Tunneling the Mekong

While I've got a quiet day at the beach I'm going to take the time to catch up on my blog. It's not been so long since Erika left and I was slightly afraid that I wouldn't find anything interesting enough to get excited about on my own again, but I've done ok more or less. After Rob and Erika took off early in the morning, I spent the better part of the day finishing up the previous post. That was a dull day... I ate pho and some bahn mi sandwiches. I've had a bunch of these sandwiches now (french roll w/ spiced meat, cucumber, tomato, pickled radish, fish sauce(?)) and I can't say that I've been too taken by any of them. The pho soup in contrast has been excellent every time. In the evening, while writing at a cafe, it poured rain so hard that my hotel's street turned into a river and I was stranded for 3 hours. No worries, they had beer.

The next morning, I took a group tour to visit the Cu Chi tunnels outside of Saigon. They are of course a relic of the war(s) and today only some stretches of the original tunnels have been preserved for visitors. They were originally dug in the 50s when the locals were fighting the French and then were extended during the war with America. Over here, they call it the American War. The tunnels were used by the Viet Cong, who can generally be considered local freedom fighters and are different than the North Vietnamese Army who were directly controlled by Ho Chi Mihn. It was the local people who dug these tunnels, set traps in the jungle, and took pot shots at GIs before making themselves scarce. They were a truly elusive enemy and these tunnels were the perfect tool for them.

By the end of the war, some 250km of tunnels had been dug in the Cu Chi area, which is of strategic importance because it's just 30km outside of the Southern capitol, Saigon. The tunnels were rather easily carved with hand tools in the firm clay soil of the river delta area and were made small enough that the Vietnamese could travel with some speed if bent over but the tall foreigners had great difficulty getting around on hands and knees. The Americans tried all sorts of ways of dealing with the tunnels from explosives to poison gas, dogs, fire, and even got short soldiers from Mexico and the Philippines to go in with guns. None of these tactics proved terribly effective so mostly we turned to napalming and Agent Oranging all the jungle in the area and shooting anything that moved. Though a hell of a lot of Vietnamese died in those tunnels, the US was never able to completely control the area and this helped pave the way for the NVA to focus its attention elsewhere.

My tour guide of the tunnels area (which has been built up for tourists) was an old guy named Min who seemed pretty bitter describing the history of the area and of Vietnam in general. He was a med student in the start of the war but the VC killed his girlfriend and he ultimately joined the Southern army and went to the US for some kind of training. He fought in the Cu Chi area and after the war was sent to reeducation camp for 4 years like so many other people in the South.

We saw recreations of the traps and weapons that the VC would make in the jungle, like spiked pits and more some elaborate pit traps. We also saw how the VC would saw open dud bombs dropped in the Mekong, remove the explosives, and melt down bomb fragments to make new traps. A lot of the guns that they used were also stolen from the invaders during the night with the help of the tunnels that reached even into the American bases. Finally we got to go through a 100 yard section of a tunnel that had been slightly enlarged for tourists. I was able to bend over completely at the waist and fretfully walk along with my back and shoulder rubbing against the ceiling. It was truely exhausting and at one section where it narrowed I had to scoot forward on my ass. Back in the day, there were 3 levels of tunnels and the bottom level was only big enough for the VC to crawl on their bellies and impossible for GIs to fit in. Most of the tunnels also had emergency exits that were carved into the river bank and would exit underwater. They also put traps for GIs in there, like pit traps and vipers tied to the ceiling. Terrible stuff.

There was also a gun range where you could fire off AK47s, M16s, as well as the M30 and M60 heavy machine guns. It costs about $0.75 a bullet for the smaller guns or $1.50 for the larger ones. The guide said that the bullets were manufactured by the communist army so I didn't fire any... can't give any of my money straight to them. After the tour, I finished up my blog post and tried to get over my nasty cold.

That day I also bought a morning bus ticket to Can Tho, a local capitol of the Mekong river delta region SW of Saigon. The Mekong river is a slow and wide beast, stained with silt that it dragged all the way from Tibet. Before it reaches the sea in Vietnam it branches wide like the Nile and fertilizes the land and thus Southern Vietnam has always had a high population in this area. The river is largely unnavigable due to seasonal fluctuation in the water and the presence of several cataracts. There's talk the the Chinese want to blow out the rocks to enable ships to reach Yunnan but I don't think anyone is going to let them do that. As it is, commercial shipping only goes a short ways up the river in Vietnam and makes the area that I went to pretty industrialized. That said, there's not so many tourists since it's a bit out of the way and even fewer if you travel to the smaller towns that I didn't give myself time to go and visit.

