Nam #2

For sun and sand we headed to the lovely beach town of Mui Ne. When we met Emily and Jas later in Saigon they told us they'd learned that, in Vietnamese, 'Mui' means mosquito and 'Ne' means town. This wasn't an exaggeration... The 'Ne' (and our room) was full of 'Mui'! Thank god for mossie nets.

Even with the obscene number of mosquitoes Mui Ne was by far the highlight of Vietnam for me. The town itself was small and laid back and situated right on a beautiful beach. There were quite a few tourists but it didn't feel half as touristy as Hoi An or Sapa. There were a few places to visit in the area, including beautiful red sand dunes that we saw at sunrise, an interesting red canyon and a busy fishing village. These sites were made better by the fact that we were the only tourists at each of the three places! The rest of out time was spent working on our sunburns and trying to bodysurf/swim. All in all it was a fantastic vacation from our vacation.

Our next stop was Saigon, the main city in the South. The city itself was nothing to write home about, but was a good base from which to see some of the surrounding areas. In Saigon we visited the shocking War Remnants Museum. This museum was crammed with candid and terrifying pictures of the Vietnam war. I thought it was a very good and seemingly un-biased view of the war that focused on the lives of journalists, civilians as well as American and Vietnamese troops. Strangely enough, after you finish viewing pictures of mutilated corpses and children with severe disabilities due to the effects of Agent Orange, you can walk outside and purchase US Army backpacks and little tanks made out of Heineken bottles. Good thing we all have learned so much about the horrors of violence and war!

The highlight of our time in Saigon was the tour Amy and I took to the Caodai Temple and Cu Chi Tunnels. The temple was a pretty standard issue temple, although it was painted with crazy colours and the followers of Caodai worship people from many different time periods/religions and not gods. I was interested to learn that Caodaists worship a strange crew of people including Jesus, Sun Yat Sen and Victor Hugo!

Anyway, the Cu Chi Tunnels were the most interesting part of this tour. The 250km tunnel network was constructed by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. There are many levels of tunnels, from 3m to 10m underground. They were used for reconnaissance, combat and living quarters. Our eccentric guide 'Mr. Bin' was a wealth of information about Vietnamese history and took to lecturing us for extended periods of time. His facts and stories were punctuated with cries of 'YOU UNDERSTAND!?'. Whenever the question was asked we all nodded our heads with enthusiasm so as to avoid being yelled at again. Without Mr. Bin the tour would have been ordinary, at best.

After a history lesson, we arrived at the tunnel complex. Mr. Bin showed us some interesting parts of the tunnel system including a sniper hole (if you were 'Vietnamese size' you could go in), booby traps for dogs and humans, as well as the actual trenches used during the war. Following this there was the option of firing an AK-47 assault rifle at a makeshift shooting range. Again, it really is amazing what we have learned from all of this. War is bad, but playing war is good for the economy.

The final activity in the day was to crawl through 100m of actual tunnel. I was a bit hesitant to enter the tunnel complex as I don't really like small spaces but peer pressure got me in. As luck would have it, there was an exit after 30m for the faint hearted. A number of us wusses bailed early in the game. Amy and a few others made it all the way through, down three levels of tunnels running the full 100m. Kudos to them, I am definitely not made for underground warfare.

Thus ended our exciting time in Saigon... Next stop Cambodia!