Helping a lady make rice paper, walking through a rubber tree plantation, crawling through tunnels used during the Vietnam War, drinking snake wine, shooting an M-60 and, most recently, getting burned by a taxi driver - all in a hard day's work... Mr. Hiep is a friend of Jamie's family and possibly the most knowledgeable guide in the country. He was a year too young to serve in the army by the end of the war, but had relatives and classmates that fought. We left our hotel at 8 and got back around 4: The rice paper. We pulled the car over in the middle of a tiny village and literally walked into a lady's home where she makes thousands of edible rice paper circles a day (used for spring rolls, dumplings, etc.). With a basic rice and water mixture, she spread little cups full on a cloth stretched over a fire. Much like a crepe. After letting it sit for 30 seconds or so (meanwhile preparing the next scoop), she used a stick and a cylindrical tool to lift it up and lay it out flat on bamboo mats. It's an art, not a science, I learned. After watching her effortlessly craft one after another in fluid motions, I took her tiny seat and struggled to complete one (in the time she made 4). But my second one only had about 6 holes in it! She was nice and left them on the drying rack, though I don't think mine will sell. The plantation. Hundreds and hundreds of rubber trees originally planted by the French for profit. Every single one is cut in a certain way around the trunk so that the sticky white sap flows down the bark and drips neatly into half a coconut shell tied beneath. Like the way gumballs spiral down the dispenser. It was crazy to think that the white goo I could roll between my fingers made the tires on the car I hopped back into. The Cu Chi tunnels were the main attraction. Dug for shelter from bombings and soldiers, the tunnels are like a human ant farm. With the simplest of tools, the Vietnamese created a complex network (roughly 200 km total) of kitchens, storage rooms, meeting places, bedrooms, escapes and booby traps. Unfortunately, they didn't anticipate a 6-feet tall tourist exploring them. Hunched over, sometimes almost on my stomach, I weaved my way through, dodging bats now and then and staying right behind our guide with the flashlight. I opted to go through a 70 meter tunnel on the second level (meaning smaller). After 30 meters, the guide asked me if I wanted to go on. The daylight filling the exit hole looked quite appealing and I responded, "I think this is good." Off he went down the last 40 meters. Not what I meant, but I quickly scurried after the fading light and the little man that knew the way out. To celebrate: the snake wine. The kind I tasted came from a bottle with a cobra staring me in the face. Always nice to have company. The M-60. I wanted the AK-47, but they were all out of bullets. 20 shots rapid fire. So here's the scene: A Vietnamese man showing an American boy how to shoot one of the guns that was used to kill one another 30 years earlier. Really bizarre, if you think about it. And finally, the taxi driver. The average cost of a ride from our hotel to Chi's Cafe is 20,000 dong (a little more than one dollar). So was it odd when I gave my driver a 500,000 bill and he only gave me 300,000 back? Just a bit. The language barrier killed me, and his playing dumb didn't help either. Paying 13 dollars for a 1-dollar cab ride - that's when you say: "Xao ba co!" (you lie like a grandmother) I almost forgot the most important thing that I learned from Mr. Hiep today: passing gas is perfectly fine in Vietnam. No "excuse me" or "safety" needed. Just let it out!

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