Cu Chi Coo - Trip day 4

Trip Start Sep 19, 2002
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Trip End Sep 22, 2003


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Monday, June 2, 2003

1st June - Our last day with our fantastic guides and although we have seen some heartbreaking sights, we feel we have really got to see the real Vietnam. We began the day by popping over to a café for some breakfast (again me with my yogurt dutifully supplied by the boys) and we tried to order something for Pip. While we were eating (something which he didn't order), the young waitress came over and asked if she could talk with us. Her sister kept rushing in with something for us item by item and then backing away slowly never taking her eyes off us and we soon realized that even though we were in a town, they still didn't see many tourists. The waitress produced an electronic translator to help with the conversation which we thought was a little extravagant but we were even more surprised by her father who appeared with another little gadget. He asked if he could take some pictures while we were talking and then rushed off to download them onto his computer - it was a little digital camera!! Apparently they, as with most people over the last 4 days, initially thought we were Russian as that is where the last white people they saw were from.

We headed off on the bikes again (with our feet in boots that were still wet - yuk!) and stopped at another war memorial. This one indicates the place where the VC from the north and south met and began the Ho Chi Minh trail. Much of the trail actually went through Laos which is why Laos suffered so badly at the hands of both sides even though they were not part of the argument. During the war the trail was just that, dirt paths forged through the jungle and forest over the mountains. Now it has mostly been made into proper roads and we stopped at a junction where the road splits off to the Laos border. We felt like we had stepped back in time to the war era as people were sat around by the roadside just loitering and waiting and no-one seemed to know what for. There was a man with a live pig on the back of his bike (the strangest bike loads though is still 6 live pigs and the strangest cyclo load is a bed and a fridge freezer so this wasn't so amazing) and there was a young girl there with hideous burns over her head and face. The motorbikes they had were very old and made in Russia and one young man wanted me to go on his bike rather than ride with Binh. I passed him up on his offer. There seemed to be some giggling and pointing at me but I've gone past the stage of worrying about people commenting on my size. Just out of curiosity I asked Binh what they were saying and he looked rather sheepish and said they thought I had very hairy arms!

Our objective of the day was to get to Saigon via the Cu Chi tunnels which are about 70k away but Binh kept getting lost. He took us past the children's academy which was a very posh looking school for children whose parents had fought and/or died in the war (on the north side obviously, nothing for the south children I'm afraid) and then to the huge cemetery for war heroes (again on the north side). Eventually we made it to the tunnels and they were so different from the ones we had seen before at Vinh Moc. Cu Chi was the hub of a lot of tunnel activity and bizarrely the Americans built a base on top of them. Of course they eventually realized after people kept getting shot in the night despite having guards everywhere but even then there wasn't much they could do. From about 50 Americans who volunteered, only about 5 could actually go down the tunnels in the end - it takes a very special sort of person to do it. The tunnels are actually VERY small, too small for most Westerners, and some people got stuck there in the war (not the VC). Of course they have opened them up quite a bit for the tourists but you still get a sense of claustrophobia when you are crawling along them. We didn't go along the real ones but looked around the staged areas they had built in the original rooms. The VC planted bamboo spikes at strategic locations in case any Americans (and of course their allies) did get down and there was always the danger of snakes etc to contend with. We had VC food (cassava dipped in peanuts, sugar and salt) and some plain tea and tried to imagine what it was like. There were bomb craters everywhere and it was really eerie to walk around the jungle and know that people could be walking around underneath you. There is also a shooting gallery there where you pay only for the bullets you use. Pip and I fired an old M16 and of course hit nothing. Our only excuse was that we were watched by a crowd of Vietnamese and that they were used in the war so were fairly old! There were tanks and helicopters etc used by the Americans (& co) that had been shot down and there were displays of the simple yet effective traps that the VC set - all to show how the people with no money and no fancy weapons overcame the big guns.

All too soon it was time to head to Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City but mostly only by the north Vietnamese) and we were immediately struck by the sheer amount of traffic. Up to 6 people on one bike and every man for himself as people weave in and out and go everywhere on the road with no concern for rights of way or flow of traffic etc. Many times we were scared for our lives but the traffic moves so slowly that you really are not in any danger. Of course it wasn't that busy... after all it was only Sunday! We finally checked into our hotel in Foreigner City as the locals call it and took the boys out for a well deserved Indian. The trip, including accommodation, but not including meals, cost $150 each. This was really expensive and we blew our budget but it was worth every penny as we saw things we would never have seen from the bus and experienced the real Vietnam.
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