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| INSIDE THE CU CHI TUNNEL...JUST MY SIZE! |
What a crazy 3 days! I arrived in Ho Chi Minh city, or Saigon as the locals call it( I think only the government and maps call it Ho Chi Minh City) on Wednesday. It used to be a French Colony from 1887, after almost 30 years of war (hence the wonderful bakery's and baguettes everywhere), until the 1950's when Ho Chi Minh and his communist forces defeated them and took control of the North. Following that was years and years of war with the United states on the side of South Vietnam vs the Communist North Vietnam. The US withdrew in 1973 and the North finally won in 1975. Saigon was then renamed Ho Chi Minh city in his honor.
It's Vietnam's largest city and overflowing with 9 million people so is extremely crowded and the traffic is insane. Most people here travel by motorcycles and scooters...there are 4 million motorbikes in the city and they are going in every direction all the time, they crowd every square inch of sidewalk to park.
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| VERY NARROW HOUSES! |
The skyline is really interesting as well...they pay property taxes here based on the width of the front of their building....so all the businesses/hotels/apartments/houses etc. are super narrow(between 6-10 feet) and go up crazy high with winding staircases at the back...it's so bizarre looking. How does one place furniture in a 6 feet by 20 foot room????
The food is also great, I love Vietnamese food. Oh! and Vietnamese coffees! So good, I've been very caffeinated here!
I headed out Thursday morning to see the Cu Chi tunnels. These underground tunnels were constructed over 25 years starting in the 1940's and run over 250km. Cu Chi is the name of the village under which they were dug. They allowed the Viet Cong to control huge amounts of rural land as well as access/ egress to the Ho Chi Minh Train which brought crucial supplies from North to South. They go 3 stories deep and housed 10 000 people who lived underground for years. The US knew about the tunnels...they allowed surprise attacks, even with in the perimeters of US bases, as well as guerrilla communication. As a result, the area above the tunnels became the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and destroyed area in all of Vietnam.
Most of the tunnels have been destroyed as the trees grew back the roots collapsed them but a select few have been maintained and are now a tourist attraction.
There is a 100 meter stretch that has been widened 25 cm for tourists for you can crawl through...Only 5 people out of our group had the guts to go through them. I'm proud to be one of them and it was actually rather terrifying. Even in their widened state I was crouched over as far as I could go. The roof scraped against my back and there was not enough room for two people to pass. It was HOT and pitch black except for an occasional floor light. It started 10 feet deep and kept going deeper and deeper as I went. It was so claustrophobic and I had a constant mental fight against my head telling me to get the hell out...I had to suppress the panic that was trying to get out! At one point I had to lay down on my stomach and squeeze through a sloping tunnel. It was so scary because I had no idea how long it was until it would come out outside and how narrow it would get or how deep it would go. It was hot and stuffy and it felt like I was running out of oxygen. There were tunnels branching out along the length of it that went into rooms they used for meetings, cooking, hospitals etc. but I was too scared to deviate from my path out of there!!
When we got though they said there was another stretch we could do that was 18" shorter and we were all like"no way!" I can't believe people actually lived under there...and these were the one's they enlarged! There's no way I could have gone through them half that size. I guess you do amazing things when bombs are falling on you. They really show the incredible resiliency and resourcefulness of the Vietnamese people.
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| MEKONG DELTA |
Then on Friday morning I headed off for a 2 day one night trip to the Mekong Delta. It's located in southwestern Vietnam and is where the Mekong river empties out into the sea through a bunch of tributaries. We visited the city of My Tho and stayed the night in a city called Can Tho. This is a huge rice growing area and is largest world's supplier of rice after Thailand.
Most of the villages and cities are only accessible via the river and people live their lives on and around the river. We had to take a boat to get into Can Tho. The most interesting thing to see here is the floating markets and we got up mighty early this morning to visit the largest of them outside of Can Tho. Tons of boats were selling everything you could want! The boats had really tall bamboo posts like flagpoles sticking out the back with whatever they were selling tied to it...like the signs in the aisles of the supermarket.
Most of the villages and cities are only accessible via the river and people live their lives on and around the river. We had to take a boat to get into Can Tho. The most interesting thing to see here is the floating markets and we got up mighty early this morning to visit the largest of them outside of Can Tho. Tons of boats were selling everything you could want! The boats had really tall bamboo posts like flagpoles sticking out the back with whatever they were selling tied to it...like the signs in the aisles of the supermarket.
It was a nice 2 days and I really enjoyed being out on the river, very peaceful easy going way of living they have. I went out to dinner in Can Tho with 3 girls from the tour and we found this great little restaurant on the waterfront and ate a yummy dinner while watching the boats go by and fishermen fishing off the shore. The menu's here are very extensive. For lunch I had the option to order fried rat, snake, and frog! They even had cages containing all these creatures not unlike Red Lobster's tanks where you can choose your own lobster.
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| PEACEFUL ROW BOAT TRIP AROUND ONE OF THE ISLANDS. |
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| STILT HOUSES SEEN ALL OVER THE MEKONG...THEY ALL LOOK ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE. |
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| MORNING FLOATING MARKET |
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| LADY ROWING HER FLOATING FLORAL SHOP |
I got back into Saigon tonight at 5:30pm and am looking forward sleeping in tomorrow(for the first day in a while). Tomorrow, I'm going to do some shopping, see a few of the museums and sights in the city( If I survive my life and death game of Frogger crossing the streets) and get another massage at night before bed. My last one involved a 5' tall 90lb Vietnamese girl walking on my back....ha,ha yes...but it felt good and she had strong hands!!
For now, I'm curling into bed to let the honking lull me into a restful sleep.
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