Cu Chi The Hard Way

Cu Chi is the kind of excursion people often go on when first arriving in Vietnam, and never again.

 Ian Wills explores a deeper side of the experience, aided by a quirky itinerary courtesy of Grasshopper Adventures. Photos by Kyle Phanroy

Living in Ho Chi Minh City has its ups and downs. The sheer density of people and traffic can become exhausting after a while — so when the opportunity to get away from the daily grind for a day occurred I jumped at the chance.

Grasshopper Adventures is a specialist tour company that since 2004 has been arranging trips across Asia, from half a day to several weeks. The adventure I was to go on would be a day trip: first via speedboat, then mountain bike, then on foot around one of Vietnam’s most important historical sites — all before heading back to Ho Chi Minh City by minivan. Quite an impressive itinerary.

Promising Beginnings

I jump out of bed at 6.30am, raring to go. A quick shower and a xe om ride later, I arrive at 7.15am at the Les Rives boat terminal and am ushered onto our waiting speed boat, bobbing on the Saigon River. Fruit, baguettes and coffee are handed out as we speed along at an exhilarating pace, with our driver expertly negotiating the waves and patches of shrubbery floating on the surface of the river.

After cruising for close to one-and-a-half hours, with everyone seemingly having their sea legs intact, we arrive at the Ben Duoc branch of the tunnels. This is the moment Kyle and I depart from the remaining group — who set off to see the more accessible tunnels — and set off on what is supposed to be a comfortable 30km zigzagging bike ride to the lesser-known Ben Dinh Cu Chi Tunnels.

While we’re told the road ahead is mostly flat, we’re also given a warning that chickens may be trying to cross — so keep vigilant. I start by alighting a pristine mountain bike and taking a short amble around the car park, reacquainting myself with pedals and gears while Kyle meets his xe om driver — it’s easier to take photos from the back of motorbike. Our guide is ultra-fit. His name is An and he is charm personified. As we head off, I am advised to keep a few metres behind in case any wildlife decides to cross our path.

Plantations and Factories

After riding for just a couple of kilometres — it somehow feels like more — we arrive at our first stop: a rubber plantation. An informs us of how the sap is gathered from the trees and protected from the rain. The trees are not native to Vietnam but were brought over from the Amazon during the French colonial era. The plantation stretches as far as the eyes can see, and it seems almost unreal that we are still close to the newly industrialised parts of Ho Chi Minh City.

As we continue on our journey, the heat starts affecting my desperately pale complexion. Our next rest stop is a welcome respite. The rice paper factory is yet another reminder of Vietnam’s still strong links to its agrarian roots. As the workers get on with their business, An gives us a thoroughly informed presentation of each stage of rice paper production: from soaking the rice to drying it in sheets in the sun, to cutting appropriate shapes for delivery to the next part of the chain. When it’s time to go, I last about 200 metres before I decide my aching body has had enough.

The Water Buffalo

I ask how many of the 30 kilometres we have covered already. I’m dismayed at the answer — a mere 8. Kyle, having plenty of photos in the bag already, generously offers to take over cycling duties as I collapse — water bottle in hand — onto the back of the motorbike.

A further 7km down more flat dirt tracks we arrive at our mid-ride break, after just over an hour-and-a-half in the saddle between us. We are presented with cold water, bananas, watermelon, a variety of nuts and coffee-infused biscuits to replace our spent fuel and prepare us for the next part of our journey. I generously allow Kyle to ride the next 3km to the water buffalo, while I fall or rather clamber into the luxury of the awaiting minivan.

Arriving at the paddy field about 15 minutes later, we are greeted by a magnificent water buffalo — who we are assured is a gentle soul. Kyle, back in intrepid photographer mode, walks out into the wetlands to get up close and personal. I watch from the sidelines, taking in the enormity of the place.

After having ridden 8km myself, and Kyle relieving me for 7km, we both decide the second half of our journey to the tunnels would be best served on the more direct paved roads, via minivan. Looking at the state of us, especially me, our guide immediately agrees.

The Tunnels

No visit to Vietnam would be complete without a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels, networks of underground passageways dating back to 1948 that were used by pro-Union forces. After recovering in the van, we embark on a leisurely walking tour as our guide shows us the various bunkers and tunnels — both original and widened for larger tourists. It is inspiring to see the ingenuity that can be brought by need.

