Uncle Phuoc

Hey, today not a heck of a lot happened as I slept in till 1pm which pissed me off haha. Reason why is that if I'm going on tours to see stuff in other cities, I'll have to get use to waking up at a decent time as some tours leave at 8am. Sleeping in past 10am will make it more of a shock to my system plus I'd like to see the sun rise one of these days along Vietnam's beautiful east facing coast. Anyways woke up, had my banana pancakes which are a staple of my diet now haha. I cam back to my room and grabbed my American war shit to be shipped and I paid for a moto to take me as the bag is a good 60lbs. I took it to Long-Mai, which I have no clue what that means, but it's the militaria guy's shop, the one that sold me the ARVN rucks. Good guy who's about 55 and runs the shop with his family. To get in you have to duck under a line of overhead uniforms and packs and then the sheer volume of army stuff hits your eyes. Organized chaos with army stuff everywhere, a small couch, chair and coffee table. He helps me with my bag and we empty it to do inventory. I packed everything how I wanted it so unpacking it I thought was a waste haha, but we did and organized everything his way and boxed it. Derek's Military Police helmet now has an olive green cover and strap over top for the time being, to protect the paint and make it look average. I was told my gas masks could be taken home with me and pass no problem, but I figure I'd box it with everything else and make sure everything gets home together, plus I have no use for two gas masks over the next 35 days haha.

Packed and boxed everything he gave me a free coke and discussed business. He wanted me to mark the value at $120 to save myself the taxes. The downside is if the box doesn't make it, I'm only insured the $120 and not the $500 it's worth. On top of that the $120 would have to be split by 5 people so losing $500 and all parties walking away with $24 doesn't sound great. The shipping divided by everyone is work more than $24 anyways haha. He wanted me to pay him then, but I was relucant as I wouldn't get anything, not even an invoice at the time so tomorrow I meet with his friend, do business and ship it off tomorrow. I'll get an invoice and a tracking number. I love watching things in the system get closer and closer to me, but the value of this package I'll be checking the status as often as possible, and I'm giving the number to the guys so they can track it too, plus it saves them from asking me where is it, how's it going, etc haha.

I got to learn a little about him. He said he opened the shop 25 years ago and surplus was everywhere. That was the period where warehouses were full of US and South Vietnamese military goods haha. Over the 25 years he's seen pretty much everything, and he's a collector too which makes sense. If I had all these goods I'd pick first dibs on cool shit instead of selling it. In 1954 after the French were defeated Vietnam was split in between the Communist North and the Democratic South. He was born in Hanoi but since the country was being split in half families had their option on what side to live in, and his family went south to Saigon. I didn't get into what side he was on during the war, as that's none of my business, but if he chooses to tell me cool, if not then cool too. I've met two Viet Cong so far and I only knew because they were introduced that way, both times visiting Viet Cong places, one where the Tet Offensive was planned and two where the Viet Cong had a secret tunnel in the Australian AO. I have a sneaking suspition he is pro-US as he wears a shirt with US Marines on it but I could be wrong.

He claims he has everything, and it's close to it, but I got a few answers of "No" from him. It's like in Fallout 3 when you go to Rivet City and Seagrave Homles says he has everything. You ask him if he has a T-51b and says "No" and you say "Well it looks like you DON'T have everything" haha. So he doesn't have the US Tunnel Rat Exploration Kit, as only 10 where made, but he knows of it. He's missing US Marine items but considering there were only 30,000 in the Vietnam War compared to 500,000 US Army troops it's forgivable (maybe not for Josh though :) haha). He has all sorts of odds and ends though and trying to open a gas mask bag I bought he broke the "lift-a-dot" tab keeping it shut, but he has the tools and parts to fix things and fix he did. Unlike most sellers he doesn't push anything on me. He'll show me some items, like today a pen flare, asks if I like and for the most part "I do but I don't buy haha". I let him know I'm more or less done buying stuff until the end of my trip as I have 35 days left and don't want to spend all my cash. We hung out for a few hours just talking about military stuff, me trying to think of things I want or need in the near future or anyone in the group might and once in a while someone would come in, show him some stuff and see if he'd buy it or not. The coolest thing was a US Naval ship gyroscope. It's not my topic but I think it's just for navigational purposes, but the cool thing is that it's dated 1941, perfect condition and still has a working clock, which is wind up. Told me it was worth about $10,000. His wife gave me some cold tea and I just kept asking if he has this or that and how much. It was cool just kinda shooting the shit, no pressure and it was like he was more of an uncle instead of Westerner with a big wallet and shop keeper wanting to unload stuff on me haha.

The other cool thing about him being able to ship things is that when I'm back home and someone needs something, we can ask him, he looks and taks pics of what he has and can buy through him online, so we have an incountry source for VN items.

It started to rain so I headed back to the hotel, dropped my shit off and went for supper down the street. I got a pineapple burger which made me think of the Big Kahuna Burger from Pulp Fiction. The burger was good but it was just a normal burger with a ring of pine apple on it which saved it. Without it, it would have passed but that's it. The service sucked too so that sucked the fun out of my meal. I hit up Highland Coffee which is their version of Starbucks and not knowing anything on the menu I asked what they recommened. I got some caramel thing that sounded and looked good. I got a sugar cookie with it (I'm not a sugar cookie go-getter haha) and took a sip. I knew the Vietnamese have strong coffee but shit! haha. It was so black that light couldn't escape from it. Each sip was as if it was trying to take my life force. Super strong and bland. I stirred in the caramel as it was sitting on top and it was as if it was just decoritive and not of any taste. I tossed my sugar cookie in to try and save it and nothing. Mind you if I had sugar and milk to put in it, it would have rocked haha but I wanted to have it the Vietnamese way and damn haha. I'll stick to my Nescafe crack in a can drink haha. I just had a shower and I'm here now. I think I took two pics so I'll pass on uploading them. I'll get ready for bed, watch another hour of "Vietnam - The 10,000 day war" as it was a PBS special series in the early 80's. If anyone's interested in the topic and wants to understand it as a whole, download it or when I get home I'll burn it and let you borrow it but it's 13 episodes and 13 hours. What I like about it though is that it was made where all the leaders, officers and politians can still remember everything, but long enough ago that they can speak their minds about it, some getting angry about how things went and such so it's pretty cool, plus tons of footage and very well done. If you're going to get a documentary on it, this is the one to get, not the $20 specials at Zellers (although thoughful gifts :D)


Tomorrow I gotta meet up with Phuoc (pronounced Fock, not Fuck haha) at 8am and maybe do something good tomorrow, book a trip to the Delta, the ricebowl of South East Asia which makes more rice than Japan and Korea combined. Probably go out for another nice dinner too, as Alfresco's and Pizza Hut was my top two places so far. Till then take care.