-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 DJA wrote: > And quite a beautiful jungle it is. Unfortunately, apparently you only > experienced the Westernized big city part of Viet Nam. Next time you're > over there maybe a side trip down the Long Tau Rap River to the Mekong > delta canal villages might be enlightening. :^)
I have indeed been to the Mekong delta. I need to get the pics posted up on my website. Ridden the canals in boats, eaten the food, etc. It is indeed pretty. No, I would not want to live there. No lights, no phones, no motor cars. Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Carusoe...er...sorry. But it is definitely primitive. And actually there is not that much jungle left at all. Nearly 50% of the land in the mekong is cultivated now. I have been to the Mekong, My Tho, Bien Hoa, Vung Tau, and other places and I am yet to see a real jungle anywhere. I think I will need to go quite a bit further north to central Vietnam to see any sort of jungle. Just found this at http://www.american.edu/TED/VIETWOOD.HTM "Vietnam's forest cover has shrunk from 44 percent of the country's total land area in 1943 to 28 percent or 9.3 million hectares today. During the Vietnam War, US military actions destroyed an estimated 4.9 million hectares of forest cover. Currenty, the country's remaining two million hectares of natural forests are being reduced at a rate of 100,000 to 200,000 hectares per year." And that is from 1997. So about half of the remaining forest has been destroyed since then. The big city isn't exactly westernized either. I would say they are still very eastern. I really need to get some pics up so you can see what I mean. > I should? I did. Twenty-seven months in the delta while serving in the > Brown Water Navy. That included time living, working, and eating with > the Vietnamese. I didn't get sick once. You are quite lucky. Even today many westerners who go there get sick, even those who live in the city. I have been fortunate not to get sick. But several people I know have and they as well as locals ask me if I have gotten sick yet so it is definitely a common thing. - -- Tracy R Reed http://ultraviolet.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCprQD9PIYKZYVAq0RAtsfAJ9RY8/03a3sCHrdXoqqMpdTOgn7kQCeJJPb fvX4uVLPkobMBuEL4XAD+pc= =bP1M -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
