Cu Chi Tunnels, War Remnants Museum

We made an early start considering our night of cheap beer, making it in plenty of time for our tour reps to spend ages persuading us we should go on the full-day tour to the big Cao Dai temple to fill their bus (which we'd been advised we'd see on a later tour) and then change their mind and put us back on the half-day! I love the organisation!

First off we went to the handicapped handicraft factory which the Vietnamese Government had set up (along with other similar factories and communes) to give the war-injured Vietnamese useful employment making various products. This particular factory made various sourveniers from coconut wood and eggshell. It was really quite impressive what they could do - I bought a wall hanging picture of a Vietnamese fisherman casting off his net from his boat.

The lush green countryside on the journey up to the factory and the tunnels was amazingly similar to the UK, had it not been for the occasional palm tree you could have believed you were back home!

The Chu Chi tunnels were amazing. We had a talk from a Viet Cong veteran who told us how he cannot remember how many American soldiers he's closed the mouths of with their dogtags inside (to make sure they didn't get lost). He said that's exactly what he sees when he sleeps. The Chu Chi tunnels are a network of 200km of tunnels over 3 levels built during the American War. The top level is for living, bunkers etc, the middle for communication and the bottom for escape and trap-setting, each pitched at 3m, 6-8m and 10-12m respectively.

Originally they were even more narrow at 0.8m wide and about 1.2m tall though they've been widened slightly now for the larger western build and the larger Vietnamese now with broader diets. We went for the hardcore option, crawling 90m of level 1 and level 2 tunnel which was very hot work being in this climate! There were loads of small tunnels leading off to either side and you could really tell where the ventilation shafts were - they were quite refreshing! Even with their 'widening' program there were still some exceptionally tight squeezes which your average American would plug!

We were given a tour of the various traps built for the Americans to fall or walk into which used either snake-venom tipped bamboo shoots or nails fashioned from shrapnel. A messy ending!

The Viet Cong kitchens used 3 consecutive chambers in their chimneys to cool and filter the smoke before releasing it from beneath large rocks. It worked impressively well. It was hard to imagine what th landscape must have looked like during the war with Agent Orange stripping the land of vegetation - its looks almost like and English wood today!

We tried out tapioca (which actually looks like a sweet potato when it leaves the ground) dipped in peanuts which was very good and then some 40% alcoholic volume rice wine. Its amazing how wherever you go in the world humans will have found a way to get themselves drunk using whatever is locally available no matter how disgusting it tastes!

Later that day we went to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Ming City which provided a rather graphic representation of the American War including deformed pre-birth babies pickled in jars, photos and journals of dead war correspondants expressing disgust at the way Americans treated both living and dead Viet Cong and even civilians. The photos showed things like devasted landscapes, troops sheltering from enemy fire and one with an American soldier amused a the sight of a mutilated corpse of a Viet Cong soldier.

Many of the photos had captions saying things like "8 members of a family we came across in the jungle. As I turned my back and walked away I heard 8 gunshots". Another photo showed two brothers dead on the road, the older one lying over the younger one as he tried to protect him whilst they were shot at. It also included a confession by US Senator Bob Kerry of cutting the throats and stabbing Vietnamese to death and subsequently opening their abdomens.

There were also a lot of tanks, guns and aircraft on display and part of a "Tiger Cage" prison ran by the Vietnamese on the American side, but used by the US Military to extract intelligence (well they had to get it from somewhere). Inside there were photos of inmates who were hideously deformed from broken bones, malnutrition and the general beating they got whilst held there. All in all it was a pretty gruesome insight into the American War.

That night Martin, Russel and I went for Bia Hoi again (no surprise there!) and then met with the guys from the tour earlier that day. After a few drinks in Go2 bar we headed out looking for somewhere lively. Suddenly 4 people came out of nowhere and started hugging Martin and me! It turned out to be Seb, Kate, Stuart and Andy from our Chiang Mai trek - how random!

Destination decided! We chilled out and danced the rest of the night away in Eden Bar whilst catching up with tales of all our travels!