Women are heroes.So declared the Vietcong at the end of the war. Another busy day, but wonderful. We set off in the (air-conditioned) coach at 7.30 and drove about an hour out of the city where the truck carrying our bikes met us. We then cycled past paddy fields, through rubber plantations and lovely countryside for about 12 miles to the Cu Chi Tunnels. We were then shown around the whole area which was a 200kilometre underground network used by the South Vietnamese guerrillas and the VietCong from 1958 to 1975.
From ground level you couldn’t see any entrances to the tunnels (which was why they used them, of course) or any sign of them. There were a number of very large craters where the US B52s had bombed and it was all in very thick forest. In the Vietnam war (or American Agression – depending on your perspective) the Americans sprayed the forest to clear the foliage to try to spot the VietCon so it would have looked very different then. Then we went into the tunnels – they had made two of them larger for Western tourists – the Vietnamese are tiny people and the tunnels were so small that no US could have got into them, if they found them. There were kitchens, workshops – everything underground and at one time there were 12,000 people in the Cu Chi area – after the war, just 4,000!All incredibly interesting.
The tour group are really good fun.
17 of us in total and I’ll try to give an initial thumbnail sketch. Mark and Karol, 40-somethings from Kent, but he’s working in Malaysia at the moment; Colin from Brighton, 50, single, looks incredibly fit, so I may attach a tow rope to his bike; Liz, a 40ish radiologist from Wigan; Norman and Beryl from Oxfordshire – celebrating their 30th anniversary with a round the world trip; Alan and Ann from Sheffield – retired local government planner/teacher; Scottish Mark, occupation/age unknown so far; Katie ‘between jobs’ from Islington – early 30s. Jenny and Steve 20-somethings from Leamington Spa – occupation unknown but have cycled round Draycote. James, real estate agent from Vancouver; Fiona from Bristol, late 20s ish. Laurie from Wales but living in Madagascar for past 20 years. In his 60s and in ‘fisheries’ whatever that means. And one I can’t remember for now. We’ve all decided to eat together tonight, so I guess I’ll remember the other one then.
Today’s cycling easy and good. Tomorrow promises something different. A drive out for the morning about 200km, then a 100 km cycle up to the mountain region of Dalat. So this blog, may end here.
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