My first couple days in Vietnam have been amazing and surreal. Ho Chi Minh City is so chaotic and different than anywhere else I’ve been and the people I have interacted with have been nice and helpful. So far the experience has been exactly what I had hoped, eye opening and transformative.
Yesterday around noon I headed into town for my first tour, the Cu Chi Tunnels. Immediately on arrival at the tour office I made friends; a couple Aussies heard I was going on the same tour and they called me over. Steph and Maddy from Melbourne have been a lot of fun to hang out with and I’m lucky to have bumped into them! We boarded a van packed with other tourists and headed off for Cu Chi.
The Cu Chi Tunnels were part of a vast underground tunnel network used by the Vietnamese initially in the First Indochina War then used again and expanded during the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam war around 65,000 people, both Viet Cong soldiers and civilians, lived in the tunnels. As we learned, it was not a nice place to live however they survived there. The tunnels are small; around 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall and wide enough for one person at a time. They formed quite a vast network at around 75 miles (121 kilometers) in length with three levels at 10 feet (3 meters), 20 feet (6 meters), and 33 feet (10 meters). On the tour you got to see several holes where the tunnel would emerge; some into trenches, some into bunkers, and some into holes in the ground that could be covered with a lid. We got to experience each of these. Here is my turn in the hole, recorded by my new friend Steph (thanks Steph!):
As you can see, it was a squeeze for this big American to get in and out! The tunnels underground were no different. At the Cu Chi Tunnels we also got to see an array of booby traps the Viet Cong laid both in the tunnels and in the surrounding jungle. They were all rather diabolical and quite nasty; lots of poisoned and barbed spikes repurposed from bomb shrapnel that would wreck legs (or worse) if you inadvertently walked into one.
The Cu Chi Tunnels were an interesting and sobering experience to say the least and showcased the resilience of the Vietnamese people. Life in the tunnels was very rough but it was key to their survival.
After the tour, we plowed through Ho Chi Minh City traffic to return to the tour office. The traffic here is easily one of the strangest parts of the city. There is very little order, lots of motorbikes, and lots of honking. It seems like honking here is used more to alert others that you’re coming through than to get the attention of a driver asleep at the wheel. Even as I write this there is a chorus of car and bike horns coming from outside the hotel window.
I joined Steph and Maddy for dinner after. We ventured to a food market near where we were dropped off to enjoy some of the local food. There, I had a nice, tasty bowl of pho, something I had been dying to try ever since I booked the trip. Steph, Maddy, and I discovered we had also booked the same tour to the Mekong Delta the next day so we parted ways after dinner with the promise of reuniting for the tour the next day.
We met up the following morning at the tour office around 8 am and climbed on the tour bus bound for the Mekong Delta. This tour turned out to be much more scenic and took us through a swath of agricultural life around the Mekong river. Our first stop though was to the Vinh Trang pagoda. This pagoda featured many different shrines and statues for Buddhist worshipers including several gigantic sculptures of the Buddha. The pagoda also had very nice gardens and ponds around the property which were pleasant to stroll through.
After the pagoda tour we made our way to the Mekong Delta and boarded a boat that would ferry us around to some different places along the delta. First, we stopped at a tropical orchard where they served us samples of fresh mangos, pineapple, dragonfruit, and other tropic fruits and teas while we were accompanied by live traditional vietnamese music. We also visited a cacao farm where they made fresh chocolate and showed us how they helped keep vermin under control, giant pythons:
We put the snake away and ventured across the street to a bee farm where they produced a number of different bee products including honey, bee pollen, and candies made from the honey that were quite tasty. After that, we boarded the boat again and crossed more of the Mekong to get to a place where we would take a row boat down a small side channel. The row boat ride was quite relaxing since the boat was powered by a woman standing on the back with a sculling oar instead of a loud motor and we made our way down a narrow, tree lined channel back to the main part of the river.
We grabbed a traditional Vietnamese lunch at a riverside cafe. The lunch consisted of a whole fried fish, some fish marinated in some kind of broth, a veggie soup, some steamed vegetables, rice, and fresh spring rolls with fish in them. Once lunch was over, we were given bikes to ride around town for a while before we returned to the boat and were shuttled back to our tour bus. The tour guide encouraged everyone to get their picture taken on the bow of the boat so I couldn’t resist:
I had a great time on the scenic tour; it was nice to get out and explore a more rural part of Vietnam and leave the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City behind for a while. Once we got back to the city, I returned to the food market with Steph and Maddy for another local meal. This time I had some kind of omelette type dish stuffed with duck and veggies along with some spring rolls. After dinner we wandered through the nearby market to look at all the things for sale; different souvenirs, clothes, bags, dishes, trinkets of all sorts. The only thing I got there though was a mango smoothie which made for a delicious dessert!
The rest of this week will calm down a bit for touring. Tomorrow I’ll do a little more touring of Ho Chi Minh City and on Tuesday I relocate to the coastal city of Nha Trang. I could definitely spend more time here but it will be nice to move somewhere a bit quieter.