A Taste of Wartime Misery...

With a Visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels

After seeing the tunnels by the DMZ I thought that maybe I had had my fill of old Viet Cong underground passageways, but it seemed as though a trip to Saigon would be incomplete without a visit to the famed Cu Chi tunnels. We booked a trip and yesterday we set out to take them in for ourselves.
The tour was combined with a visit to the Holy See of the quirky and utopian Cao Dai religion in Tay Ninh, Vietnam. In brief, Cao Dai is a religious creation of the 1920's that incorporates different aspects of five different religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucionism, Christianity and Islam. The main philosophy is that they try to override the reincarnation bit about Buddhism and go straight to heaven. They rely heavily on spiritual communication and prophecy and Victor Hugo, (yes, the French poet and playwright) is one of their three saints.
Anyway the most important thing about this first leg of our journey is that about twenty minutes before out bus got to the main temple the rain started downpouring. The bus dropped us off in the parking lot and we made a dash for the guard shack to "wait out the worst of it". Well, the worst of it never distinguished itself and it was clear that it wasn't going to let up. Having travelled to Vietnam in the peak of monsoon season without an umbrella, poncho or raincoat I found myself predictably unprepared. I took off my flip flops and made a dash for the main entrance. By the time I jumped and slid my way onto the marble steps of the temple the ends of my hair were dripping water and my shirt was clinging to me, (a rather inappropriate appearance for a religious service to say the least). Call it a religious revelation or call it meteorological intuition but with one look up towards the heavens I could tell this was a look I was going to have to put up with for most of the day.
Parts of my pants had started to dry after lunch and by the time our bus pulled up to the ticket booth of Cu Chi, a sensation I wouldn't have for long. First we watched a 20 minute long black and white video documenting the atrocities of war. The audio was echoey and the resolution was bad and combined with the warmth of the room I found myself drifting off. I wasn't at a deep enough point of unconsciousness however to avoid hearing the pro-North Vietnamese propaganda video refer to the Americans fighting in the Vietnam war as "a crazy pack of devils".
The Cu Chi district of Vietnam is rural farmland that during the Vietnam war was the epicenter of the National Liberation Front's geurilla forces. These were the supporters of Ho Chi Minh's communist Northern army that were embedded in the Southern area below the DMZ, hazzardously close to the capital of the South, Saigon. The Americans knew of the strong guerilla presence in the area and in an attempt to eradicate the infiltrators and, for lack of a better expression, bombed, gassed, burned, chemically torched and razed the shit out of the whole area. Despite the insurmountable destruction caused on the agriculture, the people, and the topography they were unsuccessful at destroying the geurilla troops and as a result they continued to play a significant role in causing the American withdrawl of the region and the eventual defeat of the South.
Anyway, after the movie we walked through the replanted jungle to get a taste of what it was like to live or fight in the region during the war. Our guide demonstrated a variety of traps for us. The most impressive one of memory was the giant "tiger trap". As the name insinuates the trap was originally used to catch the now elussive and endangered Vietnamese jungle tiger. When it came time to think of innovative ways to capture or kill the Americans and South Vietnamese, the Viet Cong found that the "tiger traps" worked quite effectively in incapacitating paratroopers who jumped down out of their helicopters from about two meters in the air. Their distance from the ground made the crude camouflage undetectable. The "tiger traps" consist of a swiftly swinging door that opens into a pit of sharpened bamboo spears about one meter in length. As we meandered through the jungle and encountered more grim traps and eerie mannequins the rain continued its onslought.
On our way to the tunnel opening we passed by another entrance, an unenlarged original tunnel entry-way, though not off limits to visitors due to its size is virtually inaccessible. The tourist friendly tunnel has been enlarged to twice the size of the original to allow a "more comfortable experience". Maybe its my American breeding or my fondness for...everything on the menu at Gom, (the restaurant that has catered to our every meal for the last four days), but if that was twice the size of the original than I think that four or five times the size would have been more appropriate. By the time we got to the mouth of the 100 meter tunnel that has countless tourists wriggling through its bowels everyday I was thoroughly and completely soaked through. There wasn't a dry spot anywhere on my clothing and I was, at the time standing in water up to my ankles. Already I could smell the stale dampness wafting from the tunnel and I knew this wasn't going to be all that fun. I lowered myself into the "entrance", basically a hole in the ground and found myself emersed in the kind of thick darkness that can only be found in places you feel like you shouldn't be. The ceiling was low. We had to move a long in a half squatted bent over position. After about ten steps I could already feel the akwardness of my movements in my burning hamstrings. My shoulders brushed the walls cold moist walls on both sides and every now and then I had to stop and crouch further down to give my legs a rest. The tunnels were lit electrically only every ten meters or so, a luxury I doubt was afforded to the tunnels inhabitants some thirty-five years ago. The smell was really pretty offenssive. It smelled like a combination of my grandpa's basement and a watered down version of what I imagine fear and death smelling like, perhaps topped off with a little bit of Ray's onerous foot odor. The tunnel dipped down deeper at a couple of points where we found ourselves scrambling through another hole into a seemingly smaller compartment. At one point Ray stopped suddenly asking "what's that?" and before I had a chance to throw up from nervousness or see what he was talking about he said "oh nevermind, it's just a frog, watch out for that frog." About halfway along the 100 meter distance the tunnel got really tight. The half-squat duck walk that we had been doing most of the way was no longer going to cut it. Here, we had to literally get down onto our hands and knees and with a littly shimmying of the shoulders, squeeze through at an angle.
Finally, I sensed an incline in the darkness and saw a brightness appear ahead, indicating our ascent back out into the open. After climbing out of the dankness of the tunnel I gratefully stepped out into the fall of rain in the hopes that it would clean the smell and the grit and the groseness of the tunnel off of my skin and clothes and out of my hair.
All in all the tunnels and Cu Chi as a whole were not a very enjoyable experience and it wasn't just because of the rain. I'm sure that the rain is something that everyone was forced to contend with during the war and it could have only been a minor upset in light of the horrible fighting, destruction and loss of life that took place there and in other parts of the country. It was a sobering and rather miserable experience to say the least.

