Binh Duong U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 8

Friday 7th October 2011

We had a fantastic day today to end our first week in Vietnam which included some of the day over ground and some of it underground!

The earliest bus this morning was at 8am so we trained for a couple of hours from 8.45am with Anais and a new addition to our “team” – Julia Weisel from Hawaii. It was very hot this morning but the quarter-final matches were outdoors so we were under cover where the humidity was even worse than it had been all week. After a solid session of mainly point play we stretched out, had lunch and then were picked up from the tennis centre at 12pm by a taxi from our hotel to take us to the Cu Chi Tunnels.

After just over an hour of driving on flooded, pothole filled dodgy roads we arrived at the Cu Chi Tunnels just 70km north west of Ho Chi Minh City. The Cu Chi Tunnels are the famous tunnels that were built by the local Cu Chi people during the Vietnam War to fight against the Americans. The locals built over 250kms of tunnels all by hand and in the tunnel system they had living areas, dinning rooms, kitchens, wells to collect water, medical areas including rooms to conduct surgery as well as escape routes into the Saigon River. It truly is an amazing feat and something that anyone visiting the areas should come and see.

We spent about 20 minutes watching a documentary on the local area and how the tunnels were constructed before our tour guide explained the system in more detail. We were very fortunate to have a personal tour guide for our group, I think the torrential rain had put off the normal flow of tourists today. He then took us around the site, telling us all about how everything was build, how they set booby traps to trap and kill American soldiers and then took us through quite a few different tunnels. I visited this site back in 2003 when I was here with my wife but they have opened up more tunnels now and there’s a lot more to see.

After a couple of hours of crawling through small spaces, the girls screaming their heads off as we came across a couple of small bats in the tunnels and me trying to fit down an original tunnel entrance we left that area and headed over to the shooting range for me and Pierre to fire an M16 rifle and the girls to have a go at an AK47!!

It took us just under an hour and a half to drive back to the hotel and everyone was thoroughly exhausted after a long but very enjoyable day. We all had dinner together but Julia and her mum were extremely disappointed that there wasn’t any “Snake’s Head” available as they had been talking about trying that all day!

It’s now time to pack up everything before we leave tomorrow morning for the 7-10 hour drive (you never know how long it will take in Vietnam!) to Bac Lieu for the next event which starts on Monday.

It’s been a fantastic week, both Mia and I have learnt a lot about her game, about her as a person and also had a chance to experience a different way of life and culture. If we can learn just as much next week and put some of it into practise then win or lose it will be a very successful trip.