Cu Chi Tunnels

Making friends with the VC.

We climbed at a crouch (Augie on his hands and knees) through about 100 meters of the tunnels.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are greatly changed from 2000. They only have a small section where you can choose to climb through. In 2000, we crawled through a long section which led into meeting rooms, a hospital, and dining room, etc. Now they just have a small section which only makes a couple of turns and goes up and down one level. The hospital, dining room, etc. and all how open and are covered with a grass shack roof so they are easily accessible to tourists. And the place was crawling with tourists, unlike 11 years ago.
This is looking down into one of the entrances. There's a statue of a worker down there, depicting how they dug them with a small hand tool and lifted the dirt out pail by pail.

This is what the entrances originally looked like. They were easily hidden by leaves and are small enough for the VC to get in and out, but too small for Americans.

Well, not all Americans. Although Augie couldn't get his check through the hole. I got all the way down, but then my knees wouldn't straighten back out again and they had to lift me out of it.

Augie and Uncle Ho.

Augie making friends with the VC.

After our tour, we were taken to a center where people disabled by agent orange design pictures and art objects using mother of pearl, crushed egg shells, and laquer. We tried to buy something but their credit card machine didn't work. Oh, well....we tried to do our part.

We were back in Saigon by 2:30. We walked down to the War Remnants Museum, which was just being put together when we were here in 2000, but is now a three story building. It was interesting, but a very one sided interpretation of what the war was all about. And we found the Continental Hotel, but when we came out of the museum, it was pouring rain, so we were pretty soaked by the time we made it back to our hotel.

We checked out of the hotel at 6pm and left our bags there and went to dinner at the Temple Club, where Brad and Angelina had dinner. If it's good enough for them.... It was very good, although the most expensive dinner we've had on this trip. Still, it was only $30 for a shared appetizer, two entrees, two drinks, and an ice tea. And it also included the 10% gratuity they add on. After dinner, we went downstairs to indulge in some ice cream at Fanny's, which has to be the best ice cream in all of Vietnam.

Our driver picked us up at 9 pm for our midnight flight to Seoul.