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.

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