Blasting through South Viet Nam

Trip Start Jul 13, 2006
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Trip End Jul 06, 2007


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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

For really the first time on our trip we felt a bit of a time crunch as we needed to get to India for a volunteer stint at the beginning of February. At the War Museum one of the themes was how devastating Agent Orange continues to be in this country causing severe birth defects. The Americans sprayed massive amounts of dioxine in an effort to wipe out the foliage so they could find their enemy. Their slogan was "only we can prevent forests".

We did a one day trip up to the Cu Chi tunnels where the Viet Cong had dug 220 km's of tunnels to protect them from the American bombs. An incredible effort to hand dig and remove all that dirt and so small that the larger Americans could not fit in them. We also went to the Cao Dai temple and watched their noon hour service which was very impressive. A fascinating religion that folds in virtually all other religions into one. We also went by where Kim Phuc (the girl in the photo, who now lives near Toronto) was napalmed during the Viet Nam war.

We spent 2 days in the Mekong Delta en route to Cambodia. The tour consisted of seeing how virtually every food product in the country was made. We couldn't get out fast enough although the floating market was cool.

We took the boat into Cambodia. Of the roughly 100 passengers there were 3 groups of Albertans for a total of 9, incredibly almost 10% were Albertans. This somewhat random sample would suggest that of the 6 billion people on the planet about 600 million are now living in Alberta, quite an increase from the 3 million when we left 6 months ago.
Word must have gotten out that there were available jobs. Traffic on the Deerfoot must be a mess.
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