Claire & Melanie's Global Trek

Day 20: Another crazy Vietnamese city with a crazy airport! We were once again exposed to the agressive and persistant taxi drivers once our foot stepped outside the airport! The Canadian girls we met in Hoi An shared a taxi with us and we went into the city to our "recommended" Lonely Planet accomodation- that didn't exist! It wasn't there but we managed to find one located centrally and up 3 flights of stairs! Room needed a make-over paint job but other than that, it was fine!
Booked the Cu Chi tunnels for tomorrow morning and went for something to eat. Found a really nice bar/restaurant called Allez Boo. The waiter must have been learning English because he kept returning to our table with grammer questions! He was very appreciative for the lessons though all the same!

Day 21: Early rising for the mini-van, the journey was 45 mins to the Cu Chi Tunnel. En route we stopped off at a handicapped crafts factory where we saw the production line from start to finish. They hand-made beautiful pictures, artwork, shoes, household goods and many other crafts and used crushed egg shells as part of the covering. Very fine detail and time went into these crafts. I would have bought hand-made clog flip-flops covered with beautiful gems but the back-pack is heavy enough and the largest size they had was a 4!
We had a guide walking around with us in Cu Chi and the first stop on the tour was one of the tunnel entrances! See below! I can barely fit into it!

There were numerous other muddy entrances on the way to the tunnels that were not as cut out as the above picture...
Next, we viewed the various traps built and set by the Vietnamese during the war. They built these awful traps out of the shells and remains of the american weapons!
This is a Vietnamese sticking trap
Clipping armpit trap
Souvenir Trap - This looks to be the most horrific of all the traps. The enemy steps into the trap to discover that his foot can not be removed-hence making it a souvenir!
Vietnamese Door trap.
During the war, the Vietnamese also had a workshop hideout where they built all their "traps" of destruction...

Next on the tour we were told we could fire one of the following:
Which one would you choose??
Here is where a B52 bomb was dropped...

Next on our tour was going into the tunnels. This was an amazing network of tunnels built by the Vietnamese but in the pictures the tunnels are slightly widened for us Westeners!! We had to squat down and nearly crawl through them so if you are clausterphobic, I would not recommend entering!!

The next tunnel was an underground bedroom/kitchen! It was nearly pitch black in there so I had to use my flash, but the picture still manages to bring you back in time!

After the tunnels, we saw mannequins dressed up in Vietnamese army clothing. We also saw various US armoury, prisoner cells, and a french guillotine. (See pics under "Melanie")
After the Cu Chi tunnels, we traveled to the War Museum. This was a large museum that contained photos of war victims, Agent Orange victims, and excerpts. Quite depressing really.
Went out for dinner to Allez Boo and met with the Canadian girls and a few others joined us. Claire and I ended up playing pool against our new friends and of course won!!!
Early flight the next day to Phnom Penh!!