My second day is Saigon was spent mostly out of Saigon. We embarked early in the morning on a motorcycle tour with the tour company OneTrip. It was a well-curated day led by our student guides. One of them, Long, had just finished a year of Survivor style (well, maybe a bit less dramatic and more manageable) trekking around Vietnam.

The day began whizzing around the streets of Saigon with the rain drizzling on us. Surprisingly, it was not as bothersome as I would have thought. It was a Sunday, and I was grateful that traffic was more muted than it would have been on a weekday.

We stopped for a misty breakfast. Our guides pulled out Vietnamese bahn mi sandwiches, giving us the option to have pork or egg. We opted for pork (ah, the vegan life was temporarily over). First, we were served a shot of iced green tea, as is customary. We watched our Vietnamese coffees drip into their vessels, and I drank mine black as the rest dumped some milkiness into the fresh brew.

We rode into the Vietnamese countryside.

We stopped at a rice noodle factory and then a rubber forest. Apparently, they are going to start getting rid of these in favor of other crops, as much of the rubber that’s now produced in synthetic.

A hammock and coconut water / sugarcane juice break was needed, naturally.

We then stopped to check out some rats, snakes, and other animals that were being kept in cages in preparation for being eaten. The owner proceeded to take out each rat by the tail, slam it headfirst into a brick, and nonchalantly throw it into a bowl. It was horrifying.

And then, finally, we arrived at the main event – the Cu Chi tunnels. These are a HUGE network of underground tunnels built by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war. They served as their base of operations for many campaigns, including the Tet Offensive. We were able to access one of the non-touristy parts of these tunnels, which cover 75 miles in total. This area was heavily fortressed and guarded by killer traps, and some of the tunnels led to nowhere. The intention was to make it only navigable by those who knew the system well. Obviously, no one can know all of it well, so it was divided into sections and those crossing over into other sections would need to be cleared and accompanied.

Then…very important…we stopped for a tasty Vietnamese lunch!

Cu Chi team…