Friday we were a tad hungover, but got up super early (again hehe) for the trip up to the Cu Chi Tunnels. This huge complex essentially won the war for the Vietcongs and were used for supplies, hospitals, hiding, weapons...
The bus stopped off on the way at a craft workshop for victims of agent orange. We watched some of them working with mother of pearl and browsed some of the plates and giant vases. A few were really weird with Disney characters and Smurfs.
The actual tunnels are deep in the woods, really hard to spot any of the trapdoors which are definitely Vietnamese sized and not fat yank tourist friendly. At one we stopped and a few kids tried hiding in the camouflaged door. See if you can spot where it opens in the video. There was a great Vietnam War-era propaganda film about "American imperialists" and how they lost.
The tunnel complex was essentially an entire war village underground, with about 121km of passages over 3 different layers. They were built too small for the larger Americans to come in and constantly twisted about - in case any enemy soldiers followed them in their guns were too big for them to turn and they had to retreat with them facing backwards. There were medical rooms, ovens, storage rooms, armoury, wells etc. There was also a tank the Vietcongs destroyed and a huge section on the ingenius traps they came up with - I'd always known that folding chairs were dangerous!
After exploring the tunnels (if you're interested there is a full length movie here) we headed out through the rubber trees to explore the forest AND FIRE AN AK47. Got a video of Matthew shooting here. Can't remember how he did but I managed to hit the target on only one of my 5 rounds.
Back in Ho Chi Minh city we got dropped off with a few others at the Cho Ben Thanh night market (every Saturday and Sunday. Went for a huge pot of shabu shabu, best I've ever had!
Decided against monkey island on Saturday and instead gonna sort out my new tattoo and Matt's suit. Nice relaxing day planned!
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