from phnom penh (nahm-pen sort of like sean penn...capital of kampuchea) a couple of hours brought us to the mighty mekong river, running from china through cam before splaying out into the enormous fertile rice-growing delta of southern vietnam

the world from a tour bus. the feet belonged to a grotesquely hip Frog who put most of his effort into planning a very fashionably tour of duty in SEA. he made us laugh.

let us off the bus already (gotta grab those apocalypse breaks when you can)

if instead of McGenocides, if monuments such as these were on every corner in the states it would make for a far more visually interesting environment.

i'm terribly sorry your childhood is one of Labor, but i still don't want to buy the crap you're selling

stripes had no smile to offer, probably because of the beating that would come after not selling any fried brown spherical treats.

the cambo-viet frontier. another day another land border. goodbye, cambodia, [we] hardly knew thee...

and hello to big bad Vietnam. vietnam is changing fast. just over a year ago, it was still a hassle to get a visa, and visitors had to indicate precise dates and locations of entry/departure. a year ago there was still a good shakedown in customs, besides searching for the usual items, they wanted to make sure you were not carrying items of "social evil" such as videocassettes, magazines, or books. this time, we breezed through in minutes.

antennae and satellite arrays sprout from riverside shanties, reaching towards to sky for the joy(?) of MTV. when you only get three channels of State produced Commu-tainment, mostly sophmoric soap-opera morality plays, pirated western news feeds and hollywood movies, pretty much anything is better. the "social evils" campaign of the mid-90s was reactionary policy to things changing a little tooquickly for some people however. learning from the soviet failure and chinese success, vietnam has liberalized economics instead of politics. it is unlikely that the former can continue without altering the latter as well. as the old guard communists are put out to pasture and replaced by the new generation, the first to live without knowing war in almost two millennia, it's [probably] an inevitability.

one catalyst for the social evils campaign was the rampant spread of english language advertising and commercial slogans. i imagine to old communists were made nervous by all the signs they couldn't understand, spreading capitalist subversion. a law was passed (and obviously enforced) requiring signs to feature larger vietnamese print, however this large signage along the saigon river seems to be immune. after the war most production and industry occured in the north, but now the south is booming again. with the return of capitalism, the residents in the nam (south) of vietnam didn't forget how it works and have been quicker to exploit the relaxed laws. people feel clever and are fond of saying that "after all, the South have won the war"

young vietnamese women will not venture into the sun without full length gloves, hats, and face covering; even in the hottest of humid weather. unlike the muslim world we were in previously, it's not a cultural thing. similar to india/pakistan/afghanistan, and well, everywhere, white = beautiful.

adam poses with a very western looking uncle hochee (sculpted both protecting and teaching child) in front of the famous french Hotel d'Ville turned "Peoples' Commitee Building"

while vietyouth napped in his shadow

we liked to hang out with the chatty cyclo drivers (large awkward foot powered cycle-rickshaws) they are almost all former South Vietnamese Army. after the war they were sent to hard labor "re-education" camps for several years. once released they were denied the permits necessary to own/rent a home and have a job. thus, they are almost all cyclo-drivers. they are pretty excited to have the sons and grandsons of their friends (and often the friends themselves) returning to vietnam as tourists, and don't play up the guilt factor too much (it's just implied).

under their seats they carry all sorts of exotic items, but you can count on them having some apocalypse for sale (they partake themselves) They also smoke some potent tobacco out of these large water pipes, one puff goes straight to your head and is enough to start your motor.

a visit to Saigon is not complete without a stop at the American War Crimes museum

the courtyard is strewn with the remnants of imperialism

you know we couldnt resist he urge to swing the mini-gun in the Huey around erratically while screaming (quietly) "RUN Charley, RUN!"

howitzuh

the daisy-cutter bomb we saw in use at Tora Bora was developed for Vietnam - at that time it was used to quickly clear large areas of jungle enabling choppers to land for deployment/extraction

the armored tractor was pretty wicked...for a tractor. these were used to clear large areas of jungle and villages

many munitions remnants

Lesson One - Historic Truths

the presentation of the museum installations were interesting and thought out, if a little corny. see how the stars and stripes drip blood unto vietnam?

the viet minh were undeniably hardcore. this photo is from the first Indochina war against the french - a suicide unit ready to charge the french tanks and ram his tripod tipped explosives into the hull

charlie didn't get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great r&r was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: Death, or Victory.

i can't believe i didn't get his face. this is the photo of an american g.i. lugging some peasant remnants through a field. the infamous caption read "This soldier seems satisfied."

blurry photo of blurry pre-humans. foetal defects alleged to be the result of massive usage of defoliants (agent orange). "Alleged" is a very powerful word. though it is rationalized as responsible journalism, truly, everything is "alleged." i allegedly woke up this morning and allegedly read on cnn.com that allegedly operation anaconda is a total fucking success. you weren't there to see me/it/that. according to the latimes, adam and i allegedly "said" we went to afghanistan. whenever u.s. bombs annihilate another civilian center/village, again it is always 'alleged' and 'unverified.' the nature of the word goes to great lengths to imply dubious doubt. but i digress...

blurry people

we must kill them. We must incinerate them. pig after pig. cow after cow. village after village. army after army.

in this lovely educational recreation, an american GI moves on from another village burning party, choppers menacing, pack of marlboro's strapped to his helmet. his smug expression and the red paint at the end of his cigarrete actually convey his Deep Satisfaction. note also his boot squarely placed atop the rice basket, his utter disregard for the life and ways of the People made manifest. his stature-challenged buddy is his ghoulish SVA counterpart.

the french were actually really damn brutal to the vietnamese, especially "agitators." What started out being about Colonialism and Catholicism before Communism and Capitalism was often settled at the guillotine.

the final exhibit was a bitch-fest about all of the counter-revolutionary threats that have faced/are facing the Security of the People and their Revolution.

under the plexi-glass countertop of evidence of cultural pollution and imperialist subversion (more "social evils") was a junk-mailer magazine piece from my home town of Pasadena, CA. how cheap ads for asian dentists and legal services threatened the Revolution, I am too ignorant to understand.

just before leaving the city, i found him. the crazy snake man and his horrific collection of paper snakes. to think, for the past year ive been living my life, the crazy snake man has been plying the same four block stretch enticing tourists to buy his paper snakes with his endearing/sad antics. at five snakes for one dollar, i still remained un-ticed.

and with that, we boarded the Sinh beast and headed North, into the jungle, towards the heart of darkness itself.