So far 2020 has been pretty interesting - and I'm not referring to COVID-19 (though I suppose we have quarantine to thank for my latest posts). I had my first game of glow-in-the-dark minigolf, made a daytrip to Bonn and, yeah, traveled Southeast Asia for a month, as one does.
On Thursday, the 9th of January, I flew over to Berlin for the night. I stayed with Raul (met in Anaheim) and some other brothers from the church. It was late, so we didn't really get to see anything, but it was a good visit nonetheless. The next day I flew to Singapore and, thanks to the time difference, I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on the 11th.
The first thing I noticed was one of these guys sleeping on his bike. Though, the one I saw was doing this in the middle of traffic!.. Basically, just slightly off to the side. At the hostel I immediately made new friends with whom I spent the afternoon eating pizza and planning the next day. I also had a $15 message - the first of many to come.
The following day, after a two-hour bus ride, we all arrived at the Chu Chi Tunnels. During our visit we learned about the many extreme survival techniques used by the Việt Cộng. First of all, they lived underground in tunnels and ate Tapioca root all day long as their only food source. We tried some, which was actually pretty good, but one can imagine getting tired of it in about a day.
Due to the resulting malnourishment, the Việt Cộng were quite small, which helped them to live in tunnels that, as I discovered, are quite confining... Of course, I'd rather be malnourished than experience the horrible conditions that some of the US troops had to face. Not only did the Việt Cộng find devestating ways to use the weapons of the attacking forces against them, but they were also quite effective in coming up with gruesome traps that would shred and impale the flesh of their victims.
Yeah... I'm pretty glad I wasn't around for that conflict. After visiting the shooting range (overpriced and crowded), we took the bus back to Ho Chi Minh City.
The next couple of days we enjoyed the fantastic free breakfast on the hostel terrace (most hostels offer really good breakfast free of charge), and ate at lots of nice restaurants. Although, most notable was the street food, in particular Banh Mi (very cheap and filling sandwich bursting with spicy flavor!). I spent most of my time with two hostel buddies - a German and a Canadian.
In the last two days, before I left for the Philippines, we checked out the Indepenence Palace, the Central Post Office, and the markets. I bought a good backpack for about 500 thousand dong (about $20) at the Ben Thanh Market (more touristy than the Chợ Bình Tây market, but good luck navigating that mess!) and tried the famous Coconut Iced Coffee at Cong - not bad!
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