9/26/10 (ho chi minh city)

Ho Chi Minh City – Cu Chi Tunnel – Ho Chi Minh City

You can’t come to Ho Chi Minh City, or as many people in the south still loving refer to it as Saigon, without visiting the Cu Chi Tunnel. The Cu Chi Tunnel is an extensive network of underground tunnels that runs 250 km long all over Saigon. There are three levels with the first level only a few meters under the ground, which included fully self-sufficient hospitals to living corridors. Sometimes the Viet Cong (VC) had to stay underground for months at a time with very little air. The second and third levels were smaller allowing the VC to roam the underground and go deeper when American and Australian bombs tried to eradicate the VC soldiers. It is said that the tunnel of the third level is so small that you have to crawl on your hands and knees.

Early in the morning a driver and a guide came to pick us up at the hotel to take us to the tunnel. The guide’s father was a former VC doctor so the guide shared with us stories of the harsh life of the soldiers. All the tunnels were dug by hand and in order to avoid suspicion they dumped the soil into the Saigon River or rice paddies. The people were amazingly resourceful and tenacious. They made shoes out of rubber tires as there was an abundance of tires around. Also they collected enemy bombs that didn’t detonate to reuse against the enemy.

Cu Chi Tunnel is now a huge tourist attraction but you are still able to get a glimpse of what it was like back in the day. First we saw a simulated trap tunnel where the soldiers would place a bomb near the opening if they saw enemy soldiers closing in on their location. The tunnel openings are all very well disguised and the air holes are the size of a straw. The Americans had dogs sniff out the openings and air holes to root out the VC. When the VC learned of this they placed chili and pieces of enemy clothing to divert the dogs.

Jon and I stepped into the opening of a tunnel to get a sense of how small they were. Our guide then asked us to close the door to get a sense of how dark it was. There are no lights just lanterns and flashlights. Then we went through a 10-meter tunnel with a special tunnel guide. After just a few minutes both Jon and I had worked up a healthy sweat. It is unbelievable how small the tunnels are and can easily cause claustrophobia. To make the setting even more surreal there was a shooting range next to the tunnels so as you are touring the grounds you can hire gunfire in the distance. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for both sides of the war.

After touring the tunnels we ended our tour with a video showing what Cu Chi was like before the war. There was nothing diplomatic or neutral about the movie. It wasn’t surprising how one sided the movie was in depicting a serene quiet town where people happily lived together before the evil Westerners came to destroy everything. It was a bit hard to watch as the movie blatantly called the Americans, specifically Washington D.C., destroyers of good. Nonetheless, regardless of one’s opinion of the war it is hard not to admire the sheer willpower of the Vietnamese.