The Beauty of Vietnam...

Is Found in Her Natural Parks


In an attempt to avoid the feeling of being funnelled into the highly touristic and pre-determined cities on the route of the open tour bus that transports the majority of Vietnam's tourists between the Northern city of Hanoi and the Southern city of Ho Chi Minh, we have tried to blaze our own trail. Although we aren't really blazing a trail, seeing as we're getting everywhere by the guidance of the Lonely Planet Vietnam book, we do seem to have the benefit of a very loose itinerary that has allowed us to go further and see more than the average backpacker I've encountered along the way.
On the first leg of our journey, rather than take the lengthy bus ride from Hanoi to Hue, we opted instead to stop in Ninh Binh. Although it rained the majority of the time we were there it proved to be our first glimpse into the true beauty of Vietnam. Cuc Phuong National Park was about an hour long motorbike ride from our hotel in Ninh Binh. We originally planned on overnighting in the parkbut thought it might be more miserable than fun with the dreary weather. The scenic ride into the center of the park was a tasty appetizer for the feast that was to come. We ended up following the trail for a 17 kilometer trek into the jungle with a 1000 year old tree being the halfway point. It was just drizzling a bit as we set out on the trek but the palm canopy above us provided a suitable shelter.
I tried desperately to tap into Jane Goodall's knowledge of primates as I searched in vain for the elussive and endangered Vietnamese gibbon and langur. Despite the absence of any seriously cool wildlife, I did see some pretty remarkable things. What with all of the rain there were a couple of crabs that seem to have lost their way. I wasn't aware that there was such a thing as a jungle crab but they were aplenty and surprising to see. In addition I did see the furry butt of some animal as it jumped from a tree but I was unable to properly classify the species. There was also an abundance of extremely beautiful butterflies of substantial size flitting around for the first half of the day.
The park ended up being so beautiful and expansive and untouched that I was thrilled that we stopped in Ninh Binh. Having seen the beauty of one national park we decided to try our luck with another one further south.
We were having lunch at a travel shop in Hue and aimlessly flipping through a book describing various tour options. We saw that the shop offered a trip to Bac Ma National Park, about an hour and a half outside of Hue. The tour didn't seem too expensive and I thought that it would be fun given my fond impressions of Cuc Phuong. The following day we boarded two guided motorbikes and drove to Bac Ma. The tour ended up being a total scam job because the fee we paid the travel shop was solely for the guided motorbikes. It didn't pay entrance to the park nor did it pay for the expensive yet mandatory taxi ride to the summit. With such a bad taste in our mouths about the whole affair it seemed as though the whole day was doomed.
This, thankfully was not the case at all. After bargaining with the taxi driver we got a pretty fair deal on the ride to the highest station. From there we had to trek a number of kilometers to the summit where we enjoyed absolutely breathtaking views of the valley and the towns below. It felt as though we were the only people on the entire mountain, which after the hustle and bustle of Hanoi and Hue was pretty welcome.
Within the grounds of Bac Ma National Park are a number of waterfalls to which we made our way next. The first was a series of five waterfalls called Five Lakes Falls for the pools of water that collected beneath each fall. The beauty of this series of falls was in the surroundings. To have such crystal clear water move so quickly and violently through such a tranquil and lush landscape was such an odd juxtoposition that would only be acceptable in nature.
The book said that the water coming from these falls was some of the coldest in the country and that no living thing inhabited it except for a recently discovered species of frog. Despite this we were eager to strip down to our swimming suits and test it out ourselves. Afterall we had been hiking all day and had worked up a pretty decent sweat. Nothing could have prepared me for the shock to my system as I took the plunge and stepped off of a rock into the deepest part of the pool. The coldness wrenched the breath right from my body and I clambered up the mossy rocks in less time than it took me to take that overzealous step in the first place. Needless to say we didn't do much swimming. We just snapped a couple of pictures and took turns daring each other to stand under the icy waterfall as it pounded down on our heads.
Afterwards we took off in the direction of the Rhododendron Falls. With our map in hand we made our way along the trail. The walk wasn't too strenuous but it was no walk in the park either and by the time we got to the top of the falls we were pretty sweaty. Notice however that I said the top of the falls. The trail leads everyone to the very beginning of the waterfall, where the river rushes over a series of rocks and then disappears over the edge. There is a stairway to the left that leads only the most insanely in shape or the simply the most insane to the bottom of the waterfall. I certainly don't fall into the first category but either way we walked down the stairs, all 680 of them. The decent wasn't too terrible but already you could tell this was something you weren't going to want to do in reverse. By about the halfway point my knees were already feeling how uncomfortable unevenly spaced stairs are to walk down. By the time we got to the bottom we were sweaty and short of breath. We had plenty of time so we took a bunch of good pictures and tried to work up the courage to start our way back up.
On the ascent we stopped after one hundred steps. Both of us were clinging to the railing and sucking down every atom of air we could. The steps are so tall and akwardly spaced that it makes it more difficult than just the sheer numbers alone. We divided the rest of the stairs into one hundred step increments and started on our way. Every time we got to about 85 it became seemingly impossible that we could climb another stair and by then our arms had to do most of the work.
I was sore for the next week but I don't regret even one of the 680 steps to the bottom and back up again because the sight looking up at that enormously long waterfall is not one I will soon forget.
Vietnam has quite a number of national parks all down its length and I fully intend to stop at as many as we can along the way.