[I STILL can't get over the fact that the first thing P said to me after 6mths was abt *cough* somebody's top. I'm hurt.]
Third Day in Vietnam, and it was another wake-up early day. I realised that Wk, after having the misfortune of bunking with me twice in Europe, is quite used to my early morning refuse to wake up habits. Cos she would always voluntarily get up first [aww we do appreciate you for ur non-cheapskate ways dear].
It's the same routine of rushing down to the guys' room and gobbling down cereal and yoghurt. Also, because I am having my usual morning diarrhoea, I had to keep running to the guys' toilet, while yh is rather distressed with his BO nil.
The morning traffic
Our itinerary today is the Cao Dai temple, and highlight of the trip, Cu Chi Tunnels.
And its another 3hr bus ride there. So while some people slept, I munched on some tidbits, but soon stopped because it was extremely, extremely salty.
Self-portrait shot taken by yours truely. Which is why there is 4/5 of Wq, 5/6 of yh, 2/3 of Wk and 1 big-ass shot of myself.
Our toilet stop was at this factory where disabled people painstakingly make intricate handicrafts like these. The pictures you see here are made of broken pieces of eggshells.
After a good nap, we arrived at Cao Dai temple, which was comprised of 3 different religions, Catholicism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
You can see statues representing the 3 religions at the main entrance.
A painting of the three founders, each believing in a different religion. I only remembered that the Catholic guy is Victor Hugo, the other two I dont remember.
I like the brightly coloured interior of the temple. As you can see, I dun really know much abt it cos I was dozing off during the guide's explanation. For more details, ask Wk.
The symbol of the eye can be found everywhere, and the believers pray to the giant eye at the end of the room. The eye rather creeps me out.
Hmm.. I think gh can find some symbolism in this photo somewhere. Smth like 3 utterly different pple, one believing in lame-ness, one in slack-ness, and one cheapskate-ness, bonded by a wonderful cg.
It is a very, very hot day.
Our lunch, which wasn't included. This was yh's msg-laden fried rice. We were all very amused by it.
And my msg-laden fish. It was very, very, very salty.
Immediately after lunch, we went to sleep again on the bus. Wq, that lazy pig, seems to enjoy this kind of itinerary.
Anyway, after another 1.5hrs nap, we arrived at Cu Chi tunnel.
No, this is not said tunnel.
The actual tunnels consist of 3levels, each not more than 1m by 80cm. In fact the deepest level is only 60cm by 40cm. And requires one to belly crawl through it. I mused out loud that what if somebody die inside, there's just no way of bypassing him. One of the guys said, "just chop him up into small pieces and take one bite each loh." -_-
Our tour guide conned us into thinking that this was the tunnel we all had to go into, and one of the ladies believed him and got stuck while her bf laughed. I saw the tour guide eyeing me first but thank goodness I was carrying a huge bag and couldn't possibly fit.
We had to track through the jungle.
Tank for gh's viewing pleasure
Fake men making weapons
There was even an exhibit of men making guerilla sandals, with a huge range of sizes from 2cm to 50cm! Apparently, the gigantic sandals were for the elephants while the tiny ones were for chickens. I kid you not, chickens!
Immediately I thought of a lame joke, and very excitedly told everyone:
Q: "Why does the chicken need to wear sandals?"
A: "Because it wants to cross the road."
[Quite funny wat, but they all seemed to think I'm very lame.]
Tunnel that the soldiers use
Tunnel for visitors, which have supposedly been widened by 80%
Us pretending to look scared before entering the tunnel
That's me, before entering the tunnel, still looking fresh and happy
The tunnel was tiny, and pitch-dark, one could easily get claustrophobic in there. I decided after a few steps that there is no way i'm can walk with my knees bent and waist bent at 90degrees, so i decided to duck waddle instead. And my terribly unfit thighs started complaining after only a few steps. And i had to hold on to my bag and keep one hand in front of me to carefully feel my way thru, while frantically waddling ahead to remain not far frm Wk cos i'm terrified of holding back pple behind me. Wk, being in front of me, shouted out useful warnings like "puddle ahead" or "sharp drop in front" and "you have to crawl up here" and I relayed the message to pple behind me, and interpersed it with moans of "argh my thighs are killing me", while behind me, Wq could be heard grunting abt his injured knee, "argh my knee cannot take it".
Wq took these photos by saying "look behind you, i'm taking a photo" and we just generally smiled into the darkness in the direction of his voice. The photos turned out amazingly well.
I think the only reason why I look so happy is because we're stopping and my thighs can take a break.
I finally emerged from the tunnel happy and relieved and dirty and freaking tired with my thighs aching and trembling with every step i take. We then trudged to a makeshift camp where we ate tapioca in the rain and the tour guides told us abt huge mosquitoes in a bid to hurry us out of our seats and back to the bus.
The bus dropped us at the Ben Thanh Market near our hotel but to reach there we need to cross two huge roads and because of the rush hour traffic, the roads were very, very, very scary, there was really no gap in the traffic at all. But thank goodness we spotted two policemen and sort of squeezed ourselves between them, and then made sure we are exactly in line with them as we crossed the roads, in fact, I wasn't even looking at the many motorbikes that were sandwiching us, but just concentrated on making sure we were not even 1cm ahead of him. The adrenaline rush and incredulity of the situation just caused us all to burst into nervous laughter after we survived.
The boys, clean freaks that they are, went to shower, while us girls hung around the lobby to build rapport with our friendly hotel owners and asked them for recommendations for cheap and good local restaurants.
At the hotel lobby, why is yh looking so sian?
Because we're all waiting for Wq to finish checking his mail so that we can go for dinner
The taxi driver brought us to a super ulu restaurant, which has nice decor but nobody there speaks a word of english. The smiling waitress brought us a photo book but even so, the food looked so exotic we don't know what they were. So we sort of looked blankly at the waitress and said, "errrr" and she started flipping thru the photos and pointed at random foods, and each time we said, "good? good?" and made thumbs-up signs and she said "yes! yes!" and we made ok hand signs and nodded vehemently and she kept giggling helplessly while we laughed at ourselves.
When the food came, again it all looked so foreign that she had to demonstrate how to eat the food and make the wraps and I must say, they were really delicious.
This is steamed rice cake with prawns.
Also, we realised that the Vietnamese can make rice paper wraps with almost anything plus leafy vegetables and mint leaves and starfruits.
We decided to spend our after dinner activities at a nice cafe that seems to be the equivalent of starbucks and just chatted and whiled the night away.
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