We now begin our Tour

Like we haven't already been touring! The title simply refers to the fact that our tour guide Bao has kicked in and we are now on the Nexus ticket. Now, you might have noticed that I've been somewhat captivated by the lunacy of the motor scooter in HCMC. Talking to Bao today we discovered that the most dangerous scooter on the road is driven by the "lady ninja". Apparently the classic Vietnamese lady is somewhat vain and when boarding their scooter they rap up their faces so thoroughly to protect their visages, that they have reduced visibility and therefore create more accidents. Hmm!

Speaking of women, tomorrow is Women's Day in Vietnam. I have no idea what that means. Anyway, our first tour today involved a two hour hair-raising drive north of the city to the Cu Chi Tunnels, escape and evasion tunnels built by the Vietcong to evade the Americans. On the way, we got a good look at Vietnam architecture.

On the way, we passed through a rubber plantation, suitably named the Happy Farm, due to the manufacture of condoms from this material.

As usual, the tunnels were a slightly popular site.

This was in fact a very interesting tour, showing the lengths that the Vietnamese went to to avoid detection by the Americans and the tons of bombs they dumped on the "enemy". There are hundreds of kilometres of these tunnels that successfully stymied the Yanks. One pic below shows a tourist in a tunnel entrance who needed serious help getting out.

One highlight here for some (read into this, Americans) was an actual firing range, where you could pay tons of bucks to fire vintage machine guns. The sound of gunfire, although totally benign, was somehow very appropriate at this venue. May I add that the majority on people popping off here were women.

Both Claude and I got into one tunnel and, on hands and knees, made our way through a short segment of the tunnel, convincing us that we weren't meant to be down there. After another two hour trip back into HCMC, we lunched at Pho 2000, famous for a Bill Clinton visit here in 2000. The pho here was tasty and enjoyed by all. Then we toured the Independence/aka Reunification Palace and thanks to Bao's in depth knowledge, we had a great tour.

We were fried by the end of this segment and gave up the remainder of the tour - which in all fairness we'd already done - Cathedral, Post Office and Ben Thanh Market. We took a final sojourn in our rooftop pool before prepping for dinner at Hoa Tuc, a culinary gem. We started with deep fried tofu, then shredded banana blossom & chicken salad, chili marinated BBQ prawns, sautéed vegetables with garlic, fried brown rice and creme caramel.

We've had a fab time in HCMC, but tomorrow we head down to the Mekong Delta to begin our River Cruise. Did I mention that today was stinking hot?