In the Viet Cong tunnels

USA Tank Vietnam war

M60 machine gun

First day in Vietnam

We arrived in Vietnam yesterday afternoon, via a 6 hour bus ride from Phnom Pen. As soon as we reached Saigon it began to rain lightly, but just as we reached our hotel it turned into absolute down pour. In a matter of a few hours the streets were flooded in 6'' of water, and all the scooter riders were soaking wet. Our hotel is quite nice, and the staff are helping us to arrange our buses and hotels for the rest of our time in Vietnam. This morning we left at 8:30 for the Cu Chi tunnels. This was the tunnel system used by the Viet Cong while fighting the Americans. We had a tour guide who took us through the tunnel system, and showed us many different points of the Viet Cong defences. The tunnels were quite small. We went through 100 meteres of them on our hands and knees. After the tunnels we got the opportunity to shoot different guns if we wanted to. The options included m1 grand, m1 carbine, m16, ak 47 assult rifles, as well as m30 and m60 light machine guns. It was quite expensive so I couldn't shoot all the guns, but I chose to shoot the biggest ones which were the m30 and m60 light machine guns. It was so much fun to shoot an automatic machine gun with that much power. We than returned to the hotel and then went out for dinner. The Vietnamese food was great, and very cheap. I had prawns, pork, and rice. Tomorrow we are going to a museum on the Vietnam war and a few other interesting tourist attractions around Saigon. Then tomorrow night we will take a night train up to a city on the coast where we will spend a few days on the beach. We will be sleeping on the bus, they have small beds. We are in quite a large city, and it seems strange to see Christmas trees and snow flakes in the windows of lots of the shops.
I hope everyone has a great day.

We are having a great time in Cambodia. Two days ago we visited some very famous temples at Angkor.The temples were lost in the jungle for a long time. Many of them are still covered in vines and even large trees. The movie Tomb Raider was filmed in these temples. I've never seen that movie but apparently it's famous. Later, we had a foot cleaning done by fish. There are big tubs of water with benches around the side, full of small fish that nibble at your feet. It was very weird, but it felt great. Yesterday, we mostly took it easy and rested around the hotel. In the evening we went to an english church service. The speaker was very good, he spoke about looking at problems through God's perspective. Today is Dawson's birthday so we will do something for him. Then tomorrow we are off to a smaller village to help out with a samaritans purse "water project". We will be helping install water fillters in people's homes. After a couple days there we will return to Vietnam for one night, then off to Vietnam.

Cambodia

We arrived in Cambodia at around 4pm today. It was a one hour flight from Bangkok. I had a great time in Bangkok. Yesterday we went to a floating market an hour outside of downtown Bangkok. It was very interesting. We hired two small boats which drove us through many small canals loaded with vendors selling everything from fruit to wooden carvings. There was even a man offering pictures with a huge boa constricter. The canals were loaded with other people shopping and sight seeing. Tomorrow we are off to the killing fields of Cambodia where millions of people were executed between the late 1960's and 1977. We are also going to see a place which was very similar to the Nazi concentration camps, also operated during the 70's. It is very hot and humid here, but we are in a nice hotel with air conditioning. We will be spending roughly eight days here, in Cambodia, before moving on to Vietnam.

Talk to you soon,
Chris

Our trek to Everest Base Camp

Our trek was very challenging, but it was really good. We were gone for a total of fourteen days. It felt like being back in Africa, not showering for that long. The first adventure of the trip was the thirty five minute flight from Kathmandu to Lukla airport. We had heard many horror stories of past flights that had crashed on this route and how it is considered the most dangerous airport in the world. We all made it safely, but there is no doubt in my mind that it was the most tense, but also beautiful flight I have ever been on. The scenery was absolutely incredible, from the numerous rivers to the towering Himalayas. From Lukla we began our hike, that same day. That evening we got our first look at the type of accommodations we would have for the next 2 weeks. They were small “tea houses” which normally had fifteen rooms and a small dining hall. They were not insulated, so they got extremely cold at night. There were places where I wore my long underwear, sweats, fleece, down jacket, and then got in my down sleeping bag just to stay warm. The food was not bad at first, but every place had the same menu so that got a little boring. We all had our problems on the trip. We first had to leave Stuart for a couple days because he had a bad cold and leg cramps. 5 of us went on to the next village. At that village
Dawson got really bad altitude sickness and had to be escorted back to the last village, in the middle of the night by Steve and our guide. Steve then rejoined with Stuart, who was now feeling better, and came back up to us a couple days later. So Dawson's trip was over, the other five of us pushed on for our last village. We all made it there just as it started to snow, so we could not do Kala Pathar that evening. I was still feeling pretty good, so I asked our guide, a
climbing Sherpa who has summitted Everest 6 times, if he would take me to base camp. He said yes, but no one else had the energy to go. So we set out in the middle of a near white out snow storm. Normally it takes people 3 hours to reach Base camp, and 2 and a half hours to return, but because of the storm the guide wanted to go fast. So he said we are going to go Sherpa speed. I was feeling pretty good so I said ok, and we did the round trip from Goarak shep to base camp in just under three hours. It was so cool being at Base camp. Our guide
took me right to the base of the Kumbu Ice fall (the furthest point you can go without an Everest Permit and crampons). We saw a huge avalanche and you could hear the huge towers of ice, in the ice fall, shifting as temperatures changed. By the time we got back, there was 4 inches of snow on the ground. The next morning it was Brendan and I who were really sick. Brendan had very severe altitude headaches and we didn't know what was wrong with me. We made it down to the town where we had left Dawson and fortunately they had a Himalayan Rescue clinic there. I checked in there at 4 oclock. There was two high altitude doctors there from Scotland and one from Canada. I had major chills, but my temp. was 39.9 and I had an extremely high heart rate.
They did a lot of tests and determined I had some sort of chest infection. They said I had had it for probably the last week, which explained why I always felt short of energy and why I was cold at night. They kept me in the clinic for 6 hours giving me lots of shots, IV's, nebulizer machines, and oral medicine. At this point the doctors said I probably wouldn’t be walking off the mountain, and we were considering plans for a helicopter rescue but miraculously, by the next morning, I felt great and they said I could walk off the mountain. I did walk off and I am feeling much better. We are now in Kathmandu. On the way down though Nathan got really sick so we left him and Steve behind for a day. They did manage to catch up with us and we flew out of
Lukla together. Some parts of this may sound a little negative, but the trek was really fun and it was even kind of cool being in the Himalayan Rescue center. Everyone kept a great attitude even when they were not feeling well and when you did feel sick everyone else was extremely encouraging. There were two people who died while we were up there. So we didn't have it too bad. We are all safely in Kathmandu, getting ready to leave for Bangkok tonight at 11:30. It was
soooooo cool to see Everest!

Thanks for your interest in our trip.

Chris