Ger’s Excellent Adventures

In spite of spending over three weeks in Vietnam I can’t say I saw much of it, because most of my time was spent in a couple very touristy areas: Hoi An and the backpacker area of Saigon. So it wasn’t until I did a couple day trips outside of Saigon that I caught a glimpse of the real Vietnam, which I loved.

First I did a half-day trip to Cu Chi tunnels, about an hour from Saigon. Watching the city pass by on the way out of town I realized how little the backpacker area has in common with the rest of Vietnam. Next time I visit I’ll try to get away from the tourists a bit more.

The Cu Chi tunnels were pretty amazing: the Viet Cong built hundreds of kilometers of tunnels and living areas 3-8m underground and used them to control large rural areas near Saigon during the Vietnam War. American ground forces were unable to make progress in the area so after suffering heavy casualties they resorted to using bombs and chemical weapons to reduce the amount of ground cover available to the VC.

We watched a video about the tunnels and underground living areas; people would live down there for weeks at a time. Smoke from the kitchen was channeled far away from the living areas and made to dissipate through a number of small holes so it wouldn’t be visible from the air. Human waste was disposed of in the Saigon river at night; the tunnel to the river was also used as an escape route if the upper tunnels were discovered.

We were given a demo of the hidden tunnel entrances and sample living areas, and shown various traps the VC had rigged up in the jungle, often using metal recycled from American bombs or other artillery.

Then we were allowed to crawl through a 90m section of tunnel. The first 30m was 3m below ground, the next 30m was 6m below, and the last was 8m, each section more cramped than the last. If you got too claustrophobic during the trip through the tunnel you had a chance to bail out after each 30m. The worst part for me was waiting for the people ahead of me and listening to others complaining and freaking out.

Anyway, it was all pretty interesting. It helped me realize how little I know about the Vietnam War. I’d like to learn more.

Near the end of the tour we had a chance to fire a bunch of weapons: shotguns, pistols, and about a dozen different machine guns, for $1/bullet. I chose to fire five rounds each of an M-16 and AK-47. I was hoping to wave my AK around spraying bullets like they do in the movies but the guns were all bolted down, what fun is that? Maybe I can find somewhere in Cambodia that has less stringent safety regulations. (I heard that somewhere they’ll let you shoot a cow with a rocket launcher. But that would be pretty inhumane, not to mention a waste of good burgers.)

The next day I left on a two day tour of the Mekong delta, which I found pretty disappointing: the first day was spent being herded around various boats with other groups of tourists, so the only thing I saw all day were other tourists and the people who served them. That day I met more Australians than Vietnamese! If I wanted to meet Australians I would have stayed in Whistler.

One of the highlights of the day for me was a bit of free time we had after lunch to laze around in hammocks or go for a bike ride. On the way in I saw the bikes we were allowed to use, and they looked like real dual-suspension mountain bikes, woohoo! I was psyched to go terrorize the countryside. I took one out for a few minutes, discovered it had no brakes and the gears didn’t work and were stuck in a permanently-skipping mode, so I headed back, picked through another half-dozen bikes to find one with a back brake that kind of worked and took it for a quick spin around the area.

On the way back I ran into a German guy from my tour and he said he had taken a different route than I did so I followed him back for a while before he admitted he didn’t know where he was going. We doubled back and caught up to our group just as they were leaving. I would have loved to have spent hours exploring at my own pace but I think I’d need more than two days here for that kind of trip.

That night I went for dinner with five Vietnamese-Americans: a couple from my tour group, and a few more we met at the hotel. We went to a very non-touristy restaurant, they translated stuff on the menu for me and I had a fantastic meal for next to nothing. I was surprised to learn that I seemed to be more adventurous than most of them when it came to eating in Vietnam: they avoided anything made with ice, and one guy seemed excited to be going out for a real Vietnamese meal for a change (while that’s basically all I have eaten for weeks.)

After dinner we went for a tour around the city (Can Tho) on a couple three-seater motorized rickshaws (not sure what they’re called.) We passed what must have been hundreds of cafes with people sitting outside drinking and watching movies. I was amazed how many cafes/bars there were for such a small city.

The next day I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another day surrounded by tourists so I ditched my tour group and hired a boat taxi to take me on a private tour of the Cai Rang floating market.

I had seen some great photos from other floating markets so I was pretty excited to take pictures at this one but I was pretty disappointed with the result: the market wasn’t as picturesque as I expected, the lighting conditions weren’t very good, and my big zoom lens let me down again. I can’t figure out if I got a dud lens, or what. I have been happy with it in the past (e.g. taking pics of Ultimate frisbee from the sidelines), so maybe I just need to try again with better light. The other lens I have with me (a Canon 17-55mm f/2.8) has been excellent.

After the floating market I had planned to rent a motorbike and tour around the countryside a bit but I couldn’t find any good tourist info or maps and had already had enough sun for the day so decided to stick around town. I went for an awesome bowl of $.50 pho, then found a quiet cafe and worked a bit before meeting up with my tour group for the bus ride back to Saigon.

On the way to the bus we did another cruise down the river that was pretty fun. The kids on the riverbank were so friendly, it was great watching them chase after us, smiling and waving. If we went past without noticing them, they’d yell to get our attention just so they could smile and wave at us.

The next day I flew to Phuket, Thailand to meet up with my friend Jeremy for some scuba diving. I’m planning to come back to visit north Vietnam some time in the next few months.

More photos: Cu Chi tunnels, Mekong Delta, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 6:01 am UTC and is filed under Asia '06-07, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.