Taking a crawl in the Cu Chi Tunnels

Cu Chi Tunnels

The last morning of our vacation, we grabbed a veggie omelet across the street from the touring office for a quick breakfast along with some coffee, and then enjoyed our Vietnamese fruit on the bus ride over to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The bus ride was about 2 hours. Again, the bus ride provided a great chance for us to view the country side, with many flooded fields and many workers in the fields.

We also rode by other cities and businesses. One picture below shows the unbelievably low prices you could find in HCMC. If you look at the photo with the “Saigon shoes”, the price for one pair of shoes is listed for 50,000 Dong. Since 18,000 Dong= $1, that one pair of shoes is less than $3! What a bargain! Also, the picture below it shows the typical backpackers that we saw in HCMC, picking out some fruit and having it made into a fruit juice or smoothie. Also, in that same picture you can see a woman carrying a fruit basket over her shoulder and trying to sell them to the tourists.

On our way over on the bus, our tour guide explained about the Vietnam War and the Cu Chi Tunnels. We also learned more details when we took the tour through the Cu Chi Tunnels site from the tour guide, from videos and from a diorama.

Here are some things I learned:

The Tunnels were 200 kilometers long, and were made by the Vietnamese with a hoe and a bamboo basket. Since the ground was made of clay, it took a very long time for them to finish this. The guide also told us that the tunnels represented hatred for the enemy during the Vietnam War, which consisted of the French, Chinese and US.
The Cu Chi Tunnels withstood 100 attacks, so won over 100 major battles. The tunnels were never taken over and when they won the war, the Vietnamese finally won their independence and Ho Chi Minh became their Communist leader. To this day, Ho Chi Minh is looked upon like a saint who has brought their country into stabilization and more wealth.
Other interesting things we saw and learned about on the tour was how small the Cu Chi Tunnels were. A few of us in the tour were able to get into the actual size tunnel. The tour guide first gave it a try to demonstrate how they climbed in, and put the piece of wood with leaves over their head on top of the hole to hide them. Keith tried but was only able to fit in halfway because his shoulders were too wide. You can see him in the picture trying to hide himself with the leaves over his head…I think he would have been caught, huh? The crazy thing was that the Cu Chi Tunnels was created as a way for the Vietnamese to live safely (they ate, slept and even got married in the tunnels), move around below the ground, and attack the enemies. They made it very, very small so that the Americans and other enemies couldn’t fit into the tunnels.

For the tourists, the Vietnamese had to widen the tunnels for us to be able to crawl inside. I crawled for the first 25 meters (it was so small and pitch black…made it felt like you couldn’t breath), and Keith went for the whole 100 meters. Go Keith! It was a great experience and really made you realize how clever of an idea the underground tunnels were.

There were also many other strategies that they used. For example, they made trench hole tunnels, which were a separate tunnel from the Cu Chi Tunnels, which was mainly used when fighting. The enemies knew about these tunnels, but the Cu Chi Tunnels were only used as an emergency tunnel in order to keep it secretive. Tree traps and other traps which contained spikes at the bottom were used. In addition, there were land mine traps. The Vietnamese tied leaves into a knot to put over the area so that their side knew where the land mines were buried. Some still exist today (but mostly in Cambodia), which can cause serious injury to the victim, such as arms or legs or both blown off all by the touch of a single land mine.

As we walked around the site, we were also shown the clothing, sandals, and weapons that the Vietnamese used in their military, as well as a few tanks they used. Also, we saw a termite mound. The termites would eat the bamboo trees and since the bamboo became hollow, the Vietnamese soldiers were able to use the air openings to breath. Our guide also mentioned that they would steal soap left over in the fields from the Americans when they washed themselves. They would then bury this soap around the mounds in order to hide their scent from the American soldiers’ dogs who would try to hunt down their scent.

The tour also stopped us off at a firing range. However, we had already went to the one in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We were glad we did too, because this one in Vietnam was a lot more expensive.

Well, this concludes our final tour, which was very educational and interesting to learn about. We then took the bus back, ate one last delicious meal in HCMC, then headed out for our long flights.

The trip was more than we could have asked for! We came home with tons of stories (Keith will be sending all of our close family and friends more detailed newsletters of our trip with humorous stories), souvenirs, e-mail addresses of people we met and hope to stay in touch with, amazing photographs, full stomachs from all the delicious Cambodian and Vietnamese food we were lucky enough to try, and tons of good laughs and experiences!

Thanks for reading about our trip, hope you learned a lot and please write comments or questions that you may have! Miss you all and thanks for supporting our travels! I know it’s tough to be away from loved ones!

HCMC: Bikes, fruit and more bikes!