Our guide gives us the full lowdown on how the tunnels were layered and interconnected, even designed with natural air conditioning. There are also bunkers for surgeries on injured combatants, and specialist underground meeting rooms to discuss strategy. We are given a measured account of how the network progressed and developed through time. There is an electric display to show in simple terms how the system worked, which our guide assiduously takes us through.

After our exhaustive look around the complex — including a taste of locally produced tapioca, and a wander through the inevitable tourist stalls selling everything from bullets on necklaces to fake Zippos — we head away from the highlight of our trip.

A short ride in the minivan takes us to a well-known local restaurant. We order enough food to feed 10, let alone three. The eatery earns its reputation due to its delicious beef dishes, morning glory and vegetable options.

Running slightly ahead of time, we have the perfect opportunity to talk more with our guide, An. Kyle asks the pertinent question as to what percentage of tourists on these trips are avid cyclists, and how many are people trying it out for the first time in a while like me. The answer: 80 percent for the avid cyclist.

Two days after turning 41, I was made to feel every one of those years and accept that I had been living in denial about my own level of personal fitness. I mean, how hard can riding a bike be? It’s something I did a lot of in the first half of my life. Surely getting back on couldn’t be that difficult? I soon found out I couldn’t be more wrong.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the tour and got some truly fascinating insights despite eight years already in Vietnam, I would certainly have benefitted from recognising my own level of fitness. I’d recommend this style of adventure tour without reservation — as long as you go into it with a keen sense of self-awareness.

For more information on the kinds of hand-crafted specialist tours offered by Grasshopper, visit grasshopperadventures.com

Vietnam Heritage Photo Awards 2014

GIẢI KHUYẾN KHÍCH / RUNNER-UP


QUA SÔNGLong An, 2013
A bridge in Long An Province, Mekong Delta, 2013Hoàng Thạch Vân



RA CHỢHà Giang, 2014
A woman on the way to market, Ha Giang
Province, Northermost Vietnam, 2014Trần Thiết Dung



HỘI AN MÙA LŨQuảng Nam, 2014
Hoi An, flood season, 2014Ngô Thanh Minh



CHO MÙA ĐÔNG TỚIHuyện Đồng Văn, 2013
A woman in Dong Van District, Ha Giang
Province, Northernmost Vietnam, 2013Nguyễn Ngọc Mai

