Vietnam!!

Finally we have made it to Vietnam! After two weeks of classes and 26 hours of traveling it seemed like we would never get here. The first day we toured Ho Chi Mihn City and visited the Chu Chi Tunnels.

Ho Chi Mihn City was amazing, just like any capital city should be. But it was amazing for different reasons than maybe originally expected. First of all, the traffic laws, or lack there of, are insane. Moped is the primary mode of transportation in the city, and I think you need to be either fearless or totally crazy to ride one of those things. The people fly through the city and barely look to see where they are going or where they are turning. We did learn that about 11,000 people die each year in the city from moped accidents, so maybe some traffic laws would be a good thing to look into...

And you though crossing the street in Atlanta was tough.

View of Ho Chi Mihn City from the hotel.

Hopefully they never need to fix the power or the telephone lines, because their power lines were a terrible mess, but make a very interesting picture.

The Cu Chi Tunnels were another stop on the tour, and this ended up being a very very cool stop indeed (and by cool, I am most definitely NOT referring to the temperature) The tunnels were used by the Viet Kong during the Vietnam war in order to fight the American army, and I have to admit they were amazing. They dug, by hand mind you, the most elaborate tunnel system I have ever seen. The Viet Kong used this system of underground tunnels to travel and live where the American army would not be able to find them. It was amazing to see how extensive these tunnels were, and they were dug by hand, using no power tools what so ever. Crazy! They even cooked down there, and engineered a system so that the smoke from the kitchens would not rise directly above where they were living underground so the Americans could not use the smoke to target the tunnels during bombings. They also made these amazing ground traps for American soldiers that looked strikingly similar to many traps used in today's Saw movies. Complete with spikes and rotating levers, I would not want to step on any of these gruesome looking traps.