Vietnam sucks but has great sandwiches

So in February I had to leave the country to get my new ED visa. I was thinking Vietnam might be the next place to live when I get tired of Thailand. My friend Jay and I went to HoChiMin/Saigon for a week. Hotel was 20 bucks a night and walking distance to most things cool. Land must be pretty expensive or they're just smart enough to maximize it. This little pink hotel we stayed at was 12 floors high. The parts of the city a tourist wants to see is very small but it's a big city with about 7 million people.

There seems to be less traffic than Bangkok since there are less cars and the streets are designed properly. The traffic is slow chaos.

Independance Palace. From what I understand this was the old US Embassy since they had pictures of American fools fleeing this rooftop by helicopter. Although nothing more than a museum now, it was used as a political palace/command center in the past.

War Remnants Museum (aka. US War Crimes Museum)

I have never been embarrassed to be an American until I came here. This is the shit they don't teach you in school. We're taught by TV and Hollywood that Hitler was the devil, but after walking through this place and almost crying; I am now aware how bad the Lyndon B. Johnson administration was. I'd say its a tie or close second for the the worst entity of the modern world. There's good reason why the rest of the world hates the US. You'd think after experimenting with nuclear bombs on the Japanese that the US gov't would relax. Nope, they used Communism as an excuse to exercise an illegal war on people used to war and oppression. The US needed to test biological weapons and figured a bunch of rice pickers wouldn't care much. My camera battery died so I didn't get to take pics of all the fucked up shit Agent Orange did and still does to this day. There were pics of deformed kids trying to live their lives. I noticed how rare and expensive seafood was through the week, but I still ate a plate of snails, hopefully land snails and not from the rivers. The only irony is Vietnam exports most of its shrimp to the US.

Cao Dai Temple: 2 hours drive away from the city is a special temple. There's 4 religious types here (Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and Catholics) and this temple was built for all of them to go. It looks like a Rainforest Cafe/Disney World inside. I thought it was retarded, but I'm Agnostic.

Cu Chi tunnels: Learned how the Vietnamese dug over 100 miles of tunnels and the dirt here is hard, almost concrete-like. Well if I was being bombed everyday, I'd be digging tunnels quickly too. Some creative booby traps and use of ordinance. I shot an M30 machine gun, pretty cool. It was fun to crawl through a tunnel but my back was killing me from crouching. Notice how small the trees are? That's because no vegetation is more than 40 years old.

Conclusions. Considering these people were colonized (enslaved) by the French, then a few years of Japanese control during WW2, then at war with the US, and throw in some Cambodian skirmishes; there's only been ~30 years of freedom in this country. I'm impressed by how modern and clean most of HCMin is, unlike the ghetto called Bangkok and many other SE Asian cities. Unlike the lazy and stupid Thais; I respect these people. They were smart enough to rebuild with Western logic; the streets and infrastructure make sense and I can at least make out the letters on signs and menus. Also, the people work hard like Americans. Many mom and pop stores were open at 8-9AM, Thai shops don't open till 10AM and many street vendors don't come out till 4PM. Even little 5 year old kids were trying to sell me stuff here. You won't find a Thai kid trying to sell something until they're out of high school. The only drawback is these people are not happy, but its understandable as the last 100+ years of history was mostly controlled by foreigners. I didn't see too many people laughing or smiling here. Thai people seem to be pretty happy since they have easy lives; eating cheap, living cheap, and not working hard. Things cost a bit more in Nam and the people are not as friendly. I think they hate all foreigners...as they should. So I don't think I'll leave Thailand anytime soon as Nam sucks, China is a bunch of rude bastards, and Singapore is too expensive. I did eat about 12 of these French/Vietnamese streetcart sandwiches and they were all delicious.