Vietcong 3: Tunnels

 Day 3 - Tunnels

There is a day where authentically local becomes too authentically local, and that day was this morning.  We started off the day with a breakfast of Pho around the corner, which sounds good, but "authentic" pho means they're throwing tripe (stomach? check if those are the same thing) in there even if you order "Shrimp" (a term which can be disappointingly singular).  Actually, lets back up. We started by falling asleep at 3 or 4 in the morning, because living three deep in a one room apartment means the lights and noise don't stop until the last person goes to bed, and getting up at 6.30 because the lights and noise start when the first person rises... Hopefully that puts the rest of today's post in context.

The next flaw in authentically local is deciding to take the bus (and by the bus, I mean three busses) to save 90% over a taxi. 90% which is also known as $35. And this journey (along with the rest of the day) is undertaken with 3 bags full of food and water. Not backpacks or purses, bags you have to carry in your hands the whole time. An entire day's worth of groceries, because groceries are cheap, restuaraunts are expensive, and the price-gougers at the gift shop will charge you $0.35 for a bottle of water. 

Now we add the neighbor kid deciding to tag along. /Tai/ is 9 and was super excited, and his mom figured it was fine to send him off with Lou, Mom, and I. This was actually adorable and a great example of the close-knit community they have, so we can strike that from the "too-authentic" list.  Unfortunately, his teacher was unwilling to let him skip class today despite the educational outing, so we got a panicked call on the bus and hopped off the bus a few stops down the line to wait for his dad to pick him up on a scooter. Anyways, the feel-good reprieve is over, back to the rant:

I know what you're thinking - there's an easy solution to all this! Sleep on the bus! That imminently reasonable suggest is complicated by sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, the quality of the pavement (or lack thereof), the quality of the suspension (or lack thereof), and the propensity to use the horn as a greeting, threat, warning, or - and I swear I'm not exaggerating - at least once on a deserted stretch of road, just for the fuck of it. In case that wasn't enough, **the turn signal is hooked into a siren**. It's a polite siren, not as loud or as piercing as an emergency siren, but there's no other word for it, and apart from a few random and sporadic reprieves it spent the whole trip singing it's heart out. So I saw an interesting slice of life across the city followed by some great views of the farmland around saigon. Rice patties, of course, but also a lot of oxen and rubber plantations. 

Finally (after another hike), we arrived at our destination: The tunnels of the Viet Cong! My first priorities were to find the gift shop, buy a coke, and pound it. The caffienne worked a treat, but it's worn off by now, so I wrote this back in the 3-hours-of-sleep temperment. You know, for authenticity.

The plan is to rewrite the rest of this when I'm not sleep deprived (or the deprivation is masked with caffiene, you know, for authenticity) so it's just a dump:

put some background on operation hammer and anvil or whatever here.  100km of tunnels, they destoyed 10, etc etc

1st was a diorama show. Massive diorama. All in vietnamese obviously. Probably propaganda. But huge and it had smoke machines, airplanes and helicopters on wires, tanks driving around, super fun even if I didn't understand a word.

2nd was a short film, in terrible CGI, showing the tunnels. Definitely propaganda, but at least it had subtitles.

3rd was the walking tour

         Started off showing a replica village

         pungee pits

         really like showing off replica villages

         single tunnel

             slightly enlarged for tourists. You can duck over and walk

         stop for lunch where we saved at least $2 by carrying everything all day

         whatever at least the bags are slightly lighter now

         maybe mention the stupid hats coming in clutch?

         landscape is still pont du hoc with all the craters

Then we had a reinactment, basically diorama write large, field of broken tanks, smoke machines, no real explosions, and 2 VN actors

                 two US actors show up 

                 I bet they die

                 They die

                 Everyone cheers

         I thought we really only got 1 tunnel out of this whole thing, but turns out

4th was the tunnel tour

         Different ticket altogether

         starts with a propaganda film

               Like legit propaganda film. Period footage of men smiling and planting rice with rifles on their back. Some small girl with a sniper rifle being awarded the "Status of Hero for Killing Americans" no lie that's what it's called. We got assigned to the english pavilion for this showing but they didn't dial back the propaganda at all. Note too self: look up if they really contaminated the spears because they repeatedly didn't mention it despite explaining how they weren't designed for instant death, word that better

         Finally, tunnel tour

         Starts off on easy tunnel, 

         Then we get to tunnel with authentic opening size: rifle goes first, feet go second, arms go last for shoulder size requirements as well as to replace lid, and don't be fat or kitted out

         medic tunnel goes somewhere, it's boring

         tunnel with meeting room - spikes in corner to trap flanking maneuvers

              This has the long tunnel going out from it. 

              mostly duckwalkable, but parts are easier bear crawling. Certain points do force you to hands and knees. write about how suicidal it would be to attack these 

         finally, commanders tunnel and then snack break

         cassava is the local delicacy but cleverly, it also makes you thirsty. Along with crawling through tunnels.  But we saved that $0.50 AGAIN.

         Mom stole the extra cassava. Smoke tunnel/chimney

That's it. Walk back to bus.

bus home. Lou shows locals really can sleep through all that shit. Rush hour traffic, magnified by NYE.

visit local friends parents, coconut jelly.

see boy from earlier, he's sad.

shower, dinner, didn't say a word since they were on a call in VN the whole time.

packing for tomorrow where we fly across the country to do tourist shit. Probably heading out to the airport around 5am so skipping NYE celebrations downtown tonight. But lets be honest, probably gonna be up till midnight anyways.