Cu Chi Tunnels

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(Hating this 'Backlog Blogging' situation aka. Backblogging. Apologies!)

Woke up at redonkulous o'clock, aka 6.30 am in the morning, craving some mega ZzzzzzZZZ during breakfast. (Aong with cereal. Damn do I miss cereal...)
Despite this, I was hugely excited to go visit the famous Cu Chi Tunnels - a network used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War as a supply and communication route, and a base for the guerillas.

Still with no change of clothes (major thumbs down accompanied by a boo hiss), I was close to dying of heat exhaustion in yet another sunny day of 35 degrees. We then had a two hour guided tour around the area, starting with a short film about the general background of the War. Having studied this in History, I was being a prattish little know it all and adding in extra facts. nErd 'nD wOt?

I was amazed by the various guerilla tactics used by the Viet Cong, and we were able to see some of the traps and hideouts during the walk. Most of these involved sharpened bamboo sticks that the American soldiers would in some way (e.g. by standing on a camouflaged trap-door, a revolving step, or simply falling) be impaled by. Ouch. Other sections included the type of artillery used and how they would make them, the kitchen and hospital areas, and a random guy who was making shoes out of a rubber tyre and selling them as souvenirs. I can't describe much of it to you, but I'll post some pictures - mainly I was left with a better understanding of the plight of the Vietnamese.

The tunnels themselves are quite tiny. We crawled round a couple of the mazes, with hunched backs and scraped knees along the way. I still can't believe people actually had to transport food and water etc. through those tunnels; after the third tunnel the majority of the group began to feel too hot and claustraphobic to continue.
All in all, pretty grim stuff - so I couldn't help but feeling quite 'hats off to ya' because the people were so resourceful. They didn't have much, but made use of everything. I learnt how they would aim to attack during the night time, when they would have an advantage over the Americans, yet during the day they continued to toil on the farms to feed themselves. And that put the whole shabang into perspective; just ordinary people, fighting for their families, land, and country.

Anyway enough of all this deep and meaningful nonsense....I GOT TO FIRE AN AK47!!! It was the first time I've ever fired a gun - apart from a water pistol which would probably be useless in battle - and it was awesome. A round of 10 bullets later, I left the insanely noisy arena feeling a) high with adrenaline. and b) so friggin' manly. truelad.com and all that. At one point, one of the officers came by to wear I was holding the gun, to 'help me'. I think the real reason was that he saw a brown person with a gun and assumed the worst.

Post tour, I felt like I had conquered most of Ho Chi Minh the day before, apart from the Ben Thanh Market shopping experience. It was abnormally hot inside, and I easily started to get frustrated by how aggressive the sellers were. Just looking at things made them rush over and give you a price, and only after repeating 'No, No, No' x20 did they let me pass by. Stressful! On the bright side, my bartering was top notch so I completed my souvenir list in record time :D.

I had dinner with one of the girls I got on really well with - Loretta from the Netherlands. We decided to go for super traditional Vietnamese cuisine. *cough* A Mexican takeaway. Woopsy daisy. Before I knew it, we were back in the hostel packing for the real adventure...the dreaded sleeper train. I mentally prepared myself for the worst - hundreds of insects, litter, no beds - just reclining seats in a communal carriage with loud people. But hoping for the best was successful - I shared a narrow room with 3 other brits in bunk beds, there were plastic flowers on our window sill, we were given some bottled water, and we played a couple of games of Shed before bed. WINNING!...Bar the dodgy toilets and non existent sleep, on a 'sleeper' train. Without air conditioning, my sleeping liner got really hot, and every time the train stopped I was woken up with a jolt and the worry of falling out of the bed. Interesting, to say the least.

We finally arrived in the lovely seaside town named Nha Trang at 5.30 a.m. Major roughsies. I was really excited to explore a new place, feeling like I had exhausted HCM, and our main guide (Albert/Albie) said the beach was something to look forward to. YAY!

So the plan: beach and sleep. Lovely Jubbly.
Love,
Prem.

P.S #cuchicrawlerz #shedbeforebed #donth8cozimbrown

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