Weekend Excursion

This past weekend, as I mentioned, we visited the 17th parallel and a series of tunnels and caves. It was a really nice change of pace from the small town of Quang Tri, and we got to end it all with some awesome wild meats! Weasel, wild boar, and deer proved to all be delicious and I especially enjoyed the weasel which was in a spicy sauce and served with fresh out of the oven bread.

The 17th parallel and the tunnels were the educational part of the day. The tunnels are a huge series of rooms that the communists lived in during the war. It's amazing that people lived there - babies were even born within. Many of the guys had to duck the entire time we were within and it was super dark and slippery. I do not think I would have enjoyed living there. The actual parallel is pretty unimpressive but marked by a bridge we unceremoniously walked across.

After an uninspiring lunch in which the chickens were killed literally right next to us, we headed to some breath-taking caves. We first went through the wet caves via small boats and then climbed over 600 steps to see the dry caves. The Vietnamese people have all sorts of stories about what the shapes of the caves mean and thus we saw faries and dragons and even the palaces of kings and queens.

Sunday we "kicked it" in Quang Tri, enjoying the time to decompress before heading back to work on Monday. We ate some good food - a crepe like concoction filled with sprouts and shrimp and dipped in peanut sauce and a udon noodle soup with fish - and got some quality relaxing done.

This coming weekend we head to Hue City for what's sure to be a fun time in our roommates' university city.