There's nothing I dislike more on holiday than having to get up early.
Ideally I don't tend to get up until around noon, so the 8am set off and 7.15am alarm call for today's journey was deeply unwelcome. I was off on a half day tour of the Cu Chi tunnels, an underground network where Viet Cong guerrillas lived and fought during the civil war.
The tunnels are roughly 70km north of Saigon, and it takes a good couple of hours to get there because of the time it takes to crawl through the city's congested streets and sprawling suburbs.
I was really looking forward to this trip - despite the early start. The tunnels are a fascinating detail of the history of the Vietnam war. There was a network of them spanning some 250km at one stage, which allowed Viet Cong forces to mount surprise attacks on American forces. Not surprisingly, the Yanks tried to bomb the fuck out of the tunnels, but to no avail. They were so deep and under such strong rock that the B52s could do nothing about them.
Our tour guide gave us a brief history of the tunnels as we made our way there on the bus. He even explained his own family's role in the conflict, revealing that both his parents and grandparents had fought for the Viet Cong because - and I quote - "they hated the Americans". Not a particularly startling statement, it must be said, but perhaps an unusual one coming from a tour guide speaking to a bus full of international tourists. Actually, it's very easy to forget that it was not just the Americans who fought for the South Vietnamese in the war. Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines were all here too.
As we approached our destination, I started to feel more and more unwell. I just attributed this to the coach travel and assumed I would feel better as soon as we arrived. Unfortunately, I didn't and over the course of the next half an hour started to feel worse and worse. This culminated in yours truly vomiting quite spectacualrly over the floor as we started our tour through the forest where the tunnels were located. To think that American bombs had once rained down on this soil, and now it was my puke...
I expected chundering to improve my health, but it didn't and I continued to feel unwell throughout the tour. This indicated it was more than travel sickness, and probably a result of the many bugs it is possible to pick up on holiday in South East Asia. An elderly Australian couple took pity on me and gave me water and barley sugar, but I could hardly concentrate as we were shown the entrances to the tunnels and varionus other miliatry parathenalia.
One of the main attractions to a Cu Chi tour is that you can fire an AK47 rifle at a load of empty petrol dumps. I had been up for this, but felt so wretched I decided against it. I did, however, summon up the strength to go underground to crawl through the tunnels. It would have been a hell of a long way to come and not see what I had set out to see, so I braved the intense heat and clambered underground with the rest of the people on the tour. Interesting though it was to see the surreal conditions that people lived and fought in all those years ago, the intense heat and claustrophobic conditions meant it wasn't long before I was climbing back up to daylight.
Fortunately the journey back to Saigon didn't result in any further spewing activity, and I arrived back at my hotel at 3pm, where I took a couple of paracetomol and went to bed for a few hours...
Ideally I don't tend to get up until around noon, so the 8am set off and 7.15am alarm call for today's journey was deeply unwelcome. I was off on a half day tour of the Cu Chi tunnels, an underground network where Viet Cong guerrillas lived and fought during the civil war.
The tunnels are roughly 70km north of Saigon, and it takes a good couple of hours to get there because of the time it takes to crawl through the city's congested streets and sprawling suburbs.
I was really looking forward to this trip - despite the early start. The tunnels are a fascinating detail of the history of the Vietnam war. There was a network of them spanning some 250km at one stage, which allowed Viet Cong forces to mount surprise attacks on American forces. Not surprisingly, the Yanks tried to bomb the fuck out of the tunnels, but to no avail. They were so deep and under such strong rock that the B52s could do nothing about them.
Our tour guide gave us a brief history of the tunnels as we made our way there on the bus. He even explained his own family's role in the conflict, revealing that both his parents and grandparents had fought for the Viet Cong because - and I quote - "they hated the Americans". Not a particularly startling statement, it must be said, but perhaps an unusual one coming from a tour guide speaking to a bus full of international tourists. Actually, it's very easy to forget that it was not just the Americans who fought for the South Vietnamese in the war. Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines were all here too.
As we approached our destination, I started to feel more and more unwell. I just attributed this to the coach travel and assumed I would feel better as soon as we arrived. Unfortunately, I didn't and over the course of the next half an hour started to feel worse and worse. This culminated in yours truly vomiting quite spectacualrly over the floor as we started our tour through the forest where the tunnels were located. To think that American bombs had once rained down on this soil, and now it was my puke...
I expected chundering to improve my health, but it didn't and I continued to feel unwell throughout the tour. This indicated it was more than travel sickness, and probably a result of the many bugs it is possible to pick up on holiday in South East Asia. An elderly Australian couple took pity on me and gave me water and barley sugar, but I could hardly concentrate as we were shown the entrances to the tunnels and varionus other miliatry parathenalia.
One of the main attractions to a Cu Chi tour is that you can fire an AK47 rifle at a load of empty petrol dumps. I had been up for this, but felt so wretched I decided against it. I did, however, summon up the strength to go underground to crawl through the tunnels. It would have been a hell of a long way to come and not see what I had set out to see, so I braved the intense heat and clambered underground with the rest of the people on the tour. Interesting though it was to see the surreal conditions that people lived and fought in all those years ago, the intense heat and claustrophobic conditions meant it wasn't long before I was climbing back up to daylight.
Fortunately the journey back to Saigon didn't result in any further spewing activity, and I arrived back at my hotel at 3pm, where I took a couple of paracetomol and went to bed for a few hours...
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