Week 5- Vietnam (HCMC) Day 2

Today was an early start, we were up at 7am ready for another big day. We stocked up on breakfast at our hostel before our guide picked us up at 8am. Yet again it was a long bus journey, which took about 2 hours each way to the Cu Chi tunnels.

On our way we had a rest stop for 20 minutes. The place we stopped at was actually an art workshop for people with disabilities mostly due to the orange agent in the war. The Americans sprayed millions of gallons of fertiliser over the lands in Vietnam to destroy their crop consequently causing many babies to be born with a disability. The Vietnamese refer to these people as the 'unlucky'. The tour guide explained it was because they couldn't do things like the rest of them, many had limb abnormalities. During our travels I have found it really interesting to see how the different countries perceive disability. In India we rarely saw anyone with a physical disability, however, it has been very common in Vietnam. 15% of the Vietnamese population have a disability. Surprisingly they have a high amount of cafés and shops ran by people with disabilities to provide them with opportunities. It's been amazing to visit these places!

We were allowed to walk through the workshop and observe the people working on their paintings. These were the most beautiful pieces of art I have seen. They were using crushed up egg shells to build up the picture, however, the detail was phenomenal! Others had sea shells and they used tiny saws to carve out silhouettes for the pictures. For example, a lady was carving out a dragonfly by hand but it was done to perfection. It took a lot of concentration and a very steady hand! I was completely fascinated by the workshop and was stunned by their work. Afterwards we walked around the shop selling their paintings. I would have loved to have bought one although it just wasn't possible while travelling.

After about another hours drive we finally arrived at the Cu Chi tunnels. To start off we watched a film telling us a bit of background information and then we were shown some boobie traps! There was one that was hidden by grass and when someone stepped on it it would swing them round and they would fall into the ground onto spikes and obviously die. It was all very brutal. We saw many more traps, although, they were all replicas because the government destroyed all traps after the war to prevent anyone being hurt by mistake.

We then had the opportunity to go through an actual tunnel. They were slightly bigger than I was expecting but we still had to crawl through. Gemma went first and managed to find us at a dead end, typical Gemma! We went about 10 metres and then decided we had enough and came out the quick exit (we wasn't in the most appropriate clothing, I was in a dress!) Some people on our tour went through an even smaller tunnel, and they had bats flying in their faces, I'm so glad we didn't go down there! At the end of the trip we tried the vegetable that all the soldiers are on a daily basis.. It wasn't very nice!

Once we got back to HCMC we decided to have a cheap lunch and had baguettes from the market, they cost us 28p each! They didn't taste too bad either although I'm unsure what was actually in them! It was smack bang in the middle of the day and we nearly melted walking back to our hostel! In the afternoon we chilled out at the hostel because we were both absolutely exhausted! We managed to FaceTime home with a fairly good connection which was nice. We were given a leaflet outside our hostel for a nail salon, it was $3 for a manicure and pedicure so we decided it would be rude not too!

We wanted to be adventurous tonight so we found a restaurant that sold frog curry... It tastes just like chicken but obviously there isn't much to it! The restaurant was lovely and we also shared some Singapore noodles and spring rolls... Don't worry mums we are still eating well ;-) We headed back to our hostel at about 9ish because we had to pack, shower and get to bed before our alarm at 2am ready for our flight to Da Nang at 5.20am. We finally got to sleep at 11.30....

PS The picture is an example of the egg shell paintings :-)