This morning we all had a large breakfast to kickstart a big day. We flew out from Da Nang at 10:30am but of course our big breakfast wasn't enough and half the team got Burger King. Today's landing in Saigon was a lot smoother than our previous flight into Hue.
Chi treated us to a meal at KFC after seeing so many KFC's around and being denied the privilege every time. We then had our first experience crossing a road in the busiest city of Vietnam, although it was only a small taste of what's to come in the next few days.
The bus trip to the Cu Chi tunnels took about an hour and a half. A lot of us used this as an opportunity for a nap. When we arrived we watched a short documentary about how and why the tunnels were made along with the impact of Americans in the war. The tunnels were built so that the Vietnamese had a place to hide when the American soldiers raided the villages.
We were all amazed when Chi revealed one of the many tunnel entries that was camouflaged amongst the natural surroundings. He demonstrated the way in which the Vietnamese hid from the enemy. We took the opportunity to try this out ourselves and soon realised that they are not suited for Westerners. When Mrs Griffiths had a turn, we decided to play a joke on her and all hide before she came back out to discover no one there.
On the way to another tunnel entry we were shown a horrific trap used by the Vietnamese only to injure and scare the enemy as they aren't designed to kill. Soon after, Chi showed us a larger tunnel opening that was uncovered. It was at this point when we realised how small and narrow the tunnels actually were.
On the way to the shooting range we saw a ventilation hole for the tunnels and Chi informed us of how the Australians were brought in by the Americans to locate the tunnel system. The Australian engineers used the strategy of smoking out the tunnels as opposed to using poison. A trained soldier demonstrated how various traps were used in the war. We were shocked at how painful these traps were.
Before arriving at the shooting range, Chi spoke about the Vietnamese Cannon that was used to fire bombs half the size of regular ones 12,000m into the air with twice the amount of TNT than normal. When we reached the shooting range, Wayne had a go at firing a machine gun.
A local soldier then guided us through the first and second levels of the Cu Chi tunnels. We were gobsmacked by the size of the tunnels and how little the oxygen levels were inside. This was only 25m of a 250km tunnel system.
We hopped back on the bus to drive to our hotel. What would normally take us 45 minutes in Australia took us 2 hours. Right in the heart of Saigon it took us 45 minutes to drive 7 kilometres due to the heavy traffic. Here, for every thousand people, there are 903 motorbikes.
Our hotel is another 10/10. We checked in and freshened up for 20 minutes before heading out again to go to dinner. At dinner we were pleased that our standard seasonal fruit platter was actually a delicious fruit mocktail.
Our patient bus driver then dropped us back at the hotel for an early night ready for a big day at the Mekong Delta tomorrow.
Connor & Olivia
Your trip is amazing too. I hope you have discovered many things about Vietnam's history, traditions and culture. Well, maybe you missed an interesting thing is to try a fishing tour in Hoi An. I think it is very interesting for you.
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