On the ride into the area, I sat next to an old Vietnamese man, named Ban, who I had a long talk with about his country and the world. He said that he fought for the SVA during the war and afterward was put in prison for 7 years. That's an awful long time just for fighting for the wrong side. Anyways, he's got a good attitude about life these days and works as a mechanic for an Australian company. He's pretty old at 62 to be doing this kind of work but he says that he fells youthful with a 5 year old son and a 27 year old wife who's also his niece. I didn't tell his I think that's really weird... maybe that sort of stuff is common out here? Anyways, he was good to talk to and bought me pho for lunch.

I got in to Can Tho a little late in the evening and checking into a small hotel near the river for $6 a night. I met an Israeli guy there and we booked a boat tour of the river for the next day and wandered about looking for something that he could eat. He keeps kosher and that pretty much means all he can eat here is eggs and veggie dishes. He won't eat tofu either just to make things more difficult. He ended up heaving to eat at an expensive riverside establishment while I got spicy chicken soup from a vendor just outside for 1/10th the price. Ah well, we all have our weaknesses.

The boat tour the next day was vaguely worth it. It's a sunrise tour so I had to be up at 5:30 and on that boat. I generally avoid sunrise tours like the plague but we were also to visit some floating markets and those hit their peak before the heat sets in so I had no choice. The river was wide and flat and I had the tiny boat to myself as we were just split up that way into groups of 2 and I was the odd one out. Apparently my partner called in sick.

We saw two floating markets that morning as the sun rose through a heavy haze of clouds. The first market had larger bloats loaded with a couple types of crops each that they would happily toss onto nearby boats for a price. They were mostly selling pineapples, mangoes, watermelons, potatoes, limes, papayas, pomelo, coconuts, and bananas. Each boat would advertise what they had by hanging each type of produce on a long vertical wooden pole protruding from their boat. I had some pineapple, pomelo (like grapefruit), and a coconut. We visited another market as well with some shorter boats and fewer tourists. My boat was small and slow without a roof and every group of Chinese tourists that went by would give me a big wave and take pictures.

One of the spots we stopped was a rice noodle factory built next to the river. It wasn't a huge operation, just 5 employees, but it looked like they turned out a hell of a lot of noodles in a traditional manner. They cooked the rice gruel into a thin white paste and then steamed it on round stoves fired with rice husks. Afterward it was peeled off and left to dry on bamboo mats outside before being fed into an iron shredding machine. It didn't taste too interesting raw.

When we stopped for lunch at a place with several other small backpacker groups on the same tour, I got to talk with a bunch of different people and that helped break up my otherwise silent 8 hour boat ride since my driver didn't speak any English. Almost all of the backpackers out here are couples but I did meet a nice German girl that wanted to meet up for dinner.

After a long lap when I got back and a lengthy ukulele practice, I met up with the German, Eva, and we wandered around town finding food and coffee. The food here is difficult because most of the restaurants have no English menu so I just sort of guess when ordering. That night I wound up with some really nasty tofu with rice. We were more successful finding good coffee and tea places, where we could get an ice coffee for just $0.25. I think that I've already mentioned how good the ice coffee is here (they even make the coffee beans that have been digested by a weasel here) but also they do American style ice tea with no sugar. It's like their default drink at all the bus stops and I think that I'm in love with this place. Anyways, Eva told me where she's traveled for the last 4 months and we had some good stories to share. I was still knackered (a silly English saying I've picked up) from the early rise and I went to bed happily by 11.

Ah, the next day was a really dull one. I took a 5 hour bus to Saigon, waited 2 hours in the station, and then went 5 more hours to the beach town at Mui Ne. I got to sit next to an interesting American girl for the second ride but after she shared her taste in music with me I had to stop talking and watch Platoon on my laptop to get it out of my head. I think that her music should never be heard outside the context of a Prairie Home Companion and even then I'd just turn off the radio. I got in around 10 at night, in the rain, and walked just a few minuted before I found a cheap hotel not directly on the beach that had a $6 room for me. I also met some Canadians that night, shared some beers, went on a fruitless 1 hour hike in search of a hamburger, and called it a night.

The plan for this town is to go surfing and to explore the scenic sand dunes. I also hear that people fish for lizards by baiting a hook with meat and dangling it on a warm rock but I can't find any locals to verify this yet. Today I slept in late, rented a scooter for 3 days, and wrote this blog. I'm taking it easy but I'll do the dunes tomorrow morning and try to surf in the afternoon. I love that surfing scene in Apocalypse now... "Charlie don't surf!". I'll let you know how that goes.