On day two of our stay in Vietnam, we took a day tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels.
The Cu Chi Tunnels are located about 2 hours North West of HCMC. In short, they are about 200km of tunnels, some three layers deep built over a period of 20 years from 1949. The tunnels formed a base for military operations of the VietCong and at housed up to 150,000 people. The vast network of tunnels were built by hand using small hoes and woven baskets (See! I was listening to the tour guide… I didn’t google this info, I promise!)
The tunnels are extremely narrow and short; the VietCong of those days were a fair bit shorter and skinnier than our modern (fat!) bodies so us going inside required squatting and crawling. It really is amazing that it was built by hand and contained so many people.
When inside, the guide asked if we wanted to do 30, 50, or 100 metres; Pat and I thought we would be macho and said “we’ll do 100!”…. lets just say, at the first junction when the guide said “this is 30 metres”, we jumped out quick smart! we were exhausted!
At the tunnels we also got to try Tapioca root, one of the foods they ate at the time.
The final two stops for the day trip was a multi denominational temple (sorry, I wasn’t paying attention this time so can’t provide any more infomation). We also stopped by at a village where we had a home cooked meal at someone’s home; the food was delicious
The tree in the 8th image is part of a rubber tree plantation. The trees are planted in a line and grooves cut into the trunk. The rubber flows down the grooves and goes into the dish at the bottom.
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