Another fabulous breakfast.
Forgot to get a picture of the pool yesterday.
Early morning departure from Saigon up to the Cu Chi tunnels.
First stop is to view the water hyacinths on the river. They just free floated on by.
Now on to the tunnels
We walked thru the jungle all the while listening to sounds of automatic rifle fire. It was meant to keep the experience more real, and it was certainly unnerving.
A map of a typical tunnel. They were 3 levels deep – 10-30 feet and covered 100 square miles.
Here’s one if the camouflaged entrances. Yes this is Ian trying it out.
Time for a popsicle -red beans,rice milk and peanuts. Well Ian had one- so Yvonne tried it.
One of the booby traps
And now on to the tunnels – the guys totally pass on going down, but Yvonne and I said we would give it a try so down we went.
We made it down 10 feet and posed for our first picture.
And then we started down – another 5 feet down and we had to hunch over- we probably traveled 8 feet when we turned a corner and saw we would have to go down a lot more steps and crouch down even further….so we turned around.
And this is fake news – we staged us coming out of the tunnel 30 feet away.
a snack of tapioca and jungle root tea.
Now on to the cruise!
Time to relax
And now a quick history lesson – hoping I get this right! We discussed with our guide Yang some of the Vietnam war specifics. He said it never was about spreading communism as far as the north was concerned – it was all about a reliable food supply. The people in the north were starving while those in the south had an abundance of food. He also explained that the Vietnamese people who had been so brutalized by the French couldn’t really distinguish the Americans from the French – and as far as the Vietnamese people were concerned we all looked the same and thus were the same. He said Ho Chi Min actually hired a Japanese photographer to take some of the most horrific pictures of the war and made sure they were well publicized. His goal was to promote anti war sentiment – and in that he succeeded.
Yang also explained that the Viet Cong were guerillas who associated the Americans with the French colonialists – and they were under the belief we were trying to colonize them. Their agenda was to stop what they saw as an attempt to take over. They were another fighting faction not associated with the communist agenda of the north.
We are ready to leave this slanted opinion – and head on up the delta.
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