The day stared early with breakfast on the roof top of the hotel and a sobering conversation with a guy named Greg from Australia. Greg and his mate were sitting next to us at breakfast. He's from the northern part of Australia and has two months to live with Long cancer. He had a great attitude about traveling and enjoying life as much as possible another how long you have left. Then we hopped on the air-conditioned (and that is key) tour bus. It is very humid and hot here and even when it rains it cools off briefly but then the humidity Rockets right back up. Or bus took us out to the Cu Chi tunnels about an hour and a half outside of Saigon. This amazing system of tunnels that spans hundreds of miles, was created by the Viet Cong or south Vietnamese communist during the French occupation. They found it was a great way to defeat the enemy who really outnumbered and out gunned them, but could never find them. The tunnels became even more important during the Vietnam war and the Virt Cong and North Vietnamese army used them to frustrate our forces as well. Some people lived in the tunnels consistently
for up to 10 years or more. Crawling through some of these today myself, i found it a bit claustrophobic and eye-opening as to how one would survive in this environment.it would help to be about 5 to 10 weigh under 100 lbs. I ran into some bat friends too! Then we had a tour of Saigon City and welcome reception by our guide Luong. After that, Amy and I went and found the Hotel Majestic, where my Frandfather Waldorn Rhoads, dropped by as a Navy officer some time in the 1950's. We had a Grest dinner at Vietnam House and waddled back to the hotel. Tomorrow we leave for Hoi an. The next morning we took a guided scooter tour through the streets of Saigon and made it back alive, before we hopped on the plane to go to Hoi An. What a fun filled first 2 days!
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