Campfire and frost on a Central Highlands walk

At 9 a.m., we started from the forestry station Klong Klanh on National Road 723, 50 km north of Dalat. The _towering peak Bidoup, covered with dark cloud, seemed to appear just in front of us, but the tour guide said, ‘It looks pretty close, but it will take us the whole day to reach it.’ We had walked 500 m along a track in pleasantly fresh forest, when Mr Son, a technical officer of the Bidoup-Núi Bà National Park, said that in the area, earlier this year, Dr Jodi Rowley, from Australia, had discovered a frog that could fly from branch to branch aided by its webbed feet. When this frog is a tadpole it has long, pointed canine teeth, so it has been nicknamed ‘the flying vampire frog’. Dr Rowley’s was the first discovery of a frog with these characteristics. At 10.30 a.m., in green tropical forest 1,930 m above sea level, one of our group glimpsed a group of monkeys. They ran fast into dense cover, to everyone’s regret. In forest with pines hundreds of years old, the leader, Mr Truong Hoang Phuong, M.Sc. in geography, specialist in topography and geomorphology, said the Bidoup-Núi Bà forest had a kind of pine, with flat, double leaves, that was rare and valuable, which used to be thought extinct, until, at the end of the 19th century, a German botanist, M. Krempfii, had discovered it. In 1921, a French scientist, H. Lecomte, confirmed the species was not just prehistoric. In the 1940s, two American scientists, Litenle and Krisphind, decided the tree was a kind of Ducanpopinus which existed at the time of the dinosaurs. At 13.15, we ate lunch in an even, flat place near a brook.  After lunch, we had walked a short distance when we came across several clusters of orchids hanging on trees. A forest ranger said that in the Bidoup National Park there were nearly 300 species of orchids, 200 to be found in the area where we were. Humans stole them to sell. Forest officers found it hard to stop this. In the area, there are also many kinds of valuable timber trees, the most valuable the pơmu, many of which are 40-50 metres high, their girth equal to a circle of six or seven men holding hands; one has a girth equal to a circle of nine men and is over 1,300 years old. The peak of Mount Bidoup 2 had a lot of ‘đỗ quyên,’ Rhododendron, with flowers blooming, which, from a little distance, made the whole area purple. Mount Bidoup 2 has the nickname ‘the Do Quyen Peak’. About 300 m from the top, we had to climb slowly, on a steep slope. Though it was cold, I sweated.  At 4.40 p.m., we arrived. Cloud and mist on the skin made me cold. Mr Phuong said Bidoup was 2,287 m in altitude and had the coordinates N1205472-E10839732. We had come 7.8 km from our starting-point. The peak was the highest of the three high peaks of the Langbiang highland. We could not see the scenery, because of the dense foliage. On the way through Bidoup-Núi Bà, in this thickly wooded area, visibility was extremely limited. Mr Vo Duan, a technical specialist from Bidoup-Núi Bà National Park, said the Bidoup peak and the adjacent areas constituted one of 221 endemic-bird centres of the world. Not only were there many resident species but there were also dozens of endemic ones. The latter were on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list. It got completely dark. The night screen of the forest together with the dense mist that formed below the foliage made the space thicken. Flashlights were on. The temperature was about 10°C. I didn’t feel cold when I walked, but as soon as I stopped for a moment I felt very cold. At 7.30, we stopped and ate dinner beside a blazing fire. After dinner we felt dead tired and cold. Everybody glided headlong into the tent or coiled himself in a hammock. At 6 a.m., the forest was covered with frost. Several people huddled up to the fire while breakfast was prepared. It seemed nobody had slept, because of the cold. We were in February, 2011. On the first day, we had climbed. On the second we went up and down, through green, subtropical forest. At 10.30 a.m., the group came to an area called Liên Ca Đá, 2,004 m above sea level, where we found a lot of footprints of deer and boar. In this area there were also gaurs and langurs, according to Mr Duan. At noon we ate lunch near the border of the Bidoup-Núi Bà and Phước Bình National Parks, 1,762 m above sea level, and kept on along the border. Toward dusk we pitched camp near the Đạ Đen brook. One of the largest national parks in Vietnam, Bidoup-Núi Bà is the source of several rivers that flow across the Central Highlands, Central Vietnam and south-eastern Vietnam. This forest is also the place the culture of several ethnic groups is preserved. It is an ideal spot for  scientific research and the preservation of a diverse ecology. I wondered why there were tracks in the tall forest. Mr Binh To Ha Lung, of the Chu ethnic group, said his grandfather had told him that in the old days people had used horses to carry rice and salt from Ninh Thuan, on the coast, to Lam Dong, to exchange for products of the forest. In wartime, people from Ninh Thuan had used the track to carry rice and salt for the military. Mr Nguyen Xuan Vinh, from the Institute of Tropical Ecology, said that from time to time ethnic-minority people still used it. On the third day, visibility was better. Ranges of hills and mountains wore old pine trees, trees alternating with plots that looked like gigantic green carpets on the slopes of mountains or in valleys. We were trekking up hill and down. Several stretches were on sharp ridges. At 3 p.m., we came across a rock as big as four-seater car, which did not look like anything special, but the guide said it was a genie, very spiritually alive. People living in the Phước Bình forest used to go here to pray. He then suggested we all say prayers, pick a flower or a twig, put it on the rock and make wishes. After we had said prayers, we walked down an abrupt mountain slope which was also particularly long, about 2 km. At the end of the slope was the confluence of two streams, the Đạ Mây and Đạ Đen, with a wide and very flat area, where we decided to pitch camp. At 6.30 a.m. on the fourth day we came to a stretch with rocks all over it, about 100 m long, 5 m wide and 7 m deep, which looked like a tunnel without a roof. Mr Phuong, the geomorphology specialist, said the Đạ Mây brook had eroded the half-tunnel during thousands of years. Mr Tuan came up with the coordinates N1205916-E10844840, and altitude, 541 m. After more than an hour exploring the area, we came back to take a rest, ate lunch, then kept crossing and recrossing the brook, through bamboo forest. We walked a few kilometres, when we saw the first house, a little bit further, and a village with 10 rudimentarily houses on stilts on the slope. Nearby a few women were heading rice with their hands and putting the harvest into bamboo baskets they carried on their backs. At 3.30 p.m., we came to a village of the Bo Lang ethnic group and rented motorbikes for 10 km to the Bạc Rây 2 hamlet. We crossed a suspension bridge over a 100 m wide river, then saw a black gaur, huge in comparison with 50 cows and oxen grazing nearby. Mr Chung, an employee of the management board of the Phước Bình National Park, said, ‘ . . . No bull dares stand within 10 m of him. He is like a king among pretty imperial maids.’ This gaur, weighing nearly 1,000 kg, had been there less than a year. Early on, it had butted and killed an ox. Sometimes it had swum the river looking for cows.n NOTES: The Bidoup-Núi Bà National Park covers 64,800 square hectares in the province of Lam Dong. It is mostly high hills and mountains and has a subtropical climate. There are 1,561 botanical species, 74 of them rare and valuable and recorded in the Vietnam red book and 258 animal species, 14 in the Vietnam red book and 17 listed in the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list. The Phước Bình National Park, in Ninh Thuan Province, southern Central Vietnam, covers 19,814 ha, is 1,500 m-1,800 m above sea level and reaches from hot, dry zone to subtropical. Big differences in temperature and rainfall mean as many as 14 types of forests. The botanical system consists of 1,225 species, 75 of them valuable and liable to extinction. The animal system consists of 327 species, 50 in the Vietnam red book and 29 on International Union for Conservation of Nature list. The trip was undertaken in February, 2011, and organised by the management boards of the two national parks Bidoup-Nui Bà and Phước Bình for scientific and tourism purposes. Participants included representatives of the travel company Vietmark, scientists and journalists.  Mr Phuong from the Vietmark travel company invited the author to join the group. The gaur is the same one as was confronted and described in some detail by Dang Khoa in the May-June edition of Vietnam Heritage.

