mo pho
it has been a while since kevin and i updated this. btw, we are not going to edit anything so moms and dads, you are forewarned. not that we would do anything too bad of course!
we are in vietnam now, but first i will tell about our last hoorah in sihanouk ville. pretty much anything goes in cambodia. including the famous Happy Herb Pizza that you can buy in many of the restaurants. naturally, kevin and i had to try it. we went to a beach front pub and ordered a pizza for less than $5 US. it took a long time for it to hit us, but finally we became very stoned. i don't think i have ever been that screwed up, it freaked me out so we went back to our room and watched cartoons, which was super hilarious. kevin has been that high before, but not for that long. apparantly kevin knows someone that had an entire pizza to himself - he ended up freaking out for 2 days in his hut. i think half a pizza was still too much for me!
we have spent the last 4 days in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). we really love it here. it's much cleaner than cambodia, and less peeps trying to hussle us out of money. it's also cheaper here. we have been eating pho (noodle soup) from street stalls for almost every meal - it costs us around 0.60-$2 for the two of us to eat from the vendors.
we went to the weekend bazaar, a festival, and were treated almost like celebrities. kevin and i tried a couple of the games and were dragged to the front of the lines so that everyone could watch us! we also went to a live theatre play that only locals go to, as it was all in vietnamese. apparently it was a comedy, as the crowd was in constant laughter. we still got the gist of the storyline and had a great time; it was cool when bats would fly across the stage from the rafters.
we spent another day visiting the museums in the city as well. the fine art museum was closed when we got there, but some galleries were open so we checked out some paintings - some great, most crap. we then went to the reunification palace where the last prime minister of south vietnam resided before it was stormed by the communists. pretty neat to see, it has been left the same as it was in the 70s. then we were off to the war museum. lots of old bombs, planes, tanks, photos etc. very one-sided for the communists, which was interesting to see, considering we grew up with such a strong influence from the american side.
today we went to the cu chi tunnels. this is where the guerilla viet cong force built underground tunnels in the jungle to battle the americans. it is amazing how brilliant the soldiers were, considering they had so little and the americans had so much! we only crawled 30 m underground, but it felt like 300 m. crazy that people lived there for so long! anyone interested in warfare should definately visit vietnam. on the way back in the city our tour bus ran out of gas, so we had to help push it out of traffic. we thought that was pretty funny. we ended up walking the rest of the way to our hotel by ourselves.
tomorrow we are planning on going to one of the cities waterparks. should be a riot.
on a last note, anyone that had the notion that vietnam was a dangerous or bad place to visit (not naming any names of course), I'm happy to say, was horribly wrong. this place is great. the people are great. and kevin and i are finding it difficult to leave the first city we've visited. i hear that this country is going to be the next tourist hot spot - that it is thailand 10 years ago. i'm ecstatic that we are here now!
oh, and happy birthdays to leanne horner and kory koziar! hope you all had a great halloween. and erin, i hope nyc was fantastic, your pics were great. and we hope the alien is growing nicely leanne. and how is milton, kristina? i really miss the little guy! give him a kiss for me.
here are some more pics for your enjoyment and entertainment.
http://photobucket.com/albums/c388/kevinkeely/Vietnam/