This is by way of an addendum to yesterday's post, where I was tired and left a bunch of stuff out that I forgot and I really think you should know. That and the fact that my fellow travellers are getting really picky if I miss stuff out.
1. Ho Chi Min city is only called that by the Northerners (who apparently speak with a funny accent just like in good old blighty. It all just sounds foreign to me. I certainly haven't noticed any Vietnamese with yorkshire accents). The Southerners have always called it Saigon, so I was correct to use that in my posts, all thanks to lazy swyping.
2. On the way to Cu Chi you pass through hundreds of acres of rubber tree plantations. These are relatively new, about 20-30 years old. The reason they are no longer growing rice is that the ground is so polluted with agent orange that they cannot safely do so. Rubber trees are one plant that seems resistant to dioxins and of course you don't eat it, you turn it into tyres. Each morning, usually before sunrise, they visit every tree in the plantation and cut the trunk in two places to harvest two small cups of rubber sap a day from each tree. Massively labour intensive, but still economically viable, which goes to show just how cheap labour is over here.
3. One of the other sights we had at Cu Chi was the manufacturing of rice paper. Apparently they did a lot if this in the tunnels because it was an easy portable form of food that doesn't go off. They would eat it like we do biscuits. The rice is ground into rice flour then mixed with water and ladelled onto a waffle plate type of thing for a few seconds. And you know that pattern you get on the dried rice paper circles? That's because the cake of rice is then turned out onto woven bamboo screens so they can be sun dried. Now you know.
4. One of the other fun things we got to do was to fire off a few rounds of AK 47 ammo. Callum, Christopher and Ruby were really looking forward to this, but they weren't allowed to take part. It was a surprisingly noisy affair and everyone had ear defenders on. Jonah had his CoD moment firing a real gun for the first time. They used to allow hand guns as well, but a Korean tourist committed suicide one year, so they had to stop doing that. The rifles and machine guns they had here were strapped loosely to a wooden frame, which reduced the kickback somewhat.
One side effect of the firing range was that while we wandered around the site of the tunnels, you had this constant chatter of gun fire in the background. It certainly added to the atmosphere of the place with the sound of gun fire resounding through the jungle.
5. Last, but not least, a blog post wouldn't be complete without another dig at the Russians. This time it was a horrendously drunk young guy dressed in tight yellow shorts and singlet. He wasn't as fat as his presumed father who could obviously take his drink better. He was just dozing off as his wife went through the market stalls. The son fell off a stool he was sitting on somehow managing to lose a thong, which probably flew into the air onto the top of a nearby stall.
We were then treated to the scene of the father trying to drag his lump of a son off the floor and make him stand still, which was nigh impossible. He staggered around looking for his lost thong before (we presume), his father sent him back to the hotel for another drink to calm his nerves. Lopsided wearing one thong and clutching a small plastic bag containing some trinket he'd bought from a vendor somewhere, he staggered off back through the night markets.
The kids of course, thought all if this was fascinating and almost lost interest in the fake soccer strips we were trying to buy.
There endeth the addendum. Now all I've got to do is today's, which was a little slower.
No comments:
Post a Comment