Ho Chi Minh City Part Two: the War Museum, Cu Chi tunnels and Mekong Delta River

1-4 July 2010

Following on from part one, our next activity involved catching a taxi to Chinatown. Learning from our mistakes yesterday with the cyclo drivers, we set a price of 100,00 VND with our driver. Annoyingly, when we got there the meter read 62,000 VND but we didn’t get change. Our attempts to be careful backfired on us there. Sadly, the market was disappointing. It was more for the locals, with lots of food and kitchen bits, although there were also a lot of knock-off handbags. We quickly gave up and went to a nearby KFC for brunch. The Gap Year Buddy went for the cultural option of chicken and rice but I stuck to my regular KFC chicken burger.

It was pouring with rain outside so we rushed into the first cab we found and headed off to Ben Thanh market again. The driver took a longer route costing us 160,000 VND – more than twice what we should have paid to get there. We tried to call him up on it but he claimed it was a one-way route, so he had go take a longer way back.  At the end of the day, it only amounted to a couple of pounds extra so we just paid (we were not good at bargaining/standing up for ourselves). On a more positive note, we managed to make a good dent in our souvenir shopping lists when we got to the market.

The next day we decided to sort out posting some of our things back to England. We easily managed to send off our stuff – we even splashed out on air mail in the hope our stuff would arrive home not too long after we did. Whilst we were at the post office, we spotted a desk saying ‘Day Tours’. This was perfect as we’d been planning on organising a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, where the Viet Cong had hidden out during the war against America and we were able to do just that right here. It was all very easy, just the way we like it.

Once we had finished at the post office, we decided to do something cultural with our day and visit the War Museum, stopping at a bakery on the way to stock up on pastries. The Vietnam War was an area of history I had briefly studied at school but still knew relatively little about. The museum had some pretty shocking photographs of children affected by the use of Agent Orange, which was difficult to see, and a lot of anti-American propaganda. As sobering as the experience was, I would definitely recommend going and seeing the war from the Vietnamese point of view.

The next morning, we actually had to get up early – a bit of a shock to the system – as we were picked up at 7.30 am by our tour guide. After an hour and a half drive in a very uncomfortable mini bus, which we did at least have all to ourselves, we arrived at the Cu Chi tunnels. We briefly managed to squeeze into the top of one tunnel that had been left in its original state and not widened for tourists (like others had), tried some very strong rice wine, had a picture standing on top of a tank, saw some very unpleasant booby traps that would have been set by the Viet Cong and then it was time to go into the tunnels themselves.

I maintain the trip was very worthwhile and interesting but this was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. We had to bend over double to fit through, even though these particular tunnels had been widened, and the small space didn’t agree with me. My knees were struggling and, even though we were down there for what can’t have been more than 10 minutes – I have absolutely no idea how people existed down there for years and years. At one point I tried to crawl but since I had stupidly worn a dress this was even worse. Both the Gap Year Buddy and I had very sore and stiff muscles for the next couple of days.

After we were finished with the tunnels, the next stop on our day tour was the big Tay Ninh Holy See Temple (the Cao Dai Great Temple or Thanh That Cao Dai – I’ve found multiple names but I think they are all the same place!) The temple was beautifully decorated and we stayed long enough to watch a bit of a service. I learned that the religion worshiped here was Caodaism and it has its own language. The people in the village around the temple would spend 20 years cleaning it and lived off donations. After we left, we had one more stop off for lunch before heading back to Ho Chi Minh.

When we got back to the hotel we set off to the market (again) to finish off our shopping, and then to the post office (these had fast become our two favourite haunts in the city) where we booked another trip, this time to the Mekong Delta River, for the next day. We then sat in a park where a passing man came over for a chat. He told us he was a professor of physics and wanted to talk to us about England. We’d also earlier had a group of people come and ask if they could take a picture with us. Apparently we were popular in Vietnam.

The next morning we were met by the same tour guide – Ken – who took us to the Vinh Trang Pagoda, with its two giant Buddha statues. We snapped some photos before boarding our boat and setting off to our port of call, for some local delicacies.

We were served up some honey team (lovely), caramelised banana (even lovelier), some peanut stuff and some ginger. We were also given shots of banana wine. This was really strong and I can’t say I loved it, so I drank it down in one. The problem with this method was that our guide was very attentive and kept topping me up. I felt bad saying I’d had enough – so I ended up having more shots than I intended to that early in the day. Once we’d eaten, we had some photos being a python and some bees, before heading back to the boat.

At our next stop, we watched people making candy and tried some coconut wine, snake wine (which was basically alcohol from a container full of soaking snakes) and a lot of fruit. All the alcohol we’d had so far on our day trips was called wine but it was definitely spirits! We then took a donkey and cart ride to a little cafe where we watched some traditional Vietnamese singing and Ken treated us to some local beer, before getting a smaller boat up a stream, whilst wearing the conical hats worn by rice pickers out in the fields.

When we were back, we went to meet up with a friend who was also visiting Ho Chi Minh. Having tried to meet up with him once before, we thought it was worth trying again and so wandered across to his hostel but sadly we had no joy this time either. However, we did find that the area he was staying in was a lot buzzier and full of backpackers than ours – if only we’d done some research beforehand, perhaps we wouldn’t have had quite so many quiet nights in! We hung out there for a while, wandered in and out of some shops, picked up dinner and then headed back to bed ready for our flight to Hong Kong in the morning.

Read about the rest of my trip:

• Ho Chi Minh City Part One: markets, cyclos and pretty buildings