Vietnam - Crawling through tunnels

Vietnam: Crawling through tunnels

I almost made the very unwise decision NOT to visit Vietnam due to mixed reports coming from both people who loved the country, as well as some who hated it. Some of the “haters” swore never to set foot again on such vile soil as they were either mercilessly harassed by street vendors, taxi drivers, scam artists, or worse yet being mugged. By chance, my ex-girlfriend Tara was also touring SE Asia at the time. She had her bag ripped off her shoulder while walking in Saigon by two guys on a scooter speeding past, leaving her short of her purse, cell phone and camera. It left her with many fond memories lost and unfortunately, a very negative view of Vietnam overall. 

While in Cambodia, I had also heard from another traveler about how he got mugged not once but twice while in Nha Trang! And, same place, same thing also happened to Amanda’s friend. All those incidents only reflected the negative part of those following the much travelled tourist trail but I knew that there had to be a much brighter side to Vietnam as well. The positive reports came from those who had stayed clear of the tourist trail, and especially the people who travelled the country with motorbikes. They kept raving about how beautiful the country was along with the friendly people and good food. I was keen to do another motorbike trip and decided to follow my gut: get off the beaten path to see the real Vietnam and I was sure to have a good time.   

Amanda, who was by then my awesome yet un-confessed girlfriend only in words, and I entered Vietnam doing an organized 4-day Mekong Delta trip. Stopping at the border we first had to pay our fines for overstaying our Cambodian Visas, a result of us not being able to leave the white sandy beaches, turquoise water, tasty food and cold cocktails behind. Our long wooden boat putted along a river past stilted wooden houses, muscled thick-necked water buffaloes, quacking duck farms, fish traps, rice fields and random men standing waist deep in the water while dredging small freshwater snails from the mud using nets with long handles. Every now and then waving kids would appear from between trees shouting heeeeeeelooooooooo with smiles on their faces big enough to put the Cheshire Cat to shame. I felt a little like an aristocrat giving the kids a lazy wave while soaking up the warm sun and enjoying the scenery – life was good.

Our first stop was the riverside fishing village of Chau Doc. Exiting the boat was dangerous, as we had to balance on thin wobbly wooden planks, while carrying our luggage, which were laid out between the boat and an uneven walkway. Below us was lots of mud and old ragged broken poles eagerly awaiting tourists with a bad sense of balance. God knows what Amanda packed in her bag to make it as heavy as it was - corpses, bricks, gold or lead did come to mind, as surely clothing couldn’t be that heavy. From the dock we walked to our hotel passing a small market where they sold fish, vegetables and fruit while vendors and buyers alike stared at us tall Westerners and Amanda’s abnormally big blue bag. After checking into our hotel we had time to walk around the city, visiting the market and soaking up our first taste of Vietnam.

I found the people extremely friendly and it was interesting seeing, for the first time, things like candied strips of fish, small spiced river crabs and large mud crabs with large pinchers tied with elastics. On a few corners we saw small tea shops lined with old locals watching the world go by. Lined also, were their faces, caused by the hardships from an era when war, both Vietnamese and Cambodian, ravaged their country. Most of the old timers were either smoking or playing a type of chess while others watched either us or the rest of the world go by. For dinner that night, we followed the example of many other locals by buying street meat (crispy fried duck or pork) off of a vendor and seating our too large Western bums on small Asian plastic chairs. To wash our dinner down, we bought cold beers from a local supermarket and used chopsticks to eat our food out of a thin plastic bag. Funnily enough, Vietnam had a beer called La Rue which, being my namesake, I had to sample.   

The next day our tour took us to see the floating village of where the locals farmed fish. Just like the fish cheese factories in Battambang in Cambodia, we could smell the farms long before actually seeing them. The floating wooden structures were home to both humans above and fish below, kept in a large net. When it was feeding time, the surface of the water exploded as hundreds of hungry fish grabbed either the fish pellets or a type of homemade paste which consisted of fish offal mixed with certain root vegetables. The next leg of our very well trodden trip was to see an ethnic minority village known for their weaving. Getting there, we crossed a monkey bridge which spanned a shallow lake covered by hundreds of lotus plants. A lone rotting wooden longboat lay in the mud while we could see stilted wooden houses perched above the swamps.

Reaching the village, we were greeted by young girls who sold coconut bread while a woman ushered us into a small shop where the actual weaving was done on a wooden machine looking old enough it could have come from Noah’s ark. It was primitive yet impressive to see how, with only a few threads, they could produce a beautiful table runner or scarf. It gave me a new appreciation seeing all the hard work going into producing something seemingly so simple. Back on the boats we were taken back to Chau Doc village where we were picked up by what I can only describe as “bicycle wheelbarrows”. Amanda and I were seated in the small carriage facing each other, while our driver peddled and puffed away like a blow fish.

