Ho Chi Minh City: Cu Chi Tunnels and the Mekong Delta

Thursday 4th October 2007
Arrived in HCMC at 4am. We waited around for a while in a hotel lobby, before shifting out on to the street at the first signs of life, to find breakfast. We sat on the tiny stools of a street vendor's restaurant - the kind we sat at before in the other cities, with their improvised, haphazard feel. This is how most people eat in Vietnam. Even a lot of the enclosed cafes and restaurants receive their food from street vendors. Often, cafes and other eateries will have dirty crockery piled up outside on the street, presumably waiting for the vendor to collect it again. This also explains why I've seen women skillfully rushing around the streets with bowls of piping hot food.
We ate everything from beef noodles to eggs, tea, bread and Laughing Cow cheese (OK - the last item was just me - it's big here!)
One of the advantages of having a tour leader is being able to eat at places where local people go and do things local people do. Without the authority that speaking the language and local knowledge have - i.e. being Vietnamese - it would have been quite awkward or difficult to do some of the things we have done as a group. But I think we were very lucky too as our tour leader was very talented and skilled at introducing us to new environments. Early in the morning, I asked Hoang whether he wanted Vietnam to be more like Singapore and whether he thought the reintroduction of capitalism in Vietnam, including foreign capitalists being able to buy up land, would be a good thing for the country. It was very interesting to hear his response: he wanted Vietnam to be more like China and capitalism would mean the massive widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. At the moment, there are no very rich people and the state still provides for ordinary workers, to a certain extent. Although there is still poverty, this would be greatly worsened by capitalism.
After once again stuffing our faces with grub, we headed to the famous Cu Chi Tunnels, about a 2 hour bus ride outside of the city. They were presented well, with a good mixture of original and artificial features. I didn't realize how clever the tunnels and the guerilla warfare were. The tunnels were tiny - MINISCULE! Too big for me - or American soldiers - to fit into. I found it difficult even crouching through a short distance of artificial tunnel, three times bigger than the original system. It was extremely claustrophobic with very little lighting, and quite scary as it kept branching off in different directions. I was blindly following the person in front of me who was just as clueless as me about how to get out again. I was so relieved when I spotted a stern member of staff crouching by a ray of sunlight. My thigh muscles were killing and I had accumulated several mud patches. That was enough guerilla warfare for one day.
We saw the mechanisms of various ingenious traps that the guerillas set for the Americans and the South Vietnamese army. Really nasty! A lot of life happened in the tunnels. People ate, slept, had meetings, nursed the sick and even delivered babies. These activites took place in the chambers, spotted in between the tiny tunnels.
Then we drove to the the Mekong Delta and got a boat down the river. We had a fresh coconut and then stopped for lunch. It pelted down with rain, which limited our activity, but we just played cards! We listened to some more live traditional music. Again, the last song was Auld Lang Syne, which the musicians moved straight on to without a flinch or hint of a change of expression.
Then we boarded some much smaller boats and floated down a narrow river with amazing, jungle-like surroundings. It was wild and perfect at the same time, like something out of a movie set.
We had dinner in a market and I discovered the first beer I've ever enjoyed drinking - Red Saigon beer!