Theme Park and Cu Chi Tunnels

We have had a great last two days, although truth be told it is not the same without Izzi and Dave. Trying to recover from our dear friends' departure, we consoled ourselves with a day trip to HCMC's nearby theme park Dai Nam. It was a seriously strange experience. A quarter of the park is a worshipping zone where the park holds Vietnam's largest temple and man-made mountain. You can walk through the "caves" of the mountain where there are many worshipping altars to pray to different dieties. Another quarter has a theme park where you need to pay for each ride, which is totally lame and explained why no Vietnamese people were on any of the rides. For every ride we went on, we were the only 3 people on it. The place was completely desolate and it took 5 minutes to walk from one ride to the next. The park felt very sterile. When we got on the log flume, which was the park's most popular ride because it was so hot, the operators tried to give us raincoats. We laughed at them but wound up being the only fools on the ride who were soaked from head to toe. It was a great way to cool off. We ended the day at their water park, which had 2 huge wave pools. We went in the fresh water pool and cooled off during the hottest part of the day.
Yesterday, S took the day to relax and my dad and I had some bonding time on a day trip to Cao Dai Temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels. Cao Daoism is practiced by 2 million people in Vietnam and is a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism and Catholicism. The temple was quite ornate and we spent the afternoon watching a prayer ceremony at this temple. After lunch, we headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels, bunkers from where Cu Chi guerrillas fought the American and South Vietnamese armies during the war. Our guide showed us different Cu Chi guerrillas' booby traps, holes to hide in (I climbed in it) and we crawled through one of the tunnels, which was awesome. We ended the tour with a nice propaganda film about "evil enemy Americans" disturbing "peaceful and harmonious Cu Chi people". My dad walked out of the film after 30 seconds.
In 30 minutes, we are going to meet Heather and Jeremy at their hotel in town before we set off for the Mekong Delta. So excited to see them!!!