From Chau Doc we continued our journey via a minibus which dropped us off at a petrol station near the Can Tho. A mob of scooters waited for us not expecting the enormity of our luggage, especially Amanda’s coffin. I had to play chivalrous boyfriend by strapping Amanda’s coffin onto my back, one hand holding a bag while the other held on for dear life. My driver sat in the front with my day-bag wrapped around the front of his shoulders. Locals stared at us as we drove to our homestay called “Hung Homestay”. To this day, I’m not sure if that was actually his name or whether he was actually hung like a horse. Our “homestay” was in fact a row of stilted wooden cabins overlooking a small tidal river. The low tide exposed gnarly trees growing out of the mud like twisted fingers while mudskippers plopped along regurgitating mud balls while staring at us with huge round eyes. Even though they were nice cabins, I felt like the name was misleading, given that a “homestay” is actually a place where you stay with your host, in his home and share meals.

When it came to food though, neither Amanda nor I could complain, as it was both tasty and plentiful. We were served dishes like stir-fried morning glory, fried pork with garlic and chili, vegetable spring rolls wrapped in rice paper, baked fish, rice (always a given), a salad of cucumber and tomato, green beans and much more! To wash it all down there were cold beers and a mystery plastic bag filled with a clear fluid and spiked through with a chopstick. We were shown how to pull the chopstick back to start the flow of mystery liquid into small shot glasses. The mystery liquid proved to be the Vietnamese equivalent of Lao-Lao: a very strong whiskey brewed from rice, which was guaranteed to give you the shivers after each shot. We shared our table that night with a very thirsty Aussie who kept filling our shot glasses and not taking “no” for an answer. It so happened that we finished our bag of mysterious fluid as well as the table’s next to us. Those rice whisky shots paved the road for many many more to come throughout our travels in Vietnam. That night I slept like a baby - a very intoxicated one...

 We were woken the next morning at the unrespectable post-drinking hour of 5:45 to visit a local market of aThuong Thanh in the Cai Rang district. To cross the river, we had to board a ferry manned by a woman. This ferry was actually a narrow wooden boat where everyone stands as the woman uses two oars to row. Amanda, lost in concentration trying to take a photo, tried to impersonate the mud skippers by stepping on the mud. She sank into the mud all the way to her knee and almost lost her flip flop - I failed miserably at being the chivalrous boyfriend by laughing and taking a picture of her while our guide graciously assisted her. Much later in our trip, while motorbiking through the northern parts of Vietnam, I nicknamed Amanda “mudskipper” after she slipped and fell off her motorbike in two separate mud pools. In hindsight, I should have dubbed her mud skipper much earlier in our trip! The actual market was small yet impressive seeing vendors selling chunks of unrefrigerated meat buzzing with flies, chopped pieces of fish and green vegetables of many variations. There was also a nervous looking duck which I won’t forget. It was going nowhere, being tied up in a plastic shopping bag with only its head and neck sticking out.  

We left Hung’s Homestay on wooden longboats making our way down the narrow muddy river to our next stop: the impressive Cai Be floating fruit and vegetable market. There were boats as far as the eye could see with most of them displaying their wares hanging from upright wooden stakes. Small boats darted between the larger ones selling drinks like coffee, tea, soft drinks and coconuts or food like “pho” (their iconic rice noodles served in a rich meaty broth). The market was a great place for getting carried away with taking photos. Airborne vegetables were being caught by buyers, some locals stood upright while rowing their boats while a few ladies sat down while expertly slicing pineapples. We bought two for the road which tasted very sweet and refreshing – a good choice for such a scorching day.  

Next up was a visit to see how they made rice noodles in a small town of My Tho. We were greeted by a weird looking twelve year old elephant eared fish in a tank, eagerly awaiting a few fresh tree leafs to be thrown into its tank. At the factory we first saw rice ground into a fine powder and mixed with a type of starch to create the correct consistency. The paste was then smeared onto a flat plate and steamed for a short while before being lifted onto a bamboo drying rack. When the rack was full, it was carried outside and left in the sun to dry. The round rice paper disks turned hard which left only one more step: sliding it through an electric cutter. The end result was long strips of rice noodles ready to be served in “pho”. 

A mediocre visit to a fruit farm followed while a local band failed miserably to entertain us. It was interesting seeing the instruments the band players used and the music they produced was actually nice on the ear. A variation of female singers gave a good impersonation of tortured cats which unfortunately didn’t compliment the band, who tried their best to muffle the horrendous wailing. We DID NOT buy the CD; neither did we feel in any hurry to leave to leave a tip, except a mentally verbal one: “please, please DO NOT continue with your singing career”!!! The boat ride that followed at least made up for the band. A friendly local lady dressed us in the iconic conical hats and skillfully rowed us down along narrow canals. There were four of us (5 with her) in the tiny boat and our poor lady was wheezing like a pit-bull in the 35 degree heat when we finally reached the next stop. We did give her a nice tip and continued on to see how coconut candy was made.

