The Easyriders...Day 3

The guy carving from the root of a tree
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Our 3rd day started by stopping at the workshop of a very talented young guy.  He carved objects out of the roots of trees and made houehold objects such as chairs and tables..it was amazing!  Across the road we visited a rubber tree plantation.  Locals would cut the tree and collect the sap in a little bowl.  The sap would then be sold to Japan where they made PVC.  As we drove off, Mui turned to me and said, 'we call them condom trees!!'

We continued on to see the Ho Chi Minh trail, well a couple of them actually! The Ho Chi Minh trail is like a centipede and has many, many roads and paths coming from it.  This was used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war as a means of transporting amunition and infantry, without the Americans discovering where they were.  The Viet Cong wore Ho Chi Minh sandals and to confuse the Americans, they would wear them back to front, so the track etched into the ground would be going in the other direction!  Very clever!  We stopped at a place where you could see the crators made by the B52 bombs.  There were 72 million tons of bombs dropped by the US planes....you can imagine the devastation it caused.

.....we call them condom trees!!

One of the masterpeices
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We continued on, travelling on a road with a 40km speed limit.  Lucikly Mui and I spotted the guy hidden behiund the van with his toy but Rob's driver Nip failed to see him so got pulled over at the end of the road.  It was quite funny!  They were both laughing and Nip got fined 150,000 Dong for travelling at 46kmh.  Mui told me that he was caught once doing 40km over the limit so instead of getting a point on his licence, he bribed the policeman with a packet of cigarettes containing one million dong!

Collecting the sap
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We carried on to stop at a cashew nut factory, where we watched about 60 people deshelling the nuts by hand.  They got paid on how many nuts they deshelled so you can imagine the speed they were working at!  There were shells flying everywhere!  Now i love cashew nuts so had to purchase a bag!  The women and kids were all staring at us and again thought we were beautiful!!!

That night we stayed in a town, where we dined on Vietnamese pancakes on the side of the road, squatting on these little stools and after a few chilled Chang beers we were very content!  We dined with our 2 Finnish friends and their drivers, who were a good laugh.  One of them was called Mr Ladykiller and had 5 women in different parts of Vietnam, not including his wife!!!!