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Published: January 23rd 2017
Breakfast was an expansive buffet of Asian and Western items. I combined the two cultures by having scrambled eggs and fried rice. (I am already tired of white bread - and white rice for that matter.)
We departed at 7:30, for a one-and-a-half hour drive through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City and slightly into the countryside. The downtown area, called Saigon, is an endless stream of small storefront businesses, with big signs and big billboards in all the in-between places. Hordes of small motorbikes cross the intersections when the light changes – and this is a Sunday when most things are closed! In the outer reaches of the City more of a village atmosphere prevailed – calmer, fewer signs, people playing mahjong or snoozing in a hammock under a canopy. Even farther out, the houses were screened by hedges, so it was difficult to see the yards. Eventually we came to some rice fields, and we stopped at a rubber plantation to get a closer view of the cuts in the trees, although no tapping was happening. The wood is used to make furniture.
A short way on, we came to the site of the
Cu Chi Tunnels, which
Trap
High tech not requiredis now a significant tourist attraction. The tunnels were dug out by hand under the villages of the area during the resistance against the French and during the American bombing campaigns. In a large semi-underground room, we watched an old propaganda video (originally a black and white film) that showed how desperate people were living above ground. The tunnels were originally dug to hide guns from the French, then expanded to three levels and 120 km to hide from the American bombs when the war continued into that phase. Essentially during the day people hid and during the night they returned to the land to grow food and planted ordnance. (Poignant to me because of being at the
Cambodia Landmine Museum Friday.) The video's language was heroic in support of the Vietnamese and harsh against the Americans.
We walked through the woods to a sequence of displays, such as man-traps, ventilation holes disguised on the ground, making rice paper and sewing uniforms for the
Viet Cong. A short distance away, tourists paid to shoot bullets from guns, but I and several others in our group found this distasteful (particularly since the Landmine Museum made a point about not treating guns as toys).
Inside the tunnel
Every muscle felt cramped! Finally, our opportunity came to try walking in a tunnel. The original way into the tunnel was through a narrow cut-out in the ground; we walked down several steep steps and crouched. It was extremely stressful to walk almost bent double for 15 metres, and none of us tried the 25 metre option. My knees almost ceased to function, and some people crawled on hands and knees. My backpack scraped against the top with every step, and my body knocked into the walls. Because I was at the front of the line, the guide offered to take my picture at a moment when I had paused to catch my breath. The picture looks braver than I felt. Happy to be above ground, I got a deep sense of how lucky it is never to have been in a war.
The drive back to Ho Chi Minh City took us to a wonderful restaurant,
Quan an Ngon. At various stations amongst the tables, cooks prepared particular dishes. Thuy ordered a suite of dishes for us, including spring rolls that in Vietnam are eaten wrapped in a fresh lettuce leaf to keep hands clean. A warm banana-flower salad was delicious, surprisingly crunchy with
a hint of bitterness. The high quality and casual style were popular with both tourists and locals – the restaurant was full.
Our afternoon visit was to the
Palace of Reunification, the former Presidential Palace, and also known as Independence Palace. The architecture of long rectangular lines could have looked militaristic, but the proportions were elegant, and the windows were shaded by curved columns that enhanced and softened the lines. On each of the four floors were huge rooms furnished in a formal style familiar to us from news clips of leaders signing agreements. The colours favoured imperial red and gold, although not exclusively. The stuffed chairs and tables were set spectacularly in large spaces that precluded conversation of any real feeling. The family rooms were on the third floor, but they looked remarkably formal too, although an outdoor living room with a garden and fountain may have offered peaceful rest. The top floor was a dance hall, and through a window we could see the helicopter pad, which was targeted and bombed during the revolutionary war. Down in the basement was a bunker that strangely resembled the
Diefenbunker in Ontario.
For a last bit of sight seeing we stopped
Post Office
Busy hum of services at the Catholic Cathedral and the nearby magnificent French Colonial Post Office which is almost on the scale of Grand Central Station in New York! The brick Cathedral, on the other hand, had a plain décor. Which hardly mattered because it was completely full of worshippers who sang and chanted with angelic voices raised high. Outside two or three rows of people (and their motor bikes) stood in reverence, presumably because they couldn’t get inside.
Full of new learning, we tiredly returned to the hotel. And a couple hours later we went out for dinner to a sophisticated restaurant. It felt small because we only saw the room in the front reserved for our group. Again Thuy ordered for us: chicken and corn soup; pork spring rolls served with lettuce, basil, cucumber and thinly sliced pineapple; scallops with onions and peppers; stir-fried greens with garlic; pork ribs; papaya and watermelon; Saigon beer.
View map of trip to date.
">View video of Making Rice Paper.
Isabel Gibson
non-member comment
Tunnels and rice paper
Your description of traversing the tunnels makes my knees ache in sympathy. As for making rice paper, I'm glad that wasn't my career. Interesting to see it, but imagine doing that all day! Or even for a significant part of one day. Do we take our variety and options for granted? Maybe.