Wow what a day, we got up bright and early and left Ho Chi Minh and headed out of the city to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cu Chi tunnels are a system of tunnels created in the war by the local people to fight the Americans. The tunnels go on for more than 250km…… It was an incredible and heart wrenching site to visit. Some of the tunnels have been widened so that western people can fit down them, poor Ian still had trouble fitting as his shoulders kept scraping the sides.
After seeing the tunnels we travelled to the Mekong Delta where we went on a 45 minute boat ride to our home stay. We were guests of Mr Moi and his family.
It was a lot better than I expected, I thought we would be sleeping on the floor. Instead we had camp stretchers and our own mossy nets. We were divided in half to accommodate everyone and we slept in two big dorm rooms. That night we helped the family cook dinner, the kitchen certainly wasn't like home but the food that was produced was outstanding. We had ‘elephant fish’ ugliest fish I have ever seen but surprisingly tasty, tiger prawns and a few things I couldn’t distinguish….
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| Hi, Mr Moi |
I slept better than anticipated, I think it’s the heat and all the good food. It was lovely listening to the sounds of the river and the fishermen that seem to fish all night? No one ever seems to sleep in this country. The constant hum of all the bugs was annoying and if I ever find the bloody roster that's been crowing since 5am I'll ring it’s friggin neck! It was a bit hairy going to the loo this morning as it was still dark and the house is literately over the water, thus you have to walk over a gang plank to get onto solid ground – not so good at 5am in the dark. The gang plank is approximately 10cm wide which is challenging when your 5 foot 7, weigh (lets just say a considerable amount more than the locals) and have enormous feet. Of course it would be no 'biggie' if you fell into the Mekong River given that the water is in such pristine condition. This is me being facetious, if I didn't immediately get washed away or was mistaken for something the locals could kill and eat I'm sure some weird arse disease would take me out within 24 hours......
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| Elephant Fish |
Today we spend the whole day exploring the river. Oh! How funny, before we left Ho Chi Minh I bought a pair of thongs from the market. The only pair I bought with me got wrecked in the torrential downpours of Saigon. The lady on the street sat me on a tiny stool and bought over a pair of shoes that were about size 6. When she saw the size of my feet she said ‘oh your feet too big will need ugly man shoes, no nice shoe for you’ she then gave me some ‘ugly man shoes’ and proceeded to invite all the local woman that she could find over to have a look. She was so stunned that I was going to buy them that ‘she gave me big discount as poor nice lady has to wear ugly man shoes’. Thank god I didn’t try on any cloths…..
The Mekong was everything I expected. After leaving our home
stay we cruised around the river for about 2 hours, we visited floating markets,
a fruit orchard and some local factories. They call them ‘factories’ but they
are more like people’s homes. One was making fish sauce – very stinky,
another rice paper. The processes here are so incredibly time consuming and
labour intensive. The last one we stopped at was making local sweets, this was
my favourite. They even made popcorn from rice, yum, yum. Of course Ian somehow
found the local moonshine, AKA ‘snake wine’. Basically a huge jar of fermenting
snakes yuk… At this stage he appears not to have suffered any lingering effects
from drinking it....
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