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Several years ago I knew a lady who had grown up in the Jungles of Vietnam during the Vietnam War (she told me of having to step over numerous dead bodies when fetching food for her family during the Tet Offensive). One thing she told me about growing up in the jungle was having to occasionally use a broom to shoo a cobra out of their grass hut before going to bed.

A couple of other things she shared was that, for entertainment, troupes of performers would walk from village to village while banging a drum to announce their arrival. She also mentioned that they used geese as "watch dogs", to announce the arrival of strangers.

The young people in the village would challenge one-another to swim under the hulls of US "PT boats" when US personnel would arrive for a visit. She said this was quite dangerous because the boats were resting on the mud at the bottom of the canal.

Interestingly, she emigrated to the US, got herself educated, and ultimately became a manager for object-oriented software development in a major international bank.