Anyways Felix got in yesterday around 12:30 so I had some major time to kill in the morning. What was sweet was that the Mayweather fight was totally on TV here and I was able to watch it at a bar for roughly the price of one beer. That guy is nuts, he's really crazy good in a scary way. You can tell from the way he moves that he sees literally everything going on in pretty much slow motion. I've seen a lot of fighters and I've never seen anyone so perfectly read their opponent and just know exactly what punch Mosley would throw and where. He was literally 6 steps ahead of his opponent and was able to just throw perfect counters after perfect slips. I think if he wanted the knockout he would have had to rick getting hit a bit more so as his reputation for someone who isn't really into taking risks goes he pulled the safe path and just picked apart his opponent and dominated him in the way that was least likely to get him hit. I really don't know how Pacquiao, as much as I'm a fan of the guy, would do against Mayweather.
Anyways after the fight I sat on the street to wait for Felix since our hostel was in a little as alley that you would be pretty unlikely to find. I ended up sitting there for over an hour and in my boredom bought a pack of 555 cigarettes which i've never seen. Something about being in Asia makes me want to smoke. Earlier in the morning I was perusing this amazing food blog about Vietnam called NoodlePie (http://www.noodlepie.com/0) and was writing down the names and addresses for what are considered to be the best spots by locals. If you know me, you know I'm really into getting the local flavor on stuff and do my best to stray away from the famous tourist places. I really like going to restaurants and everyone just being like wtf is this guy doing here. So when Felix got in I pretty much had our meals planned.
First off we had Bun Oc which is snail soup! We went to this place: http://www.noodlepie.com/2005/09/tip_off_bun_oc.html and got some Bun Oc and this other thing of snails and fried bananas. Felix probably wouldn't have gone normally but since I caught him disoriented from a red-eye flight I was able to just drag him along. It was delicious. The fresh herbs and the light sourness of the soup really jived with the texture and taste of the snails. I personally haven't had snails in a few years and was a little worried but it was bombbbb.
Afterwards we went back and felix napped while I chilled at a coffee shop with free wifi waiting for dinner.
Dinner was awesome too! we got Banh trang phoi suong (http://www.noodlepie.com/2005/04/porked.html) and it rocked our socks. Tender slices of boiled pork with an obscene amount of veggies and this really tough rice paper plus noodles and plenty of fish sauce! We also got some spring rolls which were unreal in the softness of their inside and some Bun Bo Hue. Fucking awesome. The waiter thought I was Vietnamese and tried talking to me but all I could do was sort of stare blankly and say I was sorry.
We chilled in the area for a bit and eventually headed back to our backpacker area where ewe eventaully went out to a bar because we really haven't been drunk during the trip much. India's heat is just too forbidding to hangovers. The first bar we went to was called "Bread and Butter" and was owned by this dude from Baltimore. It was pretty Irishy in terms of music, patrons, and programs. The folks there were super cool and we chatted about how hard it was go get a job with the Irish expats who were now teaching English here. The idea of all these Vietnamese people learning English with an Irish accent is pretty hilarious. During periods of serious conversation the bartender, who's been here for 4 years, was breaking down some pretty real stuff. He was talking about how prostitution and sex work here is such a means for survival in a country that is desperately poor despite the glitz of Saigon. He was saying how one girl, who might well be married, could make enough money with foreigners that she could support her entire extended family and buy houses for them in the countryside. He was saying how this is compounded by the taboo on premarital sex so that women, once no longer virgins couldn't afford to be burdens on their families and would almost have to come to places like Saigon to do sex work. It was pretty unreal. He said that compared to the US where a lot of women that do sex work were sexually abused as children and their work was an extention of the mental scarring, here it was really just a job. A job that pays more than damn near any other jobs in Vietnam, especially for women.
Eventually that bar closed and we went to one down the street that the dude from Seattle in our hostel said was owned by his friend. It was sort of dead by the 3 bartender girls were nice and there was this group of fairly obnoxious Irish girls that wouldn't really leave us alone. The said we were boring and that we weren't making conversation but honestly I just didn't really have anything I wanted to talk to them about. I told them I could fake it and went into "LOOK AT ME AND HOW ENTHUSIASTIC I AM ABOUT YOUR LIFE" mode to try and turn my sarcasm knob all the way to 11 but it sort of went over their heads. Talking to the bartenders was cool though and one of them told us about the Mekong Delta and stuff. After they closed we went to walk around and saw a really busy Hu Tieu stall so we sat down. The bartender from the Mekong Delta was there and she told me what to get and it was bombbbbbbb. While there the Irish girls harrased us again.
Then in the 3rd and final bar we went to, they were still there to harrass us a bit. This last place, T&R was all foreigners except for the bartenders. We had our last beers and stumbled home.
