leaving Vietnam

Today is officially our last day here in Vietnam. I think Josh and I are both feeling ready to leave. Of course there are things that we missed but we also got to see so much in the last 3 weeks, I feel satisfied. Today we went on a day tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels. It was a 2 hour drive to get there with a stop at a facility where many victims of Agent Orange worked. I was shocked at the pieces of artwork they produced, especially with the deformities and disabilities these people are living with. Many of the pieces were made with tiny pieces of egg shell (some burned to change colors) that they glues down on a board to form a design. Another piece, using the same technique was using small pieces of mother of pearl (the pearlized inside of a clam shell). Again, they were beautiful. It really inspired Josh and I to purchase something once we got back into the big city. We'll now have to see if we can find them! After the workshop, we made it to the tunnels. After a tour through the jungle and seeing many of the original booby traps and ventilation holes for the tunnels, we got to actually go into one and crawl 100 meters through. Out of 15 people, only 5 of us (including Josh and I) made it through the entire system. As we entered, we had to bend over completely to fit. And as we made our ways further in, we had to get onto our hands and then hands and knees. I can't imaging being claustrophobic! Oh, one more highlight was that Josh bought a round of bullets to shoot an AK57. I took the responsibility of filming it all. It was SO loud!

Along our travels in Vietnam we've met many other travels like ourselves. One couple from Ireland and England we've been traveling with for the past week. Another couple from California we met today our our tour and the 6 of us have decided to meet up for dinner. It's really nice being in the company of other people our age and sharing stories of all our travels.

Tomorrow we fly out to Manila, Philippines where we'll stay one day and then fly to San Francisco/ Peru the following. It'll be a few long days spent in airports and recovering from the huge time change. Our next big and final stop is going to in Cusco to hike Machu Picchu. We'll definitely have more pictures to post by that point.