Monday, October 8, 2012

Half day trip to Cu Chi Tunnels

I signed up the tour right after I checked in a hotel at Saigon in the early morning after an overnight bus. Cu Chi is about 40 km northwest of Ho Chi Minh City in Southern Vietnam. The Cu Chi Tunnels are an elaborate underground community made up of 250 km of tunnels and chambers below the city for the Vietnam communists to fight the US force.

On route the bus stops at a workshop where handicapped Saigon war babies of the area make handicrafts for a living. They were handicapped because their mothers were exposed to US chemical weapons.


The tunnels were dug with simple tools and bare hands to provide refuge and a defensive advantage over the American soldiers. Despite all the bombings in their town, the Cu Chi people were able to continue their lives beneath the soil, where they slept, ate, planned attacks, healed their sick, and taught their young. Some even wed and gave birth underground.

Our tour guide who was a Pilipino fought for the US in Vietnam also shred his personal stories and showed us examples of traps used during the war, and the remnants of bomb craters.

I put myself into a small hiding hole for phototaking. I only went in half of my body, considering the difficulty getting out with only part of my head above ground.

I tried an enlarged tunnel segment for tourists to crawl through and the VC were really small and flexible to be able to bent over all the time to walk or run through the tunnels. I bumped against the same spot injured during my island trip, so I dropped out of the 120 meter long tunnel walk.










After the tour, a good's sister in law who is a Vietnamese took me to a local seafood restaurant to taste some local delicacies including snails, clams, fish eyes, and thousand year eggs which are aphrodisiac that’s high in nutrition. I closed my eyes and chewed the egg to quickly sallow it. I cannot really tell you how I felt because I did not want to felt it at all. I ate it just to be polite. Fortunately, my stomach holds up so far.

We later drove near the Bitexco Financial Tower for a viewing platform for a 360° view of the city, but i dropped the idea for the cost of VND 200,000.

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