We got to follow this up with the awesome hangover morning wake up at 7:30 to go check out the Cu Chi Tunnels. We dragged ourselves and our headaches over to the travel agency and eventually got picked up by a van. In our group was two argintineans, 2 latvians, 4 swedish girls, an old German man (who was from Munich and lived really close to my friend Beverly!) and 2 New Zealanders. Everyone was cool and we got to know each other throughout the day. The driver introduced himself like this: "Hello, I'm Joey, like a baby kangaroo. So I'm your baby kangaroo." he was pretty redic and opinionated and said stuff like how people in the south hate the north for taking away a lot of their wealth after the war and that northerners were just jealous. I guess political repression here is no where near China's where you can be damn sure no one would say stuff like that. He still revered Ho Chi Minh though. He also said he liked Obama and said that our president had pledged to help all the agent orange victims. He also said that he liked obama because he was the first "chocolate baby" to become president. I don't know if he's just mad not PC or if that's the standard parlance of Vietnam. He certainly didn't say it in a disparaging way.
Along the way we stopped at this place which was called handicapped handicrafts where supposedly people who were victims of Agent Orange work to build handicrafts and that all the money spent there would go towards their benefit. I'm not sure how true that all is but I bought a cool piggy bank anyways.
The tunnels were nuts. Seeing all the traps and stuff were insane. Our guide was pretty hilarious and replete with terrible terrible jokes. Felix and I also got to fire an AK47 and M60. Both were insanely loud and the "rangemaster" if you can call him that, was redic. He was just laughing the whole time and patting our backs. It was bizzaro world. If you ever find your way out here I'd def check out the tunnels, they're worth the half-day trip. We also saw a really awesome/poorly narrated movie about the war where the VC soldiers would get medals called "America Killer" and stuff. Because of our guides thick accent I ended up having to explain a lot of the stuff to the Argintinean and German people. I think I'm just more used to the accent and those folks weren't really native speakers anyways. Some crazy stuff we learned was that in the vent holes Americans would use dogs to try to sniff out the VC. The VC countered by taking American clothes and putting them near the vents to confuse the dogs. We also dropped tons of cobras from India and Thailand which apparently did kill tons of VC but also provided food for them and venom to lace the traps with. The tour culminates with a 100 meter tunnel that's about 3.5 feet high with exits every 20 meters if you freak out. Felix and I did 40 and were sort of over it since we're both a bit tall and were sort of scrapping the roof the whole way. That and it was mad hot in there. Outside the tour guide said I could be a VC because I was keeping up with him. I guess thats a big compliment for him?
Anyways we eventually got back and went to this place called Quan 94 (another noodle pie place http://www.noodlepie.com/2004/04/cool_crabs.html) that specialized in crabs. We had awesome deep fried soft shell crabs and pork/crab rolls. The crabs were so fresh they were literally alive by the entrance and just tossed in the fryer when we ordered them. Fucking AMAZING.
I'm just digging the food here way too much. Like I could do this all day everyday. Indian food 3 meals a day feels heavy but Vietnamese food, unless you gorge on com tam, never really gives me the same feel. It just tastes mad fresh too.
Right now we're chilling at a coffee shop with wifi burning time till dinner (we gonna Ban Xeo it up!) and then we got a night train to Nha Trang at 11. This is one of those constants of backpacking, having no where to go and lots of time to spend. These sort of coffee shops where I can swill caphe sua da in AC excellence make it waaaay easier.
Sadly I'm going to conclude the post with something that made me furious here. There was some fucking hick american berating one of the workers here who got him the wrong beer. He wanted a Saigon red and she brought him a Siagon green. He literally accused her of lying and was saying how she needs to learn english because it's the money language. I really should have stopped it. I was really close to just smashing a chair on his head. I hate it when Americans go to someone else's country and are indignant about their lack of proficiency with english. For fucks sake we're in Vietnam, people here speak vietnamese, the onus needs to be on you to talk to them. I regret not stepping up but short of just beating the shit out of him and getting arrested I'm not sure what I could have done. I probably should have done it anyways. He then went and sat next to some Vietnamese girl who was just sipping her drink and loudly told her the whole story making her uncomfortable enough to leave halfway through her beverage. When she left she shot me and the folks near me that "wtf was that guy's deal" face and we all just smiled sadly back at her. Honestly if i catch that guy pulling that crap again, which is unlikely, I'm going to say something. My blood was boiling then and it is now just thinking about it again. The fucking nerve of that man.
Anyways all the images here are from NoodlePie and I'll change them to some I took and add more when I get to be on a more private computer. If you're the NoodlePie guy thanks so much for writing your awesome blog and if you want me to take down the pics just message me and I would be glad to.
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