In the town of Cu Chi, 70km away from Saigon, near the Cambodian border, there is a network of tunnels underground which once made up the final stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This trail was used by the Viet Cong to travel from northern Vietnam to Southern Vietnam during the war with America, to avoid the bombs that the US and Southern Vietnamese Armies were dropping all over to destroy the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong were guerrilla soldiers, fighting against the south Vietnamese government which had been put in place by the USA - Vietnam wanted independence from foreign intervention and the majority wanted a Communist government but America was terrified that all of South East Asia would 'fall' to Communism if one country became Communist so tried to interfere to prevent this. (This is a very basic explanation of why the almost 20 year long Vietnam War happened. It's a wonder I didn't do better at university.)
The tunnels still mostly exist, at least in this area, and we decided to pay them a visit as you can go on a day trip from Saigon. When you first arrive, they make you watch a video which is dubbed into English. It shows footage of the war and talks mostly of the Vietnamese war heroes, so called because of all the Americans they killed. It was quite bizarre to sit and watch it, such flagrant propaganda, especially as they kept fondly referring to soldiers as 'great American killer hero'. What made it even more unusual an experience was the sound of live machine gun fire in the background, floating through the trees, because part of the tour of the tunnels includes a shooting range where you can pay to fire an AK-47. Of course it does.
After the video, our guide walked us through a forest, pointing out different indicators to show the existence of the tunnels under out feet: a ventilation hole, disguised as a termite nest; a trap (roped off) which was made out of sharpened bamboo sticks in case any stray Americans came along; a hidden entrance to the tunnel network itself. You were able to go into this hidden entrance so Kim had a try.
We walked around the area for a while, being shown various entrances to the tunnels, which were absolutely tiny, and our guide explained to us about the different levels of tunnels - there were three in total. The first level, 3-4m below the surface, was for moving around and getting in place to attack or ambush the Americans; the second level, 6-7m down, was the living quarters, for cooking and sleeping, hospitals, and also where the children went to school (whole communities lived underground, it wasn't just for soldiers, it was also for protection from bombs); the third level, 9-10m down, was to escape the enemy quickly and was essentially impregnable. The tunnels were only 0.5-1m wide so no Americans could fit, or very few anyway.
It was so interesting to imagine a whole town underground but then quite awful when you thought about why. The people only came out at night and not even every night, some people would go for days underground before emerging for fresh air. The Americans and Southern Vietnamese armies were carpet-bombing the area, in an attempt to destroy or flush out the Viet Cong or their sympathisers, so it was essential for people to stay underground for their own safety. In areas that were known by the army to support the northern Vietnamese cause of independence, all were assumed guilty by American soldiers, so people would have been killed without questioning to eradicate any chances of them being an enemy.
We then reached the shooting range and our guide told us it was 'a once in a lifetime opportunity' to fire an AK-47. He wasn't correct however because I've actually already shot one, when I lived in Dallas (where else?), so I decided that once was enough and opted out of the activity. Kim decided to do it though!
The final bit of the trip was to go down into the tunnels and crawl through. They had been widened a bit, to allow westerners to actually fit through them, and the stretch you can go through is about 100m long, with an opportunity to exit every 20 metres. I thought it would be worse than it was; the idea of being underground, crawling in a cramped tunnel had filled me with fear previously and I expected that I would want to get out as soon as possible once in there. However, I made it the whole way through, which really surprised me. Parts of it were tall enough that I could walk in an very stooped manner, other bits required hands and knees, and there were parts where you had to lower yourself through a hole in the floor or climb up through a hole in the ceiling to keep going. It was so hot and stuffy down there too, I emerged at the other end positively glowing (sweating).
Such an interesting insight into the war, a side of it I had previously known very little about. I did a module on the Vietnam war in my second year of university but reading a book and actually visiting a historic site are two very different things!
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