When we finally arrived last night we found our hostel no problem at all really, it’s just off the Main Street in Ho Chi Minh and the nightlife is bouncing here! The hostel is beautiful, and very helpful and informative, and surprisingly quiet! We were absolutely knackered after the journey but we went for a couple, turned into quite a few drinks because we found a bar on the main strip with a live band playing.
Today we had a tour planned for the chu chi tunnels that we booked through the hostel, another really early start with breakfast in the hostel before the pick up at 8am.
This half day tour quickly turned into a full day tour with Vietnamese time, we first walked around the full city picking a load of other people up before waiting on a coach. There ended up being 40 people on the tour and the tour guide, although his English was reasonable you couldn’t understand a word he said through his accent and holding the microphone far too close to his lips. He also loved a story so he spoke for the full hour until we stopped. The only thing I learnt from his talking is that he wanted us to call him Mr. Bing which cracked me up thinking about Chandler in friends. We stopped at some pottery factory for the handicapped which was totally random but also very impressive and the end products were quite nice, but not nice enough to carry in our backpacks.
Another hour to the tunnels and Mr. Bing was our tour guide too, he was easier to understand without that microphone! although he kept saying I’m not a very good tour guide I’m just a driver he was very knowledgable and turns out he was an interpreter in the war for the Americans so he could tell us all about the history of the place. He kept asking if he was allowed to tell us another story. He was quite rude about the Americans referring to their asses getting stuck in the tunnels, and their asses making very big shooting targets. He loved the word ‘bullshit’ in every sentence.
The Vietnamese, from his perspective, seemed very clever in the war, they recycled all the empty bomb shells into booby traps for the Americans, they dug 200km of tunnel on 3 levels by hand and even an outlet into the river to prevent the system flooding, a tactic that was attempted to flush the troops out. They even used American waste at the vent holes to trick the sniffer dogs into smelling Americans rather than Vietnamese.
Finally we could go through a tunnel. It was very claustrophobic, dark and damp. I almost bottled going through it because you couldn’t see where the next exit was and it was metres below ground and only 1.3m high. Not sure how the troops did it. (David also saw a huge spider in there and although I didn’t ask at the time I clocked that he had seen something by his face but chose not to ask for fear it would send me into melt down 2 m below ground). I came out at the emergency exit just before the final part of the tunnel. Partly because I had just had enough of crawling by then but also because I had had enough of staring at the girls butt cheeks in front of me because of her short dress which wasn’t designed for such adventure… I left that delight for David once I had left and he carried on.
Finally mr Bing started to recommend lots of books for us to read which avoided the American ‘bullshit’. He had written one called three moons of Vietnam. He then started to sing…. hey Jude…. telling us all he loved us and to sing along. So there we were in the jungle at the chu chi tunnels with a group rendition of hey Jude led by the one and only mr. Bing,
!!!!!!!!!
On the way back we stopped for lunch at some random restaurant….if you can call it that. It was the worst food we had had yet!!!!! Disgusting. Similar to microwave noodles but served still in the square block with flash fried vegetables on top. For the who asked for meat that was placed on top. Never again!
We had great plans for our afternoon after our half day morning tour which ended at 4.30 pm. This meant that the war museum and the market were out! Instead we tried to plan transport for the rest of the trip because of Chinese New Year we are trying plan the rest of Vietnam, but travel is selling out quick and escalating in cost.we have managed to get flights sorted from Hanoi right through to Singapore but we haven’t yet sorted getting up to Hanoi in the north of Vietnam.
We ate in a restaurant called coriander which came as a recommendation. David’s red curry was unbelievable, I completely ordered wrong and ended up with battered veg on a massive plate with a pot of plum sauce, not even edible for the second time today. Good job David’s was a enough to feed 2!
Couple of beers as per at the same bar as last night before bed.
We move to Hoi An tomorrow by plane.
I’m having trouble with uploading photos but there are plenty from today, will add them on when I can
South East Asia 2019 