Let’s Get Cu Chi

Sin Chao (Hello). Today, I decide I haven’t learned my lesson from last night about getting hustled and will find out at the end of the day just how much it sets me back.

Hong, my guide for the day takes me out for a Pho breakfast.

After breakfast, he uses his superb negotiation skills to be my guide for the day. He doesn’t know much English but makes up for it with his enthusiasm. We take a trip out to the Cu Chi Tunnels (from where the VC waged war against the Yanks to capture Saigon).

Riding bitch on a Vietnamese motorbike is a very interesting experience, everything is a road and more will be revealed later.

The guide is a former VC and has plenty of tales to share about booby traps, suicide bombers and how the women were superior to the men; they would work by day and kill by night, the men would just chill during the day and kill at night.

Climbing through the tunnels is an interesting experience, to replicate the action at home, squat on your legs as if playing leap frog, now waddle forward every few metres, have some one scratch you to simulate rubbing into the walls. For bonus points, do it in the dark and throw in some random slopes.

After the tunnels, we pop into a couple of temples, see the Notre Dame (Vietnam has one too), spot the inconspicuous Australian embassy and have a look at the very dirty Saigon river.

I’ve forgotten all about the sanitiser, sun screen and not drinking anything with ice in it. Karma decides that I’ve spent enough to bribe away the traveller’s sickness god.

Having a pudding in coffee syrup on little stools along the side of some random street. The girl in the photo had the hugest crush on me but was far too shy to pose for the photo. Her little sister ran away at the prospect of a photo.

Tomorrow, I will try and organise a Mekong Delta day and try to pay a lot less than I did today.