By Nguyen Dang Khoa

Allure of the land of the fabled mountain

No 3, Vol.5, April - May 2015    Balck Lady Mountain. Photo:Than Tinh

Vietnamese street foods inspire man to open London restaurant

Paul Hopper (L) with the owner of a street food shop in Vietnam 

during his second visit to the Southeast Asian country in August 2014. 

Cu Lao Cham – the friendly green island

Cu Lao Cham is known as a beautiful island with various wild animals and legendary landscapes. The large island consists of eight islets, 20 kilometers off the coast from Hoi An Ancient Town in Quang Nam Province.

It has wonderful sandy beaches, forested hills and the sea. With a primitive landscape, the island is ideal for camping, swimming and scuba diving to enjoy the corals and beautiful marine life.

Discovering the mountain lives of the Thai people in Mai Chau

Located 130 km from Hanoi and about three hours over a cloudy mountain range, Mai Chau offers a great day trip to tourists who are curious about Vietnam's northwest. The mountainous climate offers a full four-season experience in a single day. Photos: Minh Hung

Tourists can go by bus for VND180,000 (US$8.5) or rent a bike for VND100,000-300,000 a day and drive from Hanoi. Mai Chau valley comes into view near the Thung Khe Pass -- a small, pretty town surrounded by green rice fields.

A majority of Mai Chau's residents are members of the Thai ethnic minority and reside in traditional nha san (stilt homes).

Ha Thi Thu, a 60-year-old Thai woman, preserves a traditional weaving technique. "Traditionally, a Thai woman could only hope to marry after mastering this technique, by which it takes several months to complete a single piece of cloth," she said.

From Mai Chau, tourists can rent a motorbike for around VND200,000 a day and drive to pristine Thai villages or cross over the Thung Khe Pass to visit Kim Boi Spring and Hoa Binh Reservoir. For even less, they can rent a bicycle and pedal to the Chieu limestone cave and Thai ethnic museum in town.

Xam Khoe Village, some 45 minutes drive from Mai Chau, offers an experience of the rural mountainous lives of the Thai locals.

A man fishes a stream in Xam Khoe Village next to a bathing buffalo. Buffalo are still used to plough the region's terraced rice fields.

Young locals in Mai Chau play volley ball at the village's cultural house which sits on a hillside covered in clouds.

In Mai Chau Town, tourists can buy local fabric and souvenirs and enjoy traditional music and dances at the Lac and Poom Coong villages or a home stay with the locals.

                                                                                       By Minh Hung