The Electric Buddha

1.  The Electric Buddha

2.  The Electric Buddha, shot 2.  Found in Sàigòn, but we never got close to the building that the Buddha was attached to.

3.  Company B, 369th Signal Bn., Củ Chi Detachment, at night.  Hooch on right, EE building dead center, and generator building at left.

4.  A rather lonesome-looking Catholic church, between Sàigòn and Phú Lồi, which was Southwest of Sàigòn (Củ Chi was Northwest).

5.  Củ Chi basecamp, main gate.  For ten months, whenever I saw this gate, I thought of it as home.

6.  I don’t know where this is, exactly.  Somewhere on the road between Củ Chi and Long Binh.  The complex behind the sign was said to be a hospital, but we never saw ambulances there.

7.  The complex, from a different angle.  The sign was before a small bridge.  No one ever disobeyed the guard’s signals.

8.  View of two signs and guard tower.

9.  The other sign.  “Cầu” means bridge, so I think this sign starts off “Phú Cưỡng Bridge.”  If so, then the little stream we crossed here was the Sàigòn river, or Sông Sàigòn, and that means that when we took dispatches into Long Binh, we took TL 8A from Củ Chi to at least Phú Cưỡng.  From there, we could have taken either QL 13, a Southerly route which went past Dĩ An, or a more Northerly route using LTL 1A to 313, but that one would have taken us through downtown Biên Hóa, and we didn’t do that very often.

10.  The guard tower.

11.  The guard.  Would you mess with this man?  Note the bazooka.

12.  Waiting to cross the bridge.

13.  Waiting to cross the bridge.

14.  Up the road toward Tây Ninh.

15.  Shot from Củ Chi, on top of the bunker, using a telephoto lens.

16.  Horse cart near Củ Chi.

17.  Horse cart in Biên Hóa.

18.  Bạch Dinh in Vũng Tàu.  Often called the “White House” of Việt Nam, the name is more properly translated as “White Palace.”  More is to be found at  http://www.vietscape.com/travel/vung_tau/sites.html.

19.  Because it could.

Yes, this really is a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig in its native habitat.  For more information, see http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/swine/vietnamesepotbelly/index.htm and http://www.petpigs.com/nappa.htm.

Previous Page

Table of Contents

Next Page

Click here for another page of photos.