The Ho Chi Minh Leg

March 4, 2007 Leave a comment

1 week in Vietnam – The past 1 week has been really fruitful in terms of work and relationship building. In fact, it was a very successful and mind-blowing team-building conference at Hanoi. There were tears, hugs and lots of heart-to-heart chats. I was very moved by the bonding of 46 individuals who come from different corners of Asia. Amazing!

It is weekend again. I packed my bags and headed for my Ho Chi Minh leg – a smaller group this round, just 7 of us. Finally, some quiet and personal time for myself this 2 free-&-easy days. 




HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City) is such a beautiful city. I am still in time to enjoy their "Tet Festival" (aka Chinese New Year) and the festive mood is very strong here. The city center is decorated with red lanterns and banners. Yes, lots of pigs statues around.

Yesterday (Sat), I "signed up" for their army and their army gave me for an orientation course – showing me their secret-of-success of Vietnam War. I went to visit their war sites, underground tunnels (can you imagine they dug 400km of tunnels with bare hands!) and "live" firing range. It was really physically challenging to crawl through these 1m x 1m tunnel. Man, look at the size of the tunnel entrance – only the fit and slim can enter. I tried and I passed their "hole" test.

Just 5 minutes crawling through the tunnel, I had to shout "wait, wait!". I had a bad cramp in my left leg. It was very difficult to retreat and I have to endure the sickening pain until the next nearest exit. I was sweating and crawling like hell! It was surely worse than my Australian caving experience. Man, this is the real thing – war tunnels – and I had such great respect for the Vietnamese soldiers. These tunnels were built to shelter the soldiers from the American air-bombing and it was a great network for them to travel around – visually undetectable.  

The war may have ended in 1975 but the wounds of war are still visible today. There are so many bomb craters around the site. Guess it may take another generation to cover these wounds.

I decided not to join their army – I had enough of crawling and all the backaches. Next, the famous Mekong River.


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