We didn’t rise very early for our 8:15AM call time since we were two in a room and everywhere was just a short taxi ride away. At Sinh Café, the tour participants congregated on the sidewalk. Book sellers carrying their stack of approximately 30 books abounded. They sold very good photocopies of Lonely Planet (5-7USD), Paulo Coelho and other bestsellers. We inquired with one lady but then she didn’t want to leave us alone so ended up standing silently ignoring her.

Sinh Café tours are organized. Tickets were shown before boarding. There were assigned seat numbers and to our surprise, we were all given a 500ML bottle of water and a pack of peanuts. The tour guide went to the front of the bus to give us a background on Vietnam, their history and current state of affairs. He was good at banter and storytelling, but unfortunately, although he spoke the language fluently, we had a hard time understanding his English—an unfortunate recurrence we would experience throughout the trip. His name was Truong aka Kevin, a name an American who couldn’t pronounce his real name christened him with. With his chubby frame, he looked like all the Kevins I know.

It took three hours for us to reach the Cao Dai Complex. I felt the bus was moving too slow despite us being in the countryside. Was it the narrow roads or a speed limit? I thought we were going to be late, but the tour was paced taking into consideration the slow bus ride. We had a short stop at Handicapped Handicrafts, where handicapped people painted lacquerware. I appreciated that we weren’t obliged to buy, even indirectly, by the tour guide.

Cao Dài (High Place) is Vietnam’s third largest religion. It is a religion established in 1926 which combines elements from Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, and Geniism, an indigenous religion in Vietnam. The main religious center is in Tay Ninh, about 60 miles northwest of HCMC. The figure of worship is the all-seeing eye—vividly rendered in flesh amidst the kitschy façade of the temple. There are three saints who supposedly signed the third alliance (after Moses and Jesus Christ) between God and mankind. They are Sun Yat-Sen (leader of Chinese revolution), Victor Hugo (French poet and novelist) and Trang Trinh (Vietnamese poet and prophet). The high priests wore robes in three colors—blue, red, and yellow. Approximately 7M Vietnamese are Caodaiists. The Cao Dai complex is huge.

For lunch, we were taken to a roadside restaurant serving home-cooking. Gene and I ordered spring rolls while the others had pho. I also had a taste of Tropicana Twister Orange Pulpy. The meal was at a cheap 35,000 dong.

After lunch, we were off to the Cu Chi Tunnels, the place we had come to Vietnam for. The Cu Chi Tunnel Complex (entrance fee: 80,000 dong) was a critical and strategic advantage of the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. We were first shown a film about the war and inhabitants of the Cu Chi District at a dugout while the others posed at the mouth of an actual tunnel. Truong also explained a map about the tunnel system and the strategies employed in the war. We then proceeded to look at the tanks and ammo that the Americans used.

The Vietnamese used guerilla fighting to their advantage, and their creativity was on display. Traps that overturn to deadly bamboo stalks, hidden rabbit holes for firing from below, vines and arrows that swing from the trees to decapitate unwitting enemies and other cleverly-designed killing weapons were recreated to showcase the means to their road to victory. Men dressed as Viet Cong were on hand to assist demonstrations such as when one showed us how the soldiers entered through narrow holes to escape from the GIs to the tunnels. By the time the Americans would fire down the hole (since they couldn’t fit), the Viet Cong would be long gone. Actual sections of the tunnels were still intact. They were not just one layer below ground but also interconnected deeper into the ground. There were bigger areas to stand upright in like the kitchen, meeting rooms, etc. There were also mannequins to show how others played their part in the war like females who would ostensibly be planting but were actually watchouts or guerillas.

K went first with Melissa bringing up the rear. At first there was some light for visibility, but a section of the tunnel was pitch black. The tunnel wasn’t just flat and straight since there were some areas that went a step or two down. Good thing K was able to mind those and to call out to us. We all had to squat while walking, and I feel sorry for all the tall people who enter the tunnel as the ceiling was really low. Gene was pretty much calming us down by saying that the exit was near since the tunnel seemed never-ending and our upper thighs hurt. We had fallen behind the rest of the group that we didn’t know where the people in front had gone. There were around three exit points, and we almost missed the exit where our group was. Luckily Gene heard some noises outside. Gene and I clambered out without taking a picture while the others stayed behind. The group behind us had some tall guys that were begging us not to stop to take pictures. I suppose it was harder for them since the space was really too small for non-Asians to squeeze into. To think the section we used had already been widened. Those with claustrophobic tendencies also need to take care when going inside the tunnel.

We were all dirty. It was a good thing we had mentioned beforehand to wear jeans and closed shoes. We were taken to a recreation of a kitchen area after where we had a snack break of sweet potato with dipping sugar and sweet tea. So endeth our Cao Dai/Cu Chi Tour.

The traffic going back to the city was very heavy, esp. in Cong Hoa St. as we were stuck here longest. There were gazillions of motorbikes. Unlike the buses here in EDSA, our bus wasn’t really moving aggressively forward so we got back to the city at around 7PM. We had dinner at Pho 2000 near Ben Thanh market. Pho 2000 had pictures of Bill Clinton during the time he ate there. I wasn’t impressed with the “Pho for the President.” We missed tasting supposedly flavorful pho in Pasteur Street, but in general, pho wasn’t really anything special to me. For every meal with pho, bean sprouts and leaves would be provided on a separate plate. We all discovered that Nikki hates bean sprouts.

After dinner, we went to the small square fronting Rex Hotel and the magnificent Opera House which had a statue of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s most famous figure. Along this square were some shops selling reproductions of famous paintings like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night. We also went to Dong Khoi St., Vietnam’s main shopping area to look for pasalubong. Most shops sold a variation of beaded shoes, bags, and costume jewelry. Paintings, posters, shirts, postcards, greeting cards, and stationary impressed with renderings of Vietnamese everyday images such as women wearing the iconic ao dai and conical hats were also popular. There was also a gallery specializing in images of women in various states of undress. There were a lot of Asian-inspired home pieces and lacquerware as well. Nikki was able to buy a wooden carving of a woman with a conical hat perfect for display. So if I were decorating my home with an Asian theme, I wouldn’t mind coming here to source for material.

We also tried looking for coffee shops selling authentic Vietnamese coffee—filtered and pressed in front of us and mixed with milk. We went around the side streets along Dong Khoi and even saw one coffee shop which looked like what we were looking, but no one was drinking. Other coffee shops were selling Illy coffee or mostly iced drinks, similar to Highlands Coffee. We were directed to look for a Broda which we discovered was a building which housed Gloria Jeans. To think we thought we hit the mother lode since Ernest took quite a while explaining what we were looking for to a restaurant manager.