Hoi An, Vietnam

So what did I do in Saigon... seems so long ago.... oh yes, I went on a tour of Cu Chi Tunnels, a tunnel network that the Viet Cong used to get within 30km of Saigon during the Vietnam War (or, as they call it here, the American War).

My tour guide was this little crazy, dancing, singing Vietnamese dude. He routinely serenaded us throughout the trip.

Our first stop was at a place with the best name ever - Handicapped Handicrafts. As you can probably guess, the reason behind the place is not equally awesome. It's a place where those disabled by the American use of agent orange are taught how to make crafts, which they then sell to tourists to raise funds for the medical needs of those affected by agent orange. They have some pretty cool stuff.

When we eventually got to the tunnels we got to see a short video about the place. It's quite interesting to see it from the other point of view. The local Vietnamese are very proud of the Viet Cong and how they drove out the Americans. In the video they go through a list of Vietnamese war heroes, usually with a voiceover saying something like "This great Vietnam hero. This number one American killer! She kill more Americans with bombs than anyone else in her section!". All very interesting. The tunnels themselves are incredibly tiny. Our tour guide could fit in them, but no one else could. And he was telling us that some of these stretches are 2km long, with no chance to come up into open air.

At the end of the tour I finally got to fire an AK47! They had a shooting range with ridiculously high priced bullets. So I fired off 10 rounds in about 30 seconds. They guy running the range was getting mad that I was taking too long. Man, are those things loud.

Also on this tour I ran into Patrick, a guy from Winnipeg I first met in Phnom Penh. We were both going to Hoi An, so we booked our tickets and split a room when we got here. He left yesterday, but we're both staying at the same place in Hanoi so we'll see each other again.

Hoi An is a lovely town, and really what you expect when you think of Vietnam. A little town on the edge or a river, with a fusion of Vietnamese and French colonial architecture. The old historic town has a number of sights to see, you buy a ticket and get to see five of them. They're all very nice, but my favourite culture activity of Hoi An so far has to be the cultural performance Patrick and I went to see yesterday. It was in the top of a bar, in a small room. There were only four of us, and about 6 dancers and 4 people in the band. It was cool to see some traditional dances and here the traditional music, made a little odd by there being more performers than audience and that several of the performers couldn't keep from cracking up halfway through.

And boy does this place suck your money. I've bought more tourist knick knacks here than I have in the rest of my trip combined.

Right now I have to go pick up some custom tailored shoes and sort my stuff out before going to Hanoi this afternoon.