The next day we booked ourselves on a trip to visit some of the underground tunnels used by the Vietnamese to fight the Americans during the Vietnam War. Our tour bus drove about 3 hours out of town. Our guide was Vietnamese and he spent most of the journey there signing pro-Communist and pro-Vietnam songs on his guitar. We all joined in with the chorus which was 'Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh and so on...!
During the war the Vietcong fighters spent years living underground and only surfacing at night to carry out attacks on the Americans. The tunnels were tiny and too small for 'KFC tourists' as our guide explained! But one of the tunnels had been widened for our benefit and so we were able to crawl down and take a look around.
The trap-door entrances to the tunnels were hidden away to make it harder for the Americans to find. One of the guide's tricks was to ask us where the hidden entrance was. Everyone would look around without any luck and he would then magically lift up a circular piece of earth to reveal the entrance. Everyone was amazed and then took it in turns to lower themselves into the entrance to pose for a photo. Once everyone had posed for a photo the group moved on around the corner to the next point of interest. Jenna at this point decided that she wanted a photo in the hidden hole, so as everyone walked off I told her to hurry up and I got the camera ready. I took a couple of snaps and told her to hurry up and get out otherwise we'd lose the rest of the group. She then said, 'I can't, I'm stuck'. I told her to stop being silly and told her to hurry up. She wiggled some more, before insisting that she really was still stuck. She wasn't exactly wedged in, it was more a case of being too short to reach the ground and pushherself out. Take a look at the photo below and imagine the scene 20 seconds later. Honestly you couldn't make it up! I put the camera down and lent over and tried pulling her up, straining my back in the process, but she was well and truly stuck. A soldier with a gun was standing nearby and looked at us like, 'It's no wonder we beat the Americans you thick Westerners'. We were running out of ideas and I could then hear the next tour group coming round the corner. Crap! Their tour guide would be looking forward to asking them to look for the hidden door, before proudly lifting up the piece of land to reveal the entrance to an impressed audience, only to find that when they walked around the corner, Jenna's head and shoulders sticking out of the ground! Thankfully the soldier had seen enough and came to the rescue. He grabbed one arm, I grabbed the other and together we managed to lift Jenna to freedom! I've never been so embarrassed in all my life, but then I reckon it'll be quite a good story to tell the grandchildren in 50 years time, 'When we went to Vietnam, grandma got stuck in a hole in the ground and had to be pulled out by grandad and a Vietnamese soldier'!!!
On the way back into HCMC we stopped off at the War Museum. The museum displayed photographic evidence of the destruction caused by the Americans to Vietnam and it's people. It was fair to say that it wasn't pretty viewing, particularly the photos displaying the results of the chemical bombs used by the Americans. If you were an American visiting the museum, you definitely wouldn't feel proud of their actions. We wondered whether in 20 years time, there may be similar museums in Baghdad and Kabul portraying British war atrocities?
We went for dinner and a few drinks with the Danish couple we had met in Cambodia and found a road side stall selling beers for about 20p! The next day we went on another trip to the Mekong Delta river which was another 3 hour long drive. We visited a floating market at Cat Bai, floated down the river on a traditional Vietnamese boat and visited a village where they make all sorts of Vietnamese sweets and snacks. It was a good trip, but the journey was so hot and bumpy and the minibus had no working suspension!
That night we boarded another sleeper bus and hoped for better luck! We headed North for about 12 hours to the beach town of Nha Trang. We arrived at 6.30am and spent most of our three days there on the beach. The beaches and sea were perfect for a few days relaxing, but nowhere near as good as the beaches in Thailand. We managed to find a pub showing the Southampton vs Pompey derby that evening. Incredibly there were two Southampton fans in there wearing Southampton shirts. The live internet stream which the game was being shown on went dead with about five minutes to go at 1-1. One of the Southampton fans got his phone out and went on the BBC website to keep an eye on the score and found out that Southampton had scored a late winner and that the game had finished. 'Typical jammy scummers, blah, blah, blah' I mumbled as we walked back to our hotel. When we got back I went on Jenna's phone to check my emails and saw that Pompey had equalised in the 94th minute! I thought about running back to the pub to tell the two Southampton fans the good news, but decided against it!
We had a good time in Nha Trang, with the only negative being that it was full of Russian tourists. We weren't quite sure why, maybe something to do with Vietnam being a communist country? I don't know, but they were the rudest bunch we've seen on our travels. But also the funniest as I think they travelled back into the 1980's to purchase their swimwear! Admittedly I've been wearing bright pink shorts out here, but at least I don't combine them with bandanas, socks and sandals!
No comments:
Post a Comment