On our way out of Saigon we stopped at the Jade Temple (not
actually made of Jade, it got called that due to bad translation. It wasn't very much to look out from the outside but nonetheless an interesting place to visit. Very busy,
lots of incense and rituals going on which of course we didn’t understand and I
don’t think Hien knew a great deal about it either – like me he was far more
interested in taking pictures.
There is a pool outside full or turtles, supposedly donated to give the donor good luck but given the way the Vietnamese seem to eat everything in sight, I think it's just another way of procuring dinner.
From there we drove about an hour north to the Cu Chi Tunnels,
originally constructed many years ago by guerrillas fighting against French colonialism,
but very much extended during the Viet Nam war.
Most of what we saw was reconstructed purely for tourists but it
certainly gave you a sense of what both sides of the war(s) had to contend
with. There are a couple of hundred kilometres
of tunnels in all, at differing levels and different “rooms” intended for different
purposes; sleeping, cooking (a special chimney tunnel being constructed so that
the smoke came out 200m away) etc.
The
original tunnels were very, very narrow but the reconstructed ones considerably
larger to accommodate the Western tourist trade, although Lydia is extremely
slender and even she found it rather a tight squeeze. Neither of us wanted to even attempt them;
Ian doesn’t like enclosed spaces and I didn’t want the embarrassment of getting
wedged half way along.
We were also shown
the various types of booby traps that were made – it seems every conceivable
way of killing or maiming someone in an inhumane way had been thought of. I didn't want to look at them, let alone photograph them. Although he would answer any direction
question, Hien didn’t seem overly keen on talking about the war. He’d told us previously that he’d had to leave
school at 13 and go to work making charcoal and as this was in 1975 we’re
guessing his family suffered in the war.
And so that was the end of our whistle stop tour to South Viet
Nam, we re-enter the country in a few days time to visit the Hanoi in the north.
Tomorrow Cambodia .....................