Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005- Vietnam- Cu Chi

Started the 2 hour bus ride with a stop an hour in at a Rice Sheet Factory (again not what you might think a factory to be. It was just a hut). It was a woman sitting by a stove making the thin rice sheets that wrap around spring rolls or candies. The woman starts at 4 am and works until about 1-2pm. She takes a scoop of the rice batter and places it on the skillet on the stove and covers it with a weaved basket top. Thirty seconds later she uncovers the skillet and rolls the sheet out onto a drying rack. After she fills up the drying rack she places it outside in the sun for two hours to dry. In a day she makes approximately 2,500.
Our next stop on our tour was down the road at the Rubber Plantation which were rows and rows of rubber trees as far as I could see. It’s amazing because during the war, American B-52s destroyed the plantations but over the last 30 years they have been re-grown.
We finally came to the Cu Chi Tunnels which were built in 1948 during the French War (only one level). They became more intricate during the American War (a.k.a. Vietnam War) with three levels in total and no architectural designs. In all, there were 29 underground villages, but if you wanted to go to a different one from your own then you needed to get a guide because the tunnels were so difficult to navigate.
At the entrance to the park we went to a shooting range and got to use weapons from the war. I’m not big on guns but I tried an AK-47. Right outside the range was an old US Air Force helicopter left from the war. Some of the stuff left behind is very surprising. We then went into the park and saw a movie that completely captured the essence of killing “the American devils.” That phrase (or something similar) was repeated over and over again, and made a lot of us uncomfortable.
We then walked to a place in the jungle like area where there were narrow steeps that led into a narrow tunnel. I had to crouch down to get through and made it pretty easily. The other smaller tunnels I did not even attempt to try because they, unlike the other ones, had not been widened for tourists. We then saw the different types of traps that Vietnamese set to catch the Americans, none of which looked to friendly. And finally, on our way out we stopped at the Ben Duoc Valiant Soldiers Commemorative Temple.
In all it was a pretty good day except that it was really hot and I think I had a fever along with being dehydrated and feeling like I was going to have a heat stroke. So I finished my day just resting in my room.