Cao Dai Temple and Cu Chi Tunnels

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We enjoyed our free breakfast at our hotel. Eggs, bread, and fruit. We met for our first tour down the street at 8:15am It was already hot and muggy. Our tour guide: Slim Jim, was a talker! He spoke pretty good english and joked with an australian accent. Even though we were only 60km outside the city, the buses don't move to fast because of traffic, and we spent hours throughout the day in the bus. Our first stop was right outside the city where they made paintings out of crushed egg shells. I bought one of course because they were making them right there (later i saw the same ones for like...a fifth of the price ) We were back on the bus for 2 hours. We got to the Cao Dai Temple at noon. We BAKED in the sun. I've never been so hot and so sweaty for so long. The Cao Dai religion is a mix of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christian. Thats why there are so many vibrant colors and symbols. They mix the three religions. There are ceremonies every 6 hours that the elders of the village go to each time. If you are part of the Cao Dai religion you wear white. We stayed for part of the ceremony, but after walking around for a while in the heat and then packing into the back of the church, after about 20 minutes we were walking back to the bus hoping the AC was turned on.

We drove for a while again to get to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were legendary in the 1960s for its role in facilitating Viet Cong control of a large area right outside of Saigon. At one point, the tunnel system stretched from Saigon to the Cambodian border. Once American's realized they couldn't shoot at anyone, they just started bombing the area which. Most of the tunnels have collapsed, but part is still around today.

The first thing we did was watch a 20 minute movie about how bad the American's were basically. And then we walked through the forest. There were huge centipedes. Those things were nasty. They were like a quarter inch round and 5 inches long *shivers* eugh! We were shown all the ways they tried to get the US Troops. Many of the traps were psychological, never killing the soldiers, just scary looking and really painful. It was weird for me when all the other tourists wanted to get a picture with the US Tank they blew up killing the 5 American's inside it.

My favorite part of the tour was when we had the option to shoot one of the guns. We debated between the AK47 and the M60. We shot the M60 (I think, for some reason my memory is so jogged trying to think back about everything) The one guy on the tour with us offered to take our pics while we shot them. I went first, I had 5 shots. It was akward to shoot because it was attached to the ledge and it was NOT meant for someone as tall as me to shoot so i was trying to crouch down to aim. I steadied my breathing, exhaled and shot...i shot above the target pretty far. The guy who was taking my picture for me, who just happened to be a Vietnam Vet AND Marine Corps 😊 Laughed and goes "Oh my Gosh, she didn't even flinch!" My remaining shots were close to the target but no cigar. I don't say this to make an excuse but I definitely would have hit the target if i could positioned myself in anything but a half crouch stance haha After I turned the gun over to leslie he commented that I was a natural born shooter. Hearing that from a Marine, made me stand up a little straighter and feel pretty good!

After shooting, we got to crawel through the tunnels. The ones we went through were double the size they were back then "king size...tourist size" Slim Jim called them. They were pitch black, and i had to duck walk through them. Til i got back up into the fresh air I couldn't stop sweating, my clothes were soaked! They gave us some Tea and fresh Rhubarb. On the way back to the busses to head home to Saigon, I bought the most popular drink of Vietnam. It was a glass bottle with a snake in it and the local wine. I thought Chris would love it and it would look pretty kick ass in our bar! (Unfortunately, when i got my bag from baggage claim they were no longer in my bag)

On the bus-ride back to Saigon, we were both thinking the same thing. How much we wanted to go to Ankgor Wat. I said, ya know what, we're going to be in Cambodia when our tour ends on tuesday, lets just figure out a way to get up there. So back in the city, we went to the travel agency that we saw the cheap flights at the night before. After going through a million different options, we settled on getting a taxi from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap ( 40$ each and it took 6 hours) We'd have the entire next day in Siem Reap and we'd fly from there back down to Saigon and land an hour and a half before our flight back to korea took off. It all seemed to work out perfectly...too perfectly...


Shooting 10 rounds of the M60 - $4.00
Plane Ticket from Siem Reap to HCMC - $169 each
Snake Wine - $2 each

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Photos

Tunnel
This is the actual size of the tunnel about 40x60cm the ones we crawled through were about double this size.

Oh Yeh!
We said M60 but they thought we said 16...but we didnt' know the difference haha