Goodbye Saigon.

We leave Saigon today to return to Seattle via 12 hours in Seoul.


We have little to show for Saigon. It should be said "Saigon is damned big!".




This would be our hotel. It took a few hours on the back of a couple motorbikes to find this spot. Most of the other hotels were full or too expensive. Our drivers persevered however. They have cable and a hot shower.


This is the coffee shop across the street from the hotel. We had coffee here every morning. Very nice people.


Crossing the street can be a challenge.

Some streets:







Driving here is insane. If you feel the least bit uncomfortable driving in places like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Seattle then don't bother even thinking of trying to here. If you are in a cab, it would even be best not to look.

Wastelands...

We have found a new favourite brand:


Craven "A"?



That would be a hard-boiled chicken fetus. No, not the normal egg variety. This one was inseminated and developing into a chicken. I ate that. With Salt, Pepper, and MSG. It tasted like a mix of egg and chicken. It even had a broth-like fluid in it. Delicious. I had two with some older dudes who gave me rice wine in Da Nang.


The next day. We tried to leave Da Nang, but we arrived at the train station to late for a train. Noon in other words. So we had to wait for the next train at 4am.


So we waited out of the rain under a defunct train.


The next morning early we were on the train to Nha Trang.





In Nha Trang we spent xmas in a hotel room with cable.



Also in Nha Trang, Zeb tamed his beard into that of a 70's pornstar.


Then we boarded a bus for Phan Rang.



In Phan Rang after walking 5 kilometer with our bags we finally arrived hot and tired at the beach. We immediately became a spectacle. It didn't help that we were carrying a guitar. Guitars seem to be a universal signal for free interaction. A blessing really!






We have become the jump off...


After everyone on the beach took turns kicking it with us the whole place cleared out. It was getting dark and the temperature suddenly dropped, because a huge storm was headed right for us. We walked to the first hotel we could, but it was far too expensive. Content to sleep outside as long as we could avoid the rain, we went around the side of the hotel into an unused stairway. It wasn't a half hour before a man leaned over the railing of the place next door and yelled: "Can I help you?" It was confusing because I am used to this being one of those rude things people say when they really want you to pay or leave, but in his literal and direct english he really meant it. His name is Huy (Hway) and he manages and lives at this coffee shop.



Now this is by far the most posh coffee shop I have ever seen. This is no hotel, just coffee.


Huy was very kind and excited to meet us. We were instant friends. He is slightly younger than us and his wife lives 100km from his job. Huy gave us coffee, cigarettes, Hennessey, a place to sleep for the night, breakfast, and gifts of friendship to our families. In the morning we gave him a Leatherman as our gift to his family. He was leaving town to visit his wife for four days, so we headed back to the beach to camp.


This is the camp we built:


That's right! We built a sandbag bunker in the side of a sand dune to protect from wind and rain. You see in Thailand we thought we were buying a tarp, but it was actually a bag full of plastic bags. They were finally useful.


This is what is opposite our camp away from the beach. Wasteland...


Camping was going very well for us.




One morning while we were making coffee, some men and boys we recognized as people who had come to check out our camp, started dragging long tubes through the wastland toward the beach. It was raining pretty hard and we were wondering "WHat are they up to?" Then we hear digging near our tent and noticed they were digging a trench for the pipe. We decided to help.





After we finished burying the pipeline, they insisted we eat with them.

That would be an array of various Fruits of The Sea, including squids and some unknown fishes.


I also had the priveledge of drinking a strange beverage with these men.

That would be Seahorse Wine. Yes, it IS a plastic jar with dead seahorses and ricewine. It tastes like it looks... Ahhh-mazing!


We asked what the seawater pipe was for, so they showed us.

A shrimp farm!

Shrimp Larva!

This guy has Ahhh-mazing abs!


We really like these guys. They were so friendly to us.

We spent New Years in our camp on the beach drinking beverages and burning shit!

I have to say that Phan Rang is...

Awesome! But we head on to Saigon tomorrow with hopes for more luck.



This lil' guy is gonna miss us...

It's on in Vietnam!!!

We made it to Vietnam!



1,484,500 Vietnam Dong



"If you wanna ride. Don't ride the White Horse." -Laid Back (1983)


We arrived in Dong Ha, Vietnam.




Dong Ha is just south of the DMZ (aka The 17th Parallel, aka Ben Hai River). Dong Ha had many American soldiers camping there during the war and a lot of "very terrible" fighting with the Viet Cong. We spent two days touring the area with some motor bike drivers: Dung (Joong), Aowg (Dong), and Huc (Hook).



What's left of a Claymore mine.

Aowg with a poece of an old rocket launcher.


An old American bunker on a hill. A Colonel stayed here.

The whole hill is planted with rubber trees now.




Statues at the National Cemetery. There are 75 cemeteries like this.

The graves in these cemeteries are only for North Vietnamese (Viet Cong) from the war.

Many are unknown. The Viet Cong did not have dog-tags. They had a scrap of paper on a small button. It wasn't really water proof and they broke often.

Inside an old American bunker. The US encampments were not preserved after the war. Some random pieces remain.

Dung and Zeb on top of the bunker.

The old 17th parallel bridge over the Ben Hai River.






These are the Vinh Moc tunnels. A village in North Vietnam on the coast built an underground network of tunnels and lived underground through the war. Children were born down here and the elderly and children stayed in the tunnels while the young men and women fought against the South Vietnam Army and the Americans. The surface was bombed all to hell, but they had artillery to cover the sea and a surface network of trenches to help them move around safely. There was even a very deep bombshelter.

These are some of the trenches.



Fishing boats on the sea.



Some troops camped here.

The famous Rockpile. American Artillery was stationed on top.








People still live in these mountains.







These are the kids that live there. They wanted candy. We didn't have candy.

Some of their homes.

Zeb and Aowg demonstrating camping in an old American war camp.



Huc and Dung treating us to Duck meat and rice wine of which Zeb had none. As they explained saying you don't eat meat in Vietnam is like saying you are not hungry.


We then took the train to Da Nang.

Da Nang is the first big city we have seen in a while.