HCMC


We made it to Ho Chi Minh City early in the afternoon. Since we had heard that cab drivers tend to take longer routes and overcharge you here in the busy city, we were very happy to hear from someone who worked at the airport that there was a bus that took you straight to the downtown city area where everything that we wanted to see was at. The bus was super cheap (less than a dollar for the two of us) and was surprisingly not crowded. The streets were an entirely different story though! This was the busiest city in Vietnam and even topped the busy traffic that we saw in Hanoi. There were hundreds of motorbikes, bicycles, cars and buses at every direction! It was so insane and nothing I had ever seen before that I had to take a video to show people at home. The 20 minute bus ride dropped us off at exactly the street we wanted to find a hotel on. This was where all the markets, restaurants, bars, park, monuments, and all the foreigners were at.

We checked out the first flashy hotel sign we saw and were very happy with our selection. The room was only $24 for the both of us and looked pretty fancy. It was a brand new hotel so they also gave us 20 percent off. We couldn’t believe how inexpensive this was, considering it looked very nice, was very clean, and had the usual…mini-bar, hot shower, hair dryer, internet and computers to use in the lobby, etc., plus it was on the street of all the main sites/ city life, and also a 2 minute walk from the company that we booked our Cu Chi Tunnels tour with. That meant waking up 5 minutes before having to meet at that office for tomorrow’s early tour. Yippee.

After confirming our tour at the office, we spent the whole afternoon walking around checking out the clothing and souvenir markets, as well as the fruit market. We had read about all the unique Vietnamese fruit that you could only get in this area, so we picked out about 10 fruit that we had researched, and kept it in our fridge in our hotel so that we could snack on it during the bus ride the next morning.

We also saw the Notre Dame Cathedral and walked by the Reunification Palace, as well as spent some time relaxing in the main park where there was a small concert performed by children and adults singing and playing instruments. There were many older Vietnamese kids playing a game similar to hacky sack (but more similar to the Korean-style hacky sack). There were tourists everywhere…a lot of backpackers, and restaurants galore, with every type of food you could imagine. And of course, there were street vendors and many poor people everywhere selling fruit, magazines, cds, dvds, newspapers, sunglasses, etc. A few of these people were land mine victims (innocent people who have been randomly hit by hidden land mines that are still buried underneath the ground in the fields from the Vietnam War), so Keith made sure to give him some donations when they asked him.

With all the many restaurants to choose from, we had an easy time finding good prices (still about $3 for a big meal) and great food. One dish that was new to us was a pumpkin (literally) with cooked pumpkin in the middle, as well as an assortment of veggies…onions, mushrooms, broccoli...and a little cheese, with tofu on the side. We also ate a rice, chicken, veggie dish that was served in a coconut! Delicious! We had more egg rolls as an appetizer, a dragon fruit smoothie (a type of fruit found in Vietnam/ tastes similar to kiwi) and Vietnamese coffee, which was interesting because here they served it so that it actually brewed into your cup right in front of you. It had a syrup type of cream/sugar that was at the bottom of the cup, so you mix it together after it was finished brewing. I already miss this coffee! It has an excellent and strong coffee flavor to it, with just enough sugar and cream.

Later in the night, we treated ourselves big time with a fancy 3 flavor ice-cream dish that had all sorts of fresh Vietnamese fruit on the top! Also, we shared several small bakery items that tasted similar to an éclair, but with many different fillings and toppings, including chocolate, oreo, peanut butter crunch on the top, and almonds on the top. We sampled a few of these, but each time we bit into one, the cream on the inside would squirt out…either on our plates or all over our mouths! The staff at the bakery seemed to be used to this because they warned us and also laughed with us when it happened. We also tried an amazing drink which was their specialty and named after their bakery, called the Chewey Junior. It was a triple chocolate oreo shake! Was heavenly but I was sure going to regret all those treats later! 

More interesting buildings that stood out in the city were gigantic and fancy hotels, the People’s Committee Hall, and many expensive clothing stores. You can see the People’s Committee Hall (which looks like a huge white fantasy palace) with the statue in front of it. The building had bright lights shining on it and was in front of a small park that had green glowing lights. It seemed as though the entire city was filled with lights, lanterns, animal lanterns and huge, tall buildings... even the leaves from the trees were gigantic (as you can see in the picture; it’s 3x bigger than my foot!). And, you can also see from the picture the huge bull's head on a restaurant/ club. This was right across from our apartment and always caught our attention. Biggest bull's head I've ever seen! There was a crocodile skin clothing store, an enormous Louis Vuitton (I made sure to avoid entering!) There were hotels that cost around $300/ night and a very large opera house with a life-size picture of Ho Chi Minh on the front of the building.

It was a relaxing and exciting day touring HCMC. We got a lot of rest that night, knowing that we had one more early tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels the next morning, and then we were off on the plane heading back to Cambodia, then a stop into Bangkok, then an overnight flight back to Busan/ Korea, then finally returning to Jeju. This makes me tired just hearing of all the flying! It was all worth it though because with Keith by my side, all the transportation throughout the trip was relaxing and entertaining.