Cu Chi Tunnel Warfare

  Cu Chi, Vietnam
Friday, May 29, 2009

The end of our journey in Vietnam is fast approaching and it won't be long before we embark on our private cruise to Cambodia, but that's another story. So one last excursion is needed and roughly 50 kilometres away is a great piece of history which optimise's the spirit and guile of the Vietnamese. The Cu Chi tunnels.

Our hotel arranged a half day tour for $6, which included transport and an excellent well spoken guide (called Hai), who actually fought in the Vietnam War for the South as an ally of the Americans. The journey to the tunnels took around 2 hours, with the obligatory toilet break and stop at a lacquer ware factory, which provides opportunities to disabled children and
victims from the war. Some of the pieces were beautiful, but we simply can't carry any more items.

Upon arrival to the tunnels we had to pay an 80,000 VND entry fee. Our guide gave us a brief history to the Cu Chi district and lead us to a video hall, where a documentary gave us more in depth information on the people and the exceptional feat of digging the tunnels. Now that the video had finished, the fun could start and we would be getting first hand experience of life
during these hard times.

The trail we followed snaked through the forest and stopped at key sites. The first was an actual tunnel entrance and the opening must have been no wider than 30 cm. Our guide told us that the Cu Chi people didn't really eat much food, mainly tapioca roots, so their frame was very petite, allowing them to squeeze through such a small passageway. Claustrophobia immediately springs to mind, chuck in some machine gun fire and explosions, and it must have been absolutely terrifying.

Our next stop was the trap workshop. Cu Chi fighters were renowned for recycling unexploded ordnance into hand-held explosives and building a host of grisly traps. We got to see a demonstration of each one. The worst being the souvenir box trap which was fashioned from recycled metal and would be hidden in the undergrowth for an unexpecting American troop. Upon standing on the trap, the soldiers foot would become impaled and the soldier
would effectively have to take it away with him, hence the name souvenir. The rest of the pictures and some imagination on your part will give you an idea on how the rest work.

In the distance the sound of gun fire was startling. The trip itinerary mentioned that a visit to a firing range was part of the tour. I was excited beforehand until the price of $2 per bullet put me off. A minimum of 10 bullets had to be purchased also. We instead walked down to the range and watched some of our group fire the weapons instead. It seemed the AK-47 was the
most popular choice, but it seemed to misfire most of the time. That coupled with the deafening sound of a gunshot, drove home the scary reality of warfare.

Our final part of the tour would take us to a 100 metre stretch of tunnels that have been widened twice so that us tourists can fit through them. I did wonder if this work was carried out in relation to that fact us Westerners are arguably getting larger in size, hmmm. Both of us clambered down the first set of stairs and adopted the crouching position. The lack of light and air flow mad it quite a tough sweaty exercise. At one point, the tunnels narrowed to almost the original size and a nervous moment approached for both of us as we crawled through it. As we exited the
tunnels, the look on our and the rest of the groups faces, really drove home the conditions in which these fighters existed. Such a memorable experience and one we would highly recommend to anyone in Saigon.