Day 43 Tuesday June 16, 2009

---

Day 43 Tuesday June 16, 2009

Enjoyed our free breakfast at the hotel and took a tour van 1.5 hours to visit the Cu Chi tunnels. On the way, we stopped at a lacquer ware factory that specialized in training disabled people in making these intricately patterned house wares using paint, eggshells and mother of pearl inlays. Finally made it to the Cu Chi tunnels and watched a documentary on the war against the Americans. It's amazing how clever those little guys were. They had loads of hand made boobie traps, the most famous being the trap door on the footpaths that fell through to sharped bamboo sticks standing on end and covered in poison. Ouch! Their underground tunnel system was amazing. The doors are nothing but a 6 by 8 inch piece of wood that went down below to the entrance of the tunnels. Words cannot do it justice, you have to check out the website at www.cuchitunnel.org.vn
We crawled through the tunnels and took lots of fun pictures. Next we headed back to Saigon/ Ho Chi Minh City and straight to Thai airways to try again to get our tickets changed. I calculated we've spent about $50 on cell phone bills and 8-10 of our tourist hours since last Thursday trying to get this fixed. So we were prepared to stay in this office for the long haul. Camden explained our situation (all of it) as the lady behind the counter seemingly not even listening, looked at our tickets. She asked us when we wanted to depart and we told her June 17, and within 15 minutes and a few strokes on her keyboard, we were out of there with our new tickets, WTF!!! I would like to call all those previous people who we talked to at both Thai and Vietnam airways and thank them for wasting our time on this trip! So to celebrate we had lunch at a cute cafe and ended it with a carmel mouse for Camden and a piece of yummy chocolate cake for myself. Next we headed back to the hotel and stumbled upon the Ben Thanh Market that looked really interesting so we decided to go in and have a look. Two hours later we emerged with a fake Rolex for Cam, 2 big North Face backpacks, 1 small North Face backpack and a Louis Vuitton pursea all for $50. Score...After the market we headed back to the hotel to chill out before dinner. We both had headaches from all the motorbikes and smog around the city. We had dinner at Good Morning Vietnam and browsed in the bookstore. I ended up with a copied version of Lonely Planets stories of all the LP author's mishaps during their travels. These people copy anything and everything.

---