Guest Blogger: Good Morning Vietnam

Mary and I were proud to have our first visitor come meet us (aka 'walk the walk') during our trip... Gregory Johns. As a special treat Greg got the privilege of writing the blog entries for the trip. This is a great deal all around, especially for us. Hopefully he lives up to the high blog-post expectations that have been established here. Thank you Greg for coming out to visit us and visit Vietnam. It was wonderful to have you here, a little piece of home as the holidays draw near. We had such a great time with you and with living the life of luxury for a few days. Good call on those suits. We miss you already!

Read on...
Greg here, proud to be the first special guest blogger on Plan B Travels. Apparently I am also the first guest on the trip, four months in. I've read the comments and I know lots of you are promising to meet up with the girls, so you best get to walking the walk.

For those who don't personally know me, I am Sarah's friend from Los Angeles that helped her toil through her two and a half years in the advertising business here. While I've traveled to Europe, Mexico and French Polynesia this trip would mark my first to Asia, let alone Vietnam. Needless to say I knew I was in for something completely different and was extremely excited. Just in case I was too overjoyed, I brought along Paul Krugman's "The Return of Depression Economics" for reading.
My journey to Saigon started with a flight from LA to Taipei. For some reason in my head, I thought this flight was 11.5 hours for weeks, but turns out it was 14.5. There is a YUUUGE difference between a 11.5 flight and 14.5. Fortunately, China Airlines (very good BTW) had a well stocked in flight entertainment unit allowing me to watch about 4 movies. Also, I won about $40K in video poker. I need to figure out who makes their software and somehow hack it into the machines at Mandalay Bay as soon as possible.

After finally landing in Taipei it was another 3.5 hour flight to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it is now known. After being greeted by an airport more modern than the one I departed in LA, I experienced the traffic in Saigon. They call Beijing the capital of bicycles. Saigon is the capital of mopeds. Their are something like 4 million of them in the metro area and I think we rode with at least 3 million of them on the ride into the hotel. My favorite part is when traffic backs up on the streets, they just start driving on the sidewalks.

After decompressing at the hotel for a few hours, the girls arrived from Hong Kong, so great to see them after all this time.

Our trip began with an all day exploration of Saigon by foot. Step #1, not getting killed by the traffic. We quickly mastered the art of the slow and deliberate walking pace and before too long we were experts. We saw many sights such as the Reunification Palace, the former "White House" of South Vietnam. The Vietnamese are very open about what is called the "American War" over here. Especially moving was the War Remnants Museum. As expected, it's painted in a fairly anti-American slant, though not nearly as bad as one would suspect. Still, the imagery and artifacts shown are stunning, from a tribute to the journalists (from all sides) killed in the war, to replications of the tiger cages that housed prisoners of war. Much attention is given to our use of Agent Orange during the war and the pictures showing what was once lush jungle now looking something like the surface of the moon were quite haunting.
After long day of walking, we had a wonderful dinner. The food in Vietnam was great all around, though I don't think I need to have a spring roll until about 2010, as they featured prominently in every meal we had. Our next day took us to the Mekong River delta, where we embarked on a boat tour around a few of the islands. We watched as locals made rice and coconut candies and fired bricks in traditional kilns. We also got to tour a traditional French colonial house dating from the late 19th century. The trip was also highlighted by some recurring engine trouble on the boat. Now we can say we were stranded on the Mekong River in Nam.
The next day we visited probably my favorite site on the trip, the Viet Cong tunnels of Cu Chi. The Vietnamese government preserved about 75 miles of what was once hundreds of miles of tunnel network where the insurgency lived and commanded the war in South Vietnam. Although the site has become a bit touristy, all of the tunnel openings were authentic and it was amazing to realize that people actually fit in the spaces, let alone lived in them and more. At the site, I got to fire an M60 machine gun and AK47 assault rifle...Sarah took on the AK47 as well. Neither of us won the stuffed animal though. The grand finale of the tour was getting down in the tunnels. Now, the tunnels have been tourist-ified with some low power lights and made a bit bigger. But let's just say I don't really ever get claustrophobic at all, AND THESE SUCKERS WERE SMALL. I took an early exit from the second level down, but girls went down to the 3rd level command bunker.
After we returned from Cu Chi at mid-day it was time to leave Saigon. For the 4 days we'd been in Saigon, we were fortunate to enjoy good weather. Sadly, our fortunes were about to turn courtesy of Tropical Storm Noul.

- Greg Johns