"A Rant" By Robert Burkhill

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We were up early again today to catch our bus to see the Vietcong tunnels at Cu Chi. We made the most of our free baguette breakfast at the hotel then hopped on the bus just after 8.

The bus, which we rather naively expected to be a minibus, was a full blown tour bus full to the brim with the tourist types. Also as we were one of the last on, I got sat next to a big bloke so i spent the 2 hr journey riding sitting sidewards as i didnt fully fit on the 1/2 of a seat left for me.

Our guide, Tung, was an eccentric character. He had fought for the Vietcong in his youth and bore a nasty scar from where hed been shot by a US helicopter. He sang us all a song about Cu Chi and told us a bit of history. When we arrived we discovered that our tour bus was not alone, several others arrived at the same time. So that made 98897486908678964678374673586539 tourists.

I blame Top Gear.

We paid 75,000 dong each to get in, later finding out that 20,000 was for a video, 20,000 for the tunnel, 15,000 for a snack and another 20,000 for unknown reasons. Anyway, we basically queued round the entire place for a couple of hours. We saw the entrance to a couple of holes, which were small, some B52 bomb craters which were big and a ruined tank and replica traps. It was all so crowded you could barely see anything though and seemingly not many people are as couteous as us. The video we watched half of was a crappy propaganda video discussing how noble it was to kill americans and how evil americans were to kill vietnamese. I'm not really on anyones side in this was but at least the US has shown a little regret/responsibility. The government here force a really one sided view down your throat even though atrocities were commited on all sides.

The tunnels themselves were good to see. They were so narrown you shuffled in a squatted position through almost pitch black tunnels, it was creepy and my claustraphobia kicked in a little. After some confusion about which way to turn and the narrowness of the tunnel me and suse came out in different points, she continued further through than me.

After we ate some tapioca. which resembled tasteless parsnips, and sipped some tea.

And basically that was it. Was it worth the $10 each trip? No. Was I extremely dissapointed? Yes.

It wasnt the guides fault, his english was good, he shared interesting things about his life with us, but there were too many tourists crowding the same thing at once.

Oh yeah, also my other niggle with vietnam is: When you have museums and war sites and videos and pictures explaining the atrocities commited by americans and the harshness of those times, why must it come with a crowded gift shop selling US army hats and model helicopters? It just seems a little f**ked up. Also makes the place seem like disneyland.

Cambodia's war sites showed a much better attitude about how these things should be presented, the mood in those was sombre and real. The ones here seem like propaganda laced theme parks.

Anyway, tomorrow we move to Nha Trang. Although this was a rant, we really do like Ho Chi Minh City.

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