The Mekong Delta and more Saigon

The Mekong Delta (where I was from Monday 17th - Wednesday 19th) was cool...saw a floating village (at Chau Doc near the Cambodian border - most of the people living in boats fled there to escape slaughter at the hands of the Khmer Rouge), a couple of floating markets at Cai Be and Cai Rang (basically wholesale vegetables, sugar cane and stuff are sold to smaller shop-keepers/restaurants etc from huge barges), a crocodile farm (Vietnam apparently exports thousands every year, both for meat and leather...and other assorted sights. However, something in me hates being bussed around (even if this was absurdly cheap at 30 odd USD including accomodation) and I've now made a concious decision to try and avoid tourist buses. In fact I've taken one other tour (this one only 1 day) - to the CaoDai temple and Cu Chi Tunnels. The former is a wierd religion (given it was founded in 1920 I'm not sure whether it is ne w enough to merit the word 'cult'...at their height they were a major religious force in South Vietnam with their own private 'army' of 26,000...a Caodai religious festival features in Graham Greene's A Quiet American...I got to see a lot of chanting by people in strange robes but that was about it. The building on the other hand weas truly impressive - half Catholic cathedral, half Chinese temple... The Cu Chi tunnels were tunnels originally built by the Viet Minh for use against the French (curiously the French - an Imperial power - received billions of dollars in US aid to fight against the Viet Minh - freedom fighters allbeit under a Communist flag. One wonders what the likes of Washington, Franklin, Adams etc would have made of this.). The tunnels were later en;larged and used to infiltrate Saigon (and the US 25th Infantry base built right on top of them - it apparently took the US army several months to work out why they kept getting shot at...predictable displays of hideous man-traps laid by the 'heroic' VC agnets and more government propoganda accompanied the tunnels which were not remotely comfortable to crawl in - everyone exited at the first opportunity.