Saigon

Day 9: Sept 12

We checked into a hotel in Ho Chin Minh only for the purposes of safeguarding our luggage and headed out for the tour of Kuchi village. Having read about the villagers of Kuchi who were peasants by day and Vietcong by night, we could not wait to visit the village. Mr. Lan, from Delta Adventures, was our tour guide and even as he talked about how the simpletons of Kuchi, under the leadership of Uncle Ho, fought the heavily armed US forces, it sounded incredible. At Kuchi, we were told about how the Vietcong built tunnels in three levels and how they survived the enemy by staying crouched inside the tunnels to ward off enemy attack. It’s only when we were shown one of the many such entrances to the tunnel that the magnanimity of the experience struck us. The camouflaged entrances to the tunnels were hardly one and a half feet in length and breadth, just enough for a person to enter only if slithers inside with hands raised. Once in, it only offers you breathing space to go down on your fours and thereon crawl to enter the passage way into the tunnels. Mr. Lan offered us a chance to try and enter one of the tunnels. I grabbed the opportunity and almost got stuck while entering. One minute inside and as I came out, I felt cramped all over. Further on, Mr. Lan held the audience captivated as he explained the guerrilla tactics employed by the Vietcong. Various trap doors and weaponry, crafted from wood and with sharpened bamboo sticks integrated as spears, designed to kill or maim the enemy, kept us in awe. Finally, we arrived at the destination that was one of the key reasons for visiting Kuchi, second to its historic past of course, i.e. the shooting range. Here, one could buy bullets for AK47, MI 16 et. al. and fire it in the shooting range. We bought 10 shells of AK47 each and took our turns to fire them. Fantastic experience. We took 2 shells of the spent bullets as souvenirs. Little did we know that these spent bullet shells will later tell us a different story later on.

Once the Kuchi tour was over and we were back in the city, we picked our bags from the hotel and headed to Chou Doc, from where we intended to cross international borders to Cambodia via the Mekong Delta on a speedboat. Come morning and we joined eight other tourists on the speedboat to Cambodia. Our boat dropped us off at the immigrations and from thence, after having done with the immigration formalities, we were picked up by another speed boat to Phnom Penh.

View pictures on http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=268085&id=686198445&l=ca82d649fe

Castaway in Vietnam

Day 8: Sept 11

On the bus from Nha trang to Ho Chin Minh, we whipped out our tribal mix i.e. Vietnam whisky in coke bottles, soon as we’d settled in our seats. Ivan’d had a restless night in the bus the previous night, was groggy even before he had finished his bottle and was asleep by 10pm, while I nursed my whisky at a leisured pace till I had lapped it all up and went to sleep a little later. I woke up in the middle of the night, around 2am, to realize that the bus had stopped to drop a couple of European girls enroute. I glanced out to see that the driver had stepped out for a smoke and his helper was fishing out the girls’ luggage from the luggage compartment. The stop was at a hotel and there was a dim light in the lobby and no staff around. The hotel itself was the only structure and it was surrounded by fields on all sides. My bladder was bursting at the seams and I saw an opportune moment to relieve myself. I called out to Ivan, but he was deep in a slumber and I decided against waking him. I got down and asked the driver the directions to the loo and he pointed it out to me. I went in and as I came out a couple of minutes later, I was baffled to see the bus nowhere in sight. Only the two European girls were around and I walked up to them to inquire about the bus. Even they expressed their surprise at the bus having started off without me. However they told me the bus had not gone ahead. The driver had reversed the bus and had stopped about 250-300 metres away from the place we were standing. They pointed out to the distance and I could see the bus’s headlights. The effects of whisky and sleep suddenly vanished and I was contemplating if I should walk towards the bus or stay put for it to come back. When the bus showed no signs of moving, I started walking along the road with only the waning moonlight and the bus’s headlight in the distance guiding me. As I neared the bus and was within 50 metres from it, the bus started moving. I waved frantically at the driver. To my utter disbelief, he just ignored me and sped past, while I was left wondering if this was really happening to me. To top it all, the sonovabitch didn’t even stop the bus at the point I had got off it. I started walking back through the darkness towards the only light in the vicinity and the European girls were still there. While walking back, I was weighing my chances of catching up with Ivan in the morning. Fortunately I had a good amount of money, in dongs and USDs, and my passport with me in my waist pouch. So I knew I could travel to Ho Chin Minh in the morning by the first transport available and call up Ivan on his mobile and meet him again. My only concern was, callous that Ivan is known to be, he was most likely to overlook my luggage when he got off.

The European girls had witnessed all that happened and they asked me my POA. They were as bewildered as me and I told them I had no chance but to stay put till I found some transport in the morning to Ho Chin Minh. They were apparently waiting for their hotel transport to pick them up. While we were chatting, my ears picked up the sound of a motorbike approaching and the next moment, I hastily excused myself and was on the road flagging the bike. When it stopped, I explained that I had missed my bus and asked the bike rider if he could help me catch up with it. He agreed and I hopped on waving the girls goodbye. It had been only about 10-15 minutes since my bus had left and I felt a surge of hope as the bike picked up speed and I egged the pilot all the more. A good twenty minutes later, we caught up with the bus and we flagged it to a halt. I alighted from the bike and headed straight to the bus. Now I was fuming and wanted to vent it out on the driver. As I approached the bus, the driver realized his folly and even as I yelled at him, he was apologising profusely and kept repeating only one word ‘sorry’. I calmed down, stepped out again and paid the bike pilot 1,00,000 dongs. He thanked me as I thanked him for bailing me out of a nightmarish situation. As I stepped in, I passed a couple in the bus who were giggling about me being stranded. I was still in a foul mood and I asked them if they thought it was really funny. They said they didn’t mean offence but that it was quite an exciting evening that I had. I acknowledged it and as I passed Ivan to reach my seat, I just shrugged when I saw him snoring, oblivious to the incident altogether. I mused for a while on the incident and smiled at the fortunate turn of events. I wouldn’t lose my luggage after all.

When we reached Ho Chin Minh in the morning, we were collecting our luggage when, the driver happened to come across and I chided him by asking if he always abandoned some tourist or the other in the dead of the night. He apologised again while I laughed him off. That was when Ivan asked me what happened and he looked at me in disbelief as I narrated this entire incident.

Finally we’d reached Ho Chin Minh. We were in Saigon.

To be continued…