This Week in Pictures with Uncle Ho

Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City. People like to drive bikes here.

Yeah, that's four people on one bike, and no, they're not wearing any helmets. I think I wasted about 50 pictures trying to get a good one of a baby riding a bike. I now have about 50 bad pictures of babies on bikes.

I think this was New Years Eve. I'm so cool, I stayed up until about 12:03 a.m.

Yeah, more bikes.


And some of those riding bikes are cute girls, which is unheard of in Korea.

Oh, wait. That reminds me of the best story I heard all week... Someone filled me in on the details of the Vietnam-Taiwan marriage agencies.

It turns out that Taiwan, like Korea, is developing a large number of young and lazy fat kids that are ill-suited marriage bait in a society where families still make it their responsibility to hook their kids up if they can't do it themselves.

Enter Vietnam. There are agencies set up that send Vietnamese wives and husbands to marry the fat unmarryable offspring of the wealthy Taiwanese. The Vietnamese families collect fees from the Taiwan families that coincide directly with the weight of the person they're going to marry!

Unfortunately, I wasted the best trip of the week on the first day. This is the Mekong Delta, made famous by Martin Sheen and that fishing boat on their way to kill the guy from the first Godfather movie.

In the distance, you can see a factory and a massive bridge being built over an area where they still use Martin Sheen-fishing boats to get around.

They're getting richer, get it!

They wear funny hats here.


Who's that cute Vietnamese villager?

It's me! Tim!

And I'd be a prime catch, too, if it weren't for my height. They love pale skin here, for some stupid reason... Something about looking more like David Beckham, apparently.

No McDonalds.
No Burger King.
No Wal-Mart.
Yes KFC.
Fantastic!

Gross.

Tire shoes from the war era -- popular with babies, elephants and Ho Chi Minhs.

I guess snakes were the Vietnamese Tickle-me-Cabbage-Patch-Furby this Christmas.

But don't feel too bad. These kids make more money than I do.

The Cu Chi Tunnels, just east of Ho Chi Minh City, which once ran almost 250 miles underground in total, including a string of tunnels directly under the American military base for this sector.

Timothy Dukakis, looking for more holes.

This is the face I make when people suggest I go all the way into the hole because I'm skinnier than the average tourist.

Sure.

Also, the last guy who went into this hole wearing an American college t-shirt got a shaft of bamboo in the balls.

This is the face I make when I eventually decide to go in for a few dozen feet. Not as fun as it looks in Platoon.

This rates up there with, "Sure, I'll ride in a wicker-basket up a few thousand feet in the sky with two huge flames a foot from my head. No, that couldn't possibly make me feel unsafe."

The "souvenir" booby-trap. Get it? Get it? You're bringing it home with you.

TAKE THAT AMERICANIES!!!!

Now I can join the 2 or 3 billion other people who can say they've shot an AK47.

Independence Palace? Reunification Palace?

I can't remember what they call this one, but its the building from that famous video where the North Vietnamese tanks take Saigon.

Someone kindly inform the American collaborators that a bunch of Chinese tanks (and tourists) are coming to reunite the country.

The getting rich thing again.

Skinny-but-posh buildings like this are popping up all over the countryside.

This one is a hotel, but there were a lot of great three or four-storey houses like this, too. Very nice open-air masterpieces. Unfortunately, they're probably lived in by about 10 to 20 people.

This is the face I make when restaurants have pigs heads hanging in the background. Mmm.

Guess who didn't eat the head of this chicken?

It was me! Tim!

Elephant Ear Fish. I swear to God, the tour guide was telilng me all day how great the "Eleven Year Fish" was, and I had to try it. I'm so glad it wasn't really a rotten old fish.

Also, the fact that they have deep-friers here is wonderful. Can you say culture!

The American War Crimes Museum, now renamed the War Remnants Museum, as to not offend people who spend lots of money in the country and happen to wear MIT t-shirts.

This was the best and then the worst museum I've ever seen... It started off great, lots of helicopters and blood and deformed baby fetuses in jars, suppossedly from Agent Orange carpet-bombings. And then I realized that I'd seen everything. No good pictures.

The best part might be that all the pictures documenting the horrors of the "American aggressors" are credited to American news agencies.

They want to be RICH, RICH, RICH!!!

I've heard about this, but it's still fun to see... There are more books about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs here than Uncle Ho himself.

A canal leading into the Saigon River.

What a beautiful country, huh.

A great way to spend the last day of my trip. The picturesque Saigon River itself.

Needless to say, I cut that part of the trip a little short.

I should have left the Delta trip to the end!

&%$#, &%$#, &%$#!

Six more months to go. FANNNNNNNNNNNTASTIC!