Our guide showed us how they first de-husked a coconut using a large spike. The thin hard brown shell was then removed leaving the white flesh to get crushed extracting the juice and oil. A fire was burning all the time, fueled by the previous separated wooden shells, which heated a large wok for reducing the coconut juice and oil into a sticky goo. The goo was then put into strip mould and left to cool down, after which a woman wielding a knife artfully sliced the strips into bite size. The coconut sweets were then wrapped lightning quick by school girls earning pocket money doing so. The sweets tasted very nice especially the ones mixed with crushed nuts. Also very sweet tasting was the honey produced by “emperor” bees. I had to trust my guide while pushing my finger into a honeycomb crawling with bees. Luckily for me his word proved true and I didn’t end up with a thicker than normal finger.

Adding more excitement to our trip, our guide then continued to pull a random boa constrictor from an equally random bag. We had the chance to drape the bored snake around our shoulders while taking a photo of the snake carrying what I would assume to be an “oh-please-not-another-damn-photo” expression on its face. I’m sure that snake hissed with relief when we left. The rest of our day was having lunch on Turtle Island and then boarding a bus which dropped us off at a hotel. We left on another bus the next morning and not much really happened that day other than a quick stop on our way to Saigon to see a Bonzai Garden and Buddha statues in Vinh Trang. The only excitement for the day came when we saw a snake hanging down from a mosaic arch swallowing an entire bird alive.

We arrived at Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) in the rain and while the whole city was engulfed in darkness due to an electrical failure. Our tour company was friendly enough to keep an eye on our luggage while Amanda and I walked around looking for a room for the next few nights. An alley nearby had many hotels on offer and after some haggling we managed to find a room at $10 a night. We were both very excited as Saigon was also going to be the starting point of our motorbike trip through Vietnam. It was time for us to search the web and keep an eye out for fellow travellers selling their motorbikes.

We felt that no trip to Vietnam would be complete without crawling through tunnels or seeing the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels was a treat and we learned many interesting things regarding the war. I will stick with “things” instead of “facts” due to the blatant one-sided Vietnamese propaganda war movies on display. It went something like: “There we were, ploughing our fields and planting rice when suddenly, for no reason, the Americans started shooting our flowers, our temples, our buddhas, our children and even our land.” The movie continued on to describe: “We retaliated and no matter how hard we worked, we always found time to KILL AMERICANS. We would plough the field but always found time to, KILL AMERICANS. Our children would go to school but even so, they always found time to, KILL AMERICANS.” Amanda and I had to stifle our laughter because of the “in-your-face” one-sidedness of the whole movie. I was glad about not being an American however!

For the rest of our tour our guide showed us all the traps used by the Vietnamese to well, “KILL AMERICANS” of course. Many were trap-door traps or were set off using trip wires onto which any unfortunate American would be impaled upon iron spikes or sharpened bamboo. Seeing those I was even happier not being an American. We were also shown how the Vietnamese created their own bombs and grenades by using American UXO’s (unexploded ordinances) and how to worm into a very small hole playing peek-a-boo with the rest of the group. The best part of our trip was crawling through the tunnels, definitely not meant for large westerners. Both Amanda and I had to grunt and shuffle our way through the small tunnels, her doing the 20m one while I braved the 40m tunnel. There was also a 60m tunnel which even I didn’t want to crawl through…

The Cu Chi Tunnels were dug in three various levels and covered a distance of over 250km’s! Ant hills were used to hide breathing holes and we were amazed to learn that there were even hospitals, meeting rooms and kitchens underneath the ground! We bypassed the overpriced shooting range and went back to Saigon to search for bikes. Finding bikes proved more difficult than we expected although I was the first to buy one off a young Dutch guy using a website called “Craigslist”. The bike was exactly what I was looking for: a Honda Win 110cc 4-gear motorbike which came with helmet and spare tools. Spare parts for that bike were readily available throughout Vietnam and a good overall choice. We still had to find wheels for Amanda though, as we had mine, we used it to visit the War Remnants Museum.

We both knew that there were shocking images on display but yet again we were drawn by a morbid

curiosity. It felt a little like déjà vu after visiting both the S21 Prison and Killing Fields while in Cambodia. The outer part of the museum was “normal” enough displaying a whole range of fighter jets, tanks and artillery guns. Inside, however, it was a different matter. The ground floor displayed mostly very one-sided Vietnamese propaganda, while the upper floors showed graphic wartime photos and the effects of Agent Orange: the most toxic chemical ever used in warfare! Seeing photos of the mangled remains of bomb victims and the warped faces left in the wake of Agent Orange made me feel ill. It came to a point where I felt I was going to donate my breakfast to their carpet which was a good indication to take our leave. The museum was interesting to see but I will not go back, once was enough!  

We continued to tick off the tourist attractions by visiting the Central Post Office and Saigon’s version of Notre Dame. After that, all we had left to do was find Amanda a motorbike and a company willing to ship our bags to Hanoi and put it in storage. We finally managed to buy a motorbike for Amanda off of a street mechanic near our hotel. It was the same as mine, another Honda Win, although I had to teach her how to actually drive it! Our motorbike trip through Vietnam will be my next blog and I’m slightly dreading typing it, as it will be a very lengthy one. Overall, the Mekong Delta was a good introduction to Vietnam and we were both very excited to start the next leg of our journey.