Exploring Cu Chi Tunnels and the Mekong Delta
By Justin Hayes and Lauren Gerzina
Tunnels, Snakes, and Rowboats
Today was a super long day – we took a tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Mekong Delta and got a flavor (literally) for the local culture.
We woke up at 6am to get ready and grab a quick breakfast at the executive lounge – unfortunately they did not have pho, but they did have a delicious beef soup with lots of basil and some amazing French pastries. France occupied Vietnam from 1858 to 1885 and influenced a lot of architecture and even more importantly the food! The banh mi is made on French bread, after all. So for breakfast with my delicious soup, Lauren had a fruit tart and a cream filled matcha croissant with a Vietnamese coffee (strong coffee with sweet and condensed milk). Yum.
At 7:30am we were picked up by our luxury minibus and sat in the last row, expecting to have a nice empty seat between us for the full day. Five minutes later, we were greeted by another lovely Slovenian couple, who filled every seat of the 7-passenger minibus (plus the driver and our tour guide Pham in the front row). We all introduced ourselves and where we were from, and it was very fun to learn that there was a nice couple from Singapore, a Brazilian man, the couple from Slovenia and ourselves. The Slovenian couple were especially well-traveled and made for very fun conversations later in the car ride.
After 1.5 hours traveling approximately 55 km (our tour guide mentioned the BEAUTIFUL traffic numerous times on our trip), we stopped at a manufacturing facility where people who were disabled due to Agent Orange were employed by the government to create beautiful, lacquered artwork which contained hand cut mother of pearl inlay and hand-painted scenery. After watching them work for a few minutes, we entered the gift store where we picked out a beautiful Ha Long Bay 4-piece display for our home. While it was expensive, we were very happy to see (and feel) that it was truly handmade (not a print on wood like we had seen in markets in town yesterday) and that it supported the people who worked in this manufacturing facility. We can’t wait to find a place to hang this in our home!
We took another 30 min drive to go a full 15 km and finally arrived at the Cu Chi tunnels. These tunnels were located near the town of Cu Chi and were dug out by hand by the Viet Cong (southern communist supporters who were farmers during the day and soldiers in the tunnels by night). During the Vietnam war, North Vietnam communists supported the Viet Cong to fight using guerilla warfare against the south and Americans. They created more than 250 km of tunnels (using a short shovel, woven baskets to move soil, and tons and tons of manual labor) over the course of 20 years.
In the tunnels, they set tons of traps in case the enemy got inside and created small rooms to use as bunkers during bombings. The entrances to these tunnels were TINY and clearly not American-sized. We were able to squat through a section about 20m long of the tunnels (which were apparently widened a bit for tourists). We also learned that Americans enlisted soldiers from Thailand and Korea to infiltrate the tunnels since they were similar in size to the Vietnamese, which the Viet Cong called “tunnel rats.”
How the Viet Cong spent more than a few minutes in those cramped tunnels is beyond belief. They were extremely uncomfortable, tight, dark, etc. Pham, our tour guide, gave us the option to go up to 100m in these tunnels and every single one of us were done after the first 20. She also showed us many kinds of traps, different entrances to tunnels, and how unexploded bombs were cut apart to reuse the gunpowder and metal to make new weapons.
The Cu Chi Tour offered us the chance to purchase bullets and shoot a an AK-47, an M16, or a machine gun, but we declined. One person on our tour purchased 100 bullets at about 6,000 VND per bullet and shot off the machine gun. It was quite loud.
After our tour of the tunnel system, we had a family-style lunch at a restaurant nearby with rice, soup, pork, tofu, and chicken. We learned more about each of our tour compatriots, including the Slovenian couple, a Malaysian couple living in Singapore, and a Brazilian man who travels frequently to China for work and tacked on a trip to Vietnam.
We carried on our lunch conversation about all of our world travels in the minibus on the way to our next stop – the Mekong River Delta. We all agreed that traveling wasn’t about picking your favorite places but about finding out what you enjoy most – whether it’s culture, history, scenery, or adventure activities – and pursuing those things in every new location.
We arrived at the Mekong River Delta and, after a brief afternoon rainstorm, promptly boarded a motorboat to take us across the river to a coconut candy factory. There, we learned about how they used coconut milk, malt, and other flavorings like peanuts or match, to make coconut candies and other coconut-derived products. We also were offered a sample of rice wine with fermented king cobra – what Pham called “Happy Wine”. We declined the snake wine, but Justin did try some rice wine with fermented banana. It tasted a bit like a sweeter sake or soju.
We then boarded the boat, enjoyed some coconut water, and headed to Unicorn Island, where we enjoyed some local fruit and tea while listening to folk music, complete with a rendition of “If You’re Happy and You Know It (Clap Your Hands).” We had never tried jack fruit, but it was sweet and delicious.
Afterwards, we took an XL golf cart over to a canal on the island, where we boarded a rowboat that sat four people plus two rowers down the canal to the end of the island where our motorboat was waiting for us. We found it amusing that they gave us traditional Vietnamese hats – made of either straw or bamboo – to wear while our rower wore a New York Yankees bucket hat.
Our tour of Unicorn Island ended with some brief python handling as we waited for our honey and bee pollen tea, which was amazing. Pham showed us the bee-keeping box and let us hold it, warning us of the consequences of dropping it. The tea itself had honey, bee pollen, and kumquat juice. It was delicious!
We then got back on the motorboat so we could head back to the shore (in the city Mỹ Tho). The driver offered us some water, coke, or beer, and we boarded the minibus and made the final two hour journey back to Ho Chi Minh. Justin, the Slovenian, and the Brazilian briefly talked politics before we all dozed off as the sun went down.
We were exhausted when we got back to our hotel and didn’t feel like going out again, so we grabbed some food at the executive lounge and proceeded to pass out immediately upon returning to the room.
