Monday, April 18, 2011

Shooting the Pig

I don't know how I have not mentioned it yet, but traffic here is crazy. There seem to be no real rules to the road, the majority of the intersections are uncontrolled, its basically a free for all. Somehow, it works itself out, well, most of the time. Only witnessed one minor bump between scooters so far, shocking really. En route to the airport in Da Nang today, we were no more than 3 inches away from completely taking out a scooter. The guy is lucky we stopped just in time or our taxi would have had a new hood ornament.

We were happy to get out of Da Nang, really not all that impressed. In the evening we took a cab down to the beach area and walked around. We found a nice restaurant across the street from the beach and had an excellent dinner. Two meals and two beers at a nice restaurant by the beach, sounds expensive, right? Well, wait for it, it cost us $7.46. Yea, Vietnam is awesome.

We arrived in Saigon late morning. At 1:30 we were picked up for our trip to the Cuchi tunnels. Most usually go by bus or car, but Brian found a tour that takes you there by motorboat up the river. The trip is quicker, no traffic to deal with, and its a stunningly beautiful trip. The usual group for this tour is fairly large I guess, however, being the afternoon tour, there were only three of us, so, basically a private tour. The tunnels were pretty incredible. I can definitely see how U.S. forces had such a hard time fighting against the VC, the jungle is thick and there are hidden doors and traps everywhere.

One of the highlights of the day was at the shooting range at the tunnels. For a fee, you can fire off many different types of weapons from the vietnam war era. I opted to run a 20 round belt through the good ol' M60(aka the pig). It was quite fun, but man does it have some serious muzzle climb. 3 round bursts are pretty much all you can keep on target. The other member of our tour was a nice young lady from New Zealand. She had never fired a gun before and jumped right in and went for the M60 as well, I was very impressed. We also made our way through 100m of tunnel, its a bit of a squeeze, I can't imagine being a tunnel rat during the war having to go into such tight, hostile spaces full of booby traps and unpleasantness. Even more so, I can't imagine living in the tunnels.

For more photos and video visit Brian's Blog, there are plenty of my shining face (and even one of my arse) so go take a look. I will hopefully be posting photos later this evening or tomorrow. But now we must go find something to eat. Until then enjoy the video brian shot of me shooting the M60.




UPDATE: Photos are here, yay!

A few photos from the day.

We had an excellent boat ride to and from the tunnels, had a bit of rain on the way back, but it did not last long.




Nice poofy clouds in the sky.


Lunch and fresh fruit on the boat


One type of enterance into the tunnels. Nearly impossible to see the small wood door under the leaves, wouldn't know its there unless you stepped on it.


Brian proving that not all from the States are too fat to fit.

After the tunnels we returned to Saigon. We went to a bierhaus place for dinner, then headed to the roof of the Sheridan Hotel to pretend to be classy. 6 dollars for a beer, I will just tell myself it was the best beer I had here. The view was quite nice, and I guess thats what you are paying for.

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