Okay, where was I. When I last posted, I was just arriving in Saigon at around six in the morning. From there, we went to the hotel in which we were staying but, because it was so early, we could not yet check in. Instead, we just dropped our bags off at the hotel and went to the Cu Chi Tunnels.
The Cu Chi Tunnels are the system of underground tunnels dug by the Viet Cong underneath the heavy clay in the Cu Chi area to the west of the Mekong Delta. It took a couple of hours to bus there. Once we got to the area, there were a couple of opportunities to go inside some tunnels, including crawling about 100 meters across and ten meters down into a tunnel. Personally, I can’t even sit in a window seat of an airplane because of my claustrophobia – and from the expressions that I saw on the faces of those who actually made the crawl, I think I made the right decision. It is absolutely amazing, though, that these tunnels could be built and that thousands of people actually could live in them during the Vietnam War.
Another display at the Cu Chi Tunnels demonstrated various booby traps that the Vietnamese set for the Americans during the Vietnam War. Many of them involved bamboo or steel spikes and were of the kind that you could see if you watched the Green Berets or various other Vietnam War movies. (I only mention Green Berets because I think it may be the worst war movie ever made.) There also was a firing range in which some people were firing off M-16s and AK-47s. At $1.25 per round, I decided to opt out of that particular experience, but those who did it enjoyed it.
We came back to the hotel and then I got a call from a friend of a friend who lives in Ho Chi Minh City and wanted to meet up. We walked around Saigon for a little while, including a trip to another memorial set up for a monk who cremated himself on the sidewalk in Saigon in 1963. Afterwards, we went to a little roadside bar that I liked because there were no other white folks in it. We had some beer and he taught me a little about Vietnam and we had some conversations with folks at other tables. Things started to get a little awkward when my new friend’s 18-year old boy toy showed up, but it was still fun. Around 9:00, I headed back to my hotel looking for dinner and a nightcap.
As I was walking on the sidewalk, up the street from my hotel, I felt somebody rubbing my arm. I was startled and first and turned around. It was a woman on a motorbike. On the sidewalk. She asked me if I wanted a massage and if I had a room. I politely declined her proposition, even though she was gorgeous, and went into a restaurant for dinner.
As I entered the restaurant, there were two couples dining and so I went to the third table in the restaurant. I ordered a beer and some dinner and around the time the beer arrived, the couples finished their meals and left. The waitress asked if I would mind moving up a few tables, so I did. At this point, I was the only person eating in the restaurant and I had four waitresses standing a few feet from my table because they had nothing else to do and no other customers to serve. It made me eat a little faster and stop after the second beer.
I left the restaurant to return to my hotel. As I got to the street on which my hotel was located, I felt – you guessed it – somebody rubbing my right forearm. Less startled this time, I turned around. It was yet another woman, more beautiful than the last, on another motorbike on the same street who was inquiring about my desire for a good massage. I politely declined once again and decided that I had better get to my hotel soon, while I still had the willpower to decline these invitations.
That was my first day in Saigon. I only had two, so we’ll get to the other one in the next post.
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