Day 68 – Vietnam Day 5

Monday, March 31st, 2008

This morning we woke up with a plan of everything that we wanted to do, so we headed out to the front gate of our port and negotiated a price with two of the motorbike guys to take us around for the whole day. We had a few errands to run, then we wanted to check out the Cu Chi Tunnels, then back to eat and pick up David’s suit before heading back to the ship. We were able to negotiate a ride for the entire day for $25USD, which I thought was pretty solid.

Our first stop was at our tailor so David could make sure the adjustments to his suit were good, then we actually ordered two tailor made dress shirts that he was could make us before the day was over to go with our suits. Then we went the the Citibank Tower to purchase our Japanese Rail Pass. The pass allows us to go on any train in Japan for a 7 day period, unlimited rides anywhere in Japan. This ends up being a great deal and saving tourists a lot of money (they only sell it to tourists). Since we are planning on doing a lot of traveling in Japan, and train is the primary form of transportation we decided it would definitely be worth it. I would guess that at least half of our ship also is getting a Rail Pass. We purchased ours through a place called ANA Airlines, I’m pretty sure that’s just a Japanese airline or something.

On a side note, I’ve seen a large Citibank building in every single port that we’ve been in. I didn’t realize that the company was so big worldwide! I don’t just see Citi on small signs in places, but the big towers. I’ve also seen more KFC’s than McDonalds since we left the states, which kind of surprised me. I would have never guessed that KFC was so popular across the world. It could also just be the countries that we’re visiting, but definitely more KFC’s than McDonalds. Quite a few Subway’s too. Mmmm. American food :)

Our next stop was at the Cu Chi Tunnels, located about an hour away on motorbike from Ho Chi Minh City. These tunnels are the ones that the Vietkong used against American forces in the Vietnam War. Vietnamese refer to this war as the American War. The tunnels form an elaborate underground system that they could move through without the acknowledgement of American forces. Since the Vietkong were so small, the tunnels could be made really small and could be hidden easily. At one point the US actually built a base on top of one of the tunnels without any idea that they were below. Of course they figured out quickly that this was a bad location for the base! They’ve actually expanded a lot of the tunnels by as much as 3x the original opening to allow for bigger tourists to go through them. They also had an exhibit showing all of the different kinds of traps that they used in the war. These were pretty gruesome to say the least! David and I started going through one of the tunnels, but then quickly realized as the we went away from the light that we forgot our flashlight, so we couldn’t go any further. The spaces are REALLY small though, so I’m kind of glad we only had to experience that little portion of the tunnels to avoid any risk of getting claustrophobic.

There’s a shooting range located in this “tourist” area of the Cu Chi tunnels with a bunch of different guns that were used in the Vietnam war. I’ve never actually shot a gun other than a BB gun or a paint ball gun. So I bought 10 rounds for an AK47 and shot them in the shooting range. AK47’s are LOUD. They didn’t really have any adequate ear protection either, just basically headphones like you would listen to music on. The gun had a lot of kick, but there was a guy there helping to make sure I dug it into my shoulder and was prepared for the kick. David bought an additional 10 rounds for an M60, which lasted all of 2 seconds. It’s amazing how fast 10 rounds goes! My 10 AK47 rounds lasted maybe 20 seconds because I was adjusting to hit the target.

Our next stop was the American War Remnants Museum located in Ho Chi Minh City. The museum was full of American Military equipment like tanks, choppers, planes, guns, bombs, ect. Inside the museum though they had hundreds of very powerful pictures from wars around the world, with probably ¾ of them focusing on the American-Vietnam War. I guess I should have expected this, but the entire museum was very one-sided, only showing the terrible things that the Americans did during the war. Pretty depressing to see all of these pictures with captions below them explaining what happened, or what was the cause of the photo. There was nothing in the museum condemning anything bad done by the Vietkong though. Melissa also said her friend saw something in there from Iowa, I wasn’t able to find anything unexpected from Iowa though. Anyone else know what’s in there from Iowa?

Once we were done with the War Remnants museum we headed back to our tailor for a final time to pick up our shits and David’s remaining suits, then headed back to the ship so we wouldn’t miss on-ship time.