Anthony's Howitzer

Well, I think that is what he told me this weapon is. I left him at the hotel and came to the internet cafe myself this morning to check on a hotel booking. My office ladies and boss's wife talked me into booking a weekend in Mui Ne instead of Na Trang because it is 4 hours closer, but my god, the rooms are also 4 times as much!!!

Anyway, this was the highlight of the Cu Chi tunnel trip for Anthony.

CuChi Tunnels 3

These are pictures of the bunkers and such dug throughout the tunnels. They are, of course, reproductions, as the originals are at least 6 feet underground!

You can see my student, Hung Bui, who took us to the tunnels, in front of the operating 'room.'

CuChi Tunnels 2

So, here are the photos of the 'actual' tunnels. However, they have most certainly been widened and reinforced (maybe with concrete? some brick?) and lighted for tourists. I highly doubt I could have crawled through the originals.

The thing that looks like an anthill was actually an airhole, with a long hole for air drilled down up to 30 feet.

Cu Chi Tunnels 1

I'm surprised that I never got these uploaded. They were our first trip out of the city sightseeing.

You can read about the CuChi tunnels on the internet, so I won't go into the history. I'll just say that the 'park' celebrated the CuChi villagers as heroes for their guerrilla tactics against the 'American Devils'.

These pictures were how the villagers lived and worked in the jungles around Saigon. They even had a school.

When they heard soldiers coming, first the French and later the Americans, they hid in the tunnels.

Gai Lam pagoda 2 (Grounds)

I uploaded the 'swasticas' to remind us that BUDDHISM HAD THAT SYMBOL FIRST.


Honestly, if you have walked around one pagoda, you've seen them all, but for those of you who haven't yet had the opportunity, here are a few more photos--of the grounds, like I said.





I love the 'gate keepers' of the temples.

Gai Lam Pagoda

...was under construction when we went. I have no photos of the oldest pagoda in the city, only the grounds, where we spent about 30 minutes. I did, however, manage to get pictures of a cemetery, which, for some reason, I absolutely have been dying to get (excuse the pun, it wasn't intentional). I'm just too lazy to find another idiom.
Anyway, here are some pictures of the grounds, at least!

Binh Quoi Tourist Village TWO

(not one, not three, not four...)

Binh Quoi Tourist Village 2
OK, who would have thought that a mistake by a taxi driver would turn out to be a good thing.
It started with being stir crazy the moment I got up this morning. I can’t for the life of me tell you why I was stir crazy, because we went to Karaoke on Sunday night and saw Annette downtown (which is like a whole other city) on Monday, but here it was Wednesday morning and I needed to get out of Dodge. I was up at 5:00, walked down the street to buy breakfast from the lady who makes those rice-batter steamed “spring-rolls”, had two cups of coffee and packed our stuff for the pool before we even left the hotel for work. For the record, two breakfasts to go from the lady costs 24,000 vnd, which equals about $1.30. Can’t beat that now, can we?
The minute we were done teaching, we came back to the hotel, dropped off the laptop, changed, and I grabbed an old pool ticket. I thought about digging through the envelope to find the actual business card with the map on the back, but figured the pool ticket had the address on it, so it should work.
Should is the operative word, here. The ticket said “Saigon Tourist” on it and had the “Binh Quoi” logo on it, but it clearly said Van Thanh. The taxi driver first pulled into Binh Quoi 1, which Anthony and I recognized (funny, isn’t that) at the same time as the ‘wedding picture place one.’ We both went, “No.” At first, the taxi driver insisted he was right, but I made him ask a person who worked there, and that person pointed down the street—to #2. Well, we didn’t want Binh Quoi #2 either, we wanted Van Thanh, but it turned out that this place had a pool, and it was basically empty. It wasn’t as big as VanThanh, but it was quiet and it was nice the food turned out to be exactly the same, with an even more interesting view of the Saigon river with boats and barges driving past all the time. A handful of people did come and go, but for the most part it was very peaceful and nice. Not that the other pool is at all crowded on a weekday. This was just even less so.
It also had little hotel ‘houses’ on poles on the water!! They were so cute, and they were so cheap! A small room with a queen bed was 290,000 vnd (about $15.50) and a bigger room with a king size bed was only 360,000 vnd—and that included pool use, which costs 30,000 (2.50). If you do decide to stay here, though, bring your own food. The restaurant is excellent, and we eat there every time we come, but it’s really expensive, particularly for 3 meals a day!
It turned out to be a good mistake, which was a good thing, because one boy bit another boy in my classroom this morning, and it wasn’t shaping up to be a good day. There were 34 kids crammed into the classroom, and I was listening to students on the other side of the room. When I turned around, two boys were in a minor slapping war, and when I told them to stop, one showed me his shoulder with bite marks and pointed to the other one. Well, what was I supposed to do then? I took them both by the wrist and took them over to the office, rolled up the sleeve of the bitten one, and just said, “here.” I figured the kids could explain it.  They came in later and apologized, which was sweet, because I was never angry. Boy, when I threatened another two with the office a little later, though, they knew I wasn’t messing around!!!! I’m sure word will get around. Maybe next week will be smooth sailing???
TTFN—ta ta for now!!