Vietnam: Cu Chi Tunnels

Upon arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, we were met by our guide Lee and driven to tour the Cu Chi tunnels. The entire network consisted of over 200km of tunnels on three underground levels and these were used by the Viet Cong soldiers to hide from (and surprise attack and then disappear into thin air) the Americans during the Vietnam war (fun fact: what we call the Vietnam war is called the American war by the Vietnamese).

When I was younger I didn't like history class and so I didn't learn that much about the Vietnam war during my high school history classes so I found this site very educational and interesting.  While I tend to be biased towards the American side of things, from this tour it was obvious that the Vietnamese were not living in good conditions and they were doing what they had to in order to survive a war.  As our guide kept reiterating to us (I think he was nervous that we were Americans), there was no winner in this war; nobody ever wins in war.

And, yes, it was really hot in the jungle.  But I can also tell you that it was about a million times hotter in the tunnels!  It was no picnic to hang out in those tunnels for even a single second.  I have no idea how the Vietnamese did it.  They actually *lived* full-time in these tunnels to stay alive.

Okay but let's back up a second.  The site of the tunnels is mostly above-ground where you wander around and are shown entrances into the tunnels, the air holes, and all the traps that were set for the American soldiers to fall into. The air holes were hidden in termite mounds:



And the entrances into the tunnels weren't much larger than the air holes. They were meant to be big enough for the Vietnamese but too small for an American to fit through. Below are pictures of some random guy fitting in, and then Martin trying it out. I didn't even bother - there was already a woman who tried it before me that had to be pulled out because her bottom got stuck.



They widened the opening here, there is a tunnel at the bottom where Martin's feet are. It's so narrow you wouldn't believe people could go through it but their purpose was to be so small that the Americans couldn't fit in them.



I didn't take any pictures of all of the traps that the Vietnamese set for the Americans to fall into but they involved a lot of spikes and couldn't be seen until you fell into one of them. Most of the traps wouldn't necessarily kill anybody, but they would cause serious injury and for that person to have to be taken to back to a doctor. So the Vietnamese slowly picked off their enemies in that manner.  I know that these sorts of traps really messed with the Americans' heads because they never knew when they would walk into one.

Here's a destroyed American tank:



And a bomb crater:



And one of the many narrow paths through the jungle:



The Vietnamese made shoes out of tire rubber. They were really resourceful as they didn't have much to work with.



Also, there's a shooting range here. You get to purchase bullets and then shoot various guns, including AK47s, right at the site. It provides realistic background noise while you're wandering around the site but it doesn't seem right to have tourists shooting guns for fun and enjoyment here when the mood should be more solemn and reflective. Sorry no pictures - I was worried some tourist who'd never fired a gun before would accidentally shoot me while I was near the shooting range.

And, finally, the tunnels. Note they have *widened* the tunnels so tourists can fit through them.  But we still had to awkwardly crab-walk through them.  There is another tunnel site where the tunnels are still authentic-sized - glad we didn't go there!  You can choose how far you go in the tunnels - 20 meters, 40 meters, 60 meters ... up to 140 meters. We only made it 20! Turns out Martin's claustrophobic down there and I was just hot. It was so hot in those tunnels, like you're in an oven.  Have I mentioned that it was hot?

The pictures below mess with your depth perception. It looks like you could stand up in them, doesn't it? Well you can't. You can crawl.



Our guide made us do another segment of tunnels that contained this triangle-shaped room that was supposedly for meetings. We couldn't even stand up straight in it and it was just a triangular little oven.



Our legs are freakishly elongated here but you can see the tunnel size behind us.



This was a dining room. The tunnels existed on 3 different levels and this room would have been on the top level (still underground, bur barely).



At the end of the tour, you're fed some tapioca, which is what the Vietnamese ate while living in the tunnels. It tastes like nothing but fills up your stomach.