Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Vietnam

Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City
  • City is divided into two major sections: the municipal district of Saigon, and Chinatown, or 'Cholon'
  •  Cholon is Ho Chi Minh City's liveliest and most popular section. Visitors are fascinated by their numerous pagodas (Temples), reputed to be the finest in the city
  • Ho Chi Minh is still called Saigon by most residents, this is Vietnam's largest city 
  • It takes 3 months to grow rice.  The crops are saturated with water (free standing water).  After 3 months the tops turn yellow and it is ready to be pick
Cu Chi Tunnel
  • During the Vietnam War, fierce Vietcong resistance fighters waged a guerrila war that included the use of tunnels
  • At one time there would be 16,000 people in the tunnel
  • This architectural structure, a system of deeply underground tunnels having several floors and alleys and branches like spider web more than 250 km long, with places for dining, living, meeting and fighting.
  • The 250-km (155 miles) underground network of hospitals, command posts, livingn quarters and trapdoors, the Cu Chi Tunnels testify to the Vietcong's inguenuity in the fac of overwhelming odds.  First used in the late 1940s to combat the French, the tunnels made it possible for the Vietcong in the 1960s not only to withstand massive bombings and to communicate with other distant Vietcong enclaves but to command a sizable rural area that was in dangerous proximity to Saigon.
Jeff decided to see what it was like to get into this extremely small tunnel.  Watch from beginning to end and see how small and hard to get into this tunnel.










Below is the trap in which they used:













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Local Living




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During our bike tour, we stop at a local house, the gentlemen makes pottery pots and sells them.
Unfortunately Jeff and I were the only ones that needed to use the restroom (you probably realize, we were the oldest).  Well there was no public restroom but the gentlemen's wife below took us in the home.  Very lived in home with many families.  Beds, actually pads of bedding all over the floors for all their family members.  So she showed us the bathroom BUT she stood there and watch both of us pee, one at a time.  I was so appreciated I tipped her.  She was so happy !!





Can you imagine riding a bike with all the scooters.
Ho Chi Minh City now has 7.4 million motorbikes and counting.
No one has the right away with the scooters.  It is totally insane watching everyone go in different directions. Below is a normal stop light with thousands of motorbikes.  Yikes..Jeff and I did surprise the bike ride.  Instead of a crazy scooter, I had a truck run me and another biker in our group off the road.  Luckily, we just got stuck in massive mud, no harm.








Family of 4 is very common riding on the scooters





Silversea -  Good Evening Saigon Event 
Hotel Majestic




Anne & I at the fabulous Hotel Majestic getting ready for the show.







Enjoying dinner at one of Saigon's finest Vietnamese restaurant for a feast of local specialities.
Friends Mark and Anne from Las Vegas...







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