We’ve got a travel day ahead of us today, with seemingly quite a lot of time to kill at Ho Chi Minh City airport, so last night I made a call to Tai from the boat suggesting we change our plans.
We’re due to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels – famous for being the secret underground complex of the Viet Cong where they waged guerrilla war against the American occupation – in a week’s time when we return to Saigon. However my rudimentary calculations suggest we could squeeze them in before we leave the Mekong Delta… allowing us more time to explore the actual city of Saigon on our return.
Outside the noodle factory
Tai, somewhat disconcerted by me trying to alter plans laid out in our pre-agreed itinerary, has agreed it’s “possible” but we’ll need to take a cross-country short-cut to avoid the notoriously bad traffic on the main road to Ho Chi Minh City. And we’ll need to be picked up earlier than planned to get on our way.
The last part of our Mekong experience is an on-shore excursion to a noodle factory down some deserted back alleys, where we watch noodles being created and Coman feeds purple gloopy strands through a noisy machine. But rather than return to Cần Thơ with the rest of the Bassac II’s guests after this experience, sure enough Tai and Hai are waiting for us at the side of the road and we hastily load our bags into the back of the car and set off on our new adventure, the clock already ticking for our onward flight departure.
Hai puts his foot down and we speed along the main highway for an hour or so, past the city of My Tho and crossing huge bridges over the Mekong paid for by Australian grants, before he takes a left-turn and we’re all of a sudden weaving down back roads and through tiny villages well off the tourist trail.
Driving through rural Vietnam
There’s some noisy discussions between our Vietnamese companions as we race along, with a wary eye on their watches as they obviously discuss the unorthodox route they’re taking. These discussions get even more heated as we bump along unfinished roads through a pineapple plantation and beside a canal, plumes of dust billowing behind us for kilometres, until we reach a new main road and speed on again. I’m not sure Tai & Hai are particularly confident we’ll be able to visit the tunnels and still make our flight in time.
Four nerve-jangling hours later – which includes a roadside toilet break at a shack with a hole in the ground and a bemused lady owner – and we arrive at the Cu Chi Tunnels just after 2.30pm, grabbing an on-the-go lunch of spicy crisps and coco-cola from the gift shop at the entrance. Tai speeds us through the ticket barriers and down a long underpass before we emerge into a forest clearing, recreated for a guerrilla encampment.
Before we can explore we enter a tent to be shown a flickering yet jaunty black and white propaganda film, extolling the great heroism of the Viet Cong and their attacks on the invaders, trying to eat and drink our snacks as quietly as possible to avoid the dirty looks of a couple a few rows in front. Tai then leads us around the Viet Cong theme park, stopping to give us as much detail as time will allow.
Fitting into a hidden tunnel
We squeeze into tiny hidden holes in the earth, have demonstrations of how gruesome traps would impale, imprison or kill US soldiers, are shown how the guerrillas would wear their sandals made from tyres back to front so their trails would suggest they were heading in the opposite direction, enter their underground kitchens, refectories and dormitories and finally get the chance to crawl through the ever narrowing tunnels they used.
Our own Western frames are not exactly huge, but years of starvation and a naturally slender Asian build, meant the Viet Cong could continue through tunnels that we don’t even attempt, emerging above ground well before the exhibition ends.
The final part of the park is a shooting range where gung-ho tourists are noisily firing bullets and blowing things up, but neither of us have any desire to shoot a gun, so instead buy an ornate four-piece lacquered artwork of herons and trees in a golden sunset. It’s much more to our tranquil vibe.
Little Buddhas on the dashboard
Within an hour, we’re back on the road with just 90 minutes remaining to make it to Ho Chi Minh City airport. The drive takes us through further forests and Tai explains that Saigon – the original name for Ho Chi Minh City, and which is still used by the local population to denote the colonial centre – means Tree or Forest; the original town having arisen out of dense woodland.
But it’s dense traffic, busy dual carriageways and flyovers that we encounter as we drive through the city’s northern suburbs, arriving at the airport - thanks to Hai’s heroic efforts - just in time to check in and make our flight (with a cheeky glass of champagne in the lounge thrown in). So we take our leave of Tai and Hai, thanking them for their flexibility and wishing them well for the week ahead, ensuring they will be there to greet us in a week’s time when we return to Saigon.
We have a little snooze on our 90 minute flight north to Hué, the ancient capital of Vietnam, where we are met by a feisty young lady called Hyung, our guide for the next two days, and our driver Bé. It’s dark outside and while she extols the virtues of the city of her birth, we watch the lights of the buildings disappear as we’re driven a few kilometres out of the centre to the beautiful Pilgrimage Village resort, our hotel for the next two nights.
Inside our Pilgrimage Village bungalow
Being just out of season, the resort is not full so we are upgraded to our very own bungalow, a vast space with an outdoor terrace overlooking jungle plants and a creek, and with a bathroom that’s twice as big as any other place we’ve ever stayed in. It’s pretty spectacular. Exhausted, we wander through the grounds to the bar for a nightcap, before falling into bed for a much-needed sleep. Tomorrow we’ll be going back in time into the Imperial past of Vietnam.
