Day 15 (13th Feb 2013)

Day 15 / 13th of Feb

Ho Chi Minh to Svey Ring - 132 km

Dipankar getting a lesson in tying his hat  we guess ;-)

We had taken directions for the first town towards Cu Chi and Moc Bai which was the border town on the Vietnam side and Bavet which was on the Cambodian side. We decided to try our best to visit the Cu Chi tunnels about which we had read a lot. They had been built by the Vietnamese people (Cu Chi Guerillas) to escape the enemy attacks, bombings and the enemy had been unable to destroy them till the very end. In all our research we had been unable to find out how far they were from our planned route. When we reached Cu Chi town which was 7km off our route we found to our dismay that the 'tunnels' were a further 19kms away, we had almost decided to head back to the highway as there was no taxi in sight and we had to cross the border well before eve.... while in these thoughts a local person invited us for some tea and sweets, we decided to respect his hospitality and have tea with him, we shared our family photos with them and also tried to explain our predicament, he got up and got his neighbour to help translate, she had worked in Saigon and knew a little english. He immediately sent his son into town to get us a taxi, when that did not work out he said he would arrange for another scooter, so we now had three scooters with drivers and we were the passengers. It was just amazing to have met a person like him, so enthusiastic to help us see the tunnels. Almost immediately we saw that Kedar had changed his position to that of a driver :-)  it was an old honda motorbike. We reached the tunnels and our man took charge, he made sure we had the best guide, the best seats at the audio visual presentation...

Nothing can prepare you for the tunnels, they were like an underground city going below ground to 16 levels, we were taken only till the 2nd level and it was a very claustrophobic experience for me (Dipankar) at one point it was pitch dark and i was already on my hands and knees and my bag got stuck, i could neither move forward nor backward. Kedar was too far ahead, finally Rajoo got out his torch and i was able to free my bag and go ahead..... One of the ladies in our tour group went into the first tunnel and when she got out she was all red in the face and breathless..... and to imagine children were born in these tunnels and families lived here for months at a time.... it was a peek into the tenacious nature of people fighting to remain free..... it was all very moving. We rode back to Cu Chi, thanked the wonderful people who made this happen for us and headed to Moc Bai which was another 40 km away.

By the time we started riding again it was 12.30 pm and it was blazingy hot. Usually we take break in the afternoon for an hour or two, but today we had no option but to keep riding to reach border town 'Moc Bai' well in time to cross over to Cambodia and to reach 'Svey Ring' which was another 40 kms away. fortunately the road was flat and with just one halt for cold drinks we reached Moc Bai at about 2.30. There we stopped for lunch at a road side joint and then went to the border. We had no difficulty at either Vietnam side or on Cambodian side. We just had to fill up a form as we had already taken a visa in India.

It is amazing to see how things change when we cross from one country to another though geographically we are in the same region. There were huge Casino's on both sides of the road, road sides were littered with plastic waste, road surface deteriorated and thus our speed dropped to about 20 km/hr. We were clocking 25 kms/hr regularly on Vietnam side. The road had no proper shoulder and thus it was dusty- dust was almost non existant in Vietnam. The landscape also changed as there were much more open fields, rice paddys on both the side of the road till your vision could reach, ponds with water lily's, and almost all the houses were on stilts. The appearance of the people also changed - people wore more simpler clothes, and the colour of the skin became one shade darker.

Even though it was getting late we stopped at one fruit stall run by a girl and her mother. She prepared a wonderful mixed fruit milk shake for us. We had no opportunity to exchange money and we had not a single Riel (Cambodian currency) but we paid her in US $ which is commonly accepted every were in Cambodia and every one knows the exchange rate ( 1 US $ = 4000 Riels)

We reached Svey Ring at dusk and as we were entering the town one person approached us and started saying sleeping, sleeping....women, women???? We were shocked but he was just indicating to us about a hotel run by women's association. He took us to that river side hotel and it turned out to be a very comfortable, nice and clean place charging $ 15 for a 3 bed ac room

Distance covered : 132 Kms with diversion to Cu Chi village of about 10 kms. on mostly flat road in very hot conditions.