Cu Chi tunnels

In Ho Chi Minh for two days now. It reminds us a bit of Bangkok. Today we went out to see the tunnels that were used during the war.

To our chagrin (sp) we took a half day group tour, since the cheapest private one we could find was 70 bucks, while the group one was 8 total. Thinking back to the group tour with the elephants, we thought it might be ok. Boy were we wrong.

The tunnels we saw are 60 km from HCMC, but it took us 4 hours to get there. Waiting around for 2, stopping at some lame factory for 30 min and then another 1.5 in the bus.

Once there our cranky ass guide rushed us through everything. I (jarret) did lag behind to check some things out though. The sight itself was pretty good, although it would have been much better with a guide who said more than, "this is a tank, take a picture, lets move on". He rushed us so much only 5 out of 28 ppl got to try the tunnel entrance I did above!

Near the end of the tour was a 100m section of tunnel that has been enlarged sightly for tourists. By slightly, I mean going on my knees I was still hitting the cieling. The soldiers would often go through these tunnels for 6 hours at a time. Leigh and I were two of only 5 in our group that managed to do 100m, so I cannot imagine 6 hours in there.

After being yelled at more by our cranky guide, who then managed to lose our bus, we came back to HCMC for the evening. Our advice, if you are really interested in the tunnels, get a private guide. It will add a lot of info, skip stuff you dont want to see and make for a more pleasant day. If you just have a passing interest and would like to save money, go for the group tour. One thing it helped us realize...we wont mind spending a bit more for the Mekong tour later on.

Off to Mui Ne beach area in the morn. Ciao