Saigon - Cu Chi - Saigon

Monday, March 2nd

We asked to move the pick-up time forward to 9:00am so we could have a more relaxed breakfast. Besides, we only had only activity planned for today - a 70km drive to visit the Cu Chi tunnels to the north west of Saigon. 

Half of this journey is through the bustling "suburbs" of Saigon, and the other half through fairly uninteresting, and now dry, cassava and rubber plantations.

Cu Chi is a strange place. I knew about the tunnels, the Ho Chi Minh trail, the unsuccessful attempt of the French and then Americans to locate and destroy the tunnels, But when you see them there are so many questions unanswered.

Only a very minute section of the apparently 200km of tunnels is open to the public. Indeed, perhaps most of it is no longer maintained. Most of what you can see is well explained, albeit with a bit too much 1960's communist style propaganda, but there seems to be an example of everything in a very small area. If it were like this, you'd think the enemy would either ignore the tunnels, or just destroy then. But that clearly didn't happen, and they did in fact prove strategic to winning to war. I just don't get it

Here's Lee, our guide, showing how one small entrance would be camouflaged:

Now you see him, now you don't. If these were fox-holes I'd totally understand, but they connect to a large network of rooms for all purposes.

Here's a more substantial entrance, and we were allowed down one of these so we could crawl to another entrance about 25m away - a bit claustrophobic, but also quite hot.

The display of booby-traps was quite interesting, this one (without the fake grass, presumably) swung open and dropped the unsuspecting enemy soldier onto a grid of pointy steel spikes. The objective, apparently, was to maim rather than kill, thereby taking out several enemy, rather than just the one.

The various displays use life size mannequins to show how the VC/NLF were dressed, or how they manufactured weapons and booby traps. You could even buy "tailor made" black pyjamas and striped scarves in the gift store.

There is a collection of captured and/or destroyed weapons and vehicles, such as this tank "taken out" with a delay bomb constructed from captured cluster bombs. Yes, Uncle Sam, we mean you!

Also in the gift shop you could buy 10 rounds of ammunition and use your "weapon of choice" to fire them at the nearby rife range! The only people taking up the opportunity seemed to be Russian, male tourists - of course they would.

Also on display was rice paper manufacturing, complete with outdoor drying racks:

And very nearby, a B52 bomb crater - it's a wonder it didn't take out several parts of the tunnels - perhaps it did.

And here's a sandal factory showing how Uncle Ho seized upon someone's idea of making footwear from used tires - no nails, no glue.

On the way back to Saigon we stopped in at a restaurant by a canal and had (yet another) fixed course lunch. We're starting to think that dinner is no longer required given the amount of food that seems to be included in this tour (drinks are extra).

Back In Saigon we headed off for a our first G&T. We'd only just realised that Saigon's tallest building was a few blocks away, but we were headed to an older establishment.

The Hotel Rex terrace bar was apparently quite famous during the war. These days it's been thoroughly made-over, and the surrounding blocks have become very up-market (the usual very expensive designer shops etc).

But rather than a G&T, we had cocktails - me a Singapore Sling, and Prue some kind of berry and rum concoction. We guessed the price before we entered - not much change out of $50!

We're not sure why we went looking for dinner, but after sitting down in a couple of BBQ places, we decided that wasn't what we felt like and headed to a restaurant recommended by out hotel and our guide.

It was fantastic, and of course very popular. We ordered a bit more than we needed, but we'd love to return sometime when feel really hungry!