Cu Chi tunnels: Home of No.1 American Killing Super Heroes!
12th March 2007
No trip to Ho Chi Minh City, HCMC, or even Saigon would be complete without an excursion to the Cu Chi Tunnels, 50km north west of the city. It is possible to visit the tunnels via public transport, but as the daily organised trips from the hostels in the city were no more expensive, we opted for the easy life and signed up for the ‘official’ tour.
You are probably wondering why some holes in the ground constitute a tourist attraction, so let me explain. The district of Cu Chi was a strategic base of the ‘National front for the Liberation of South Vietnam’ (NLF) guerillas during the country’s struggles against both the French and American forces between 1948 and 1975. Over time the NLF developed an elaborate network of over 200kms of connected tunnels providing communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous guerrilla fighters. By the early 1960’s, the NLF had created a relatively self-sufficient community that was able to house hundreds of people and for the most part, go undetected by large amounts of American troops based, literally, right on top of the tunnels.
Well, at least that is how Wikipedia describes it. The Vietnamese version of the history of the war is often more graphic and unsurprisingly more damming of the west’s involvement. At the war remnants museum in HCMC, the true horrors of the conflict are presented in a factual and very impactful way. However, on our arrival at the Cu Chi tunnels we were shepherded into a room for an ‘informative’ video, which was comedy propaganda of the highest order!
The video started with pleasant images of Vietnamese children happily playing in the lush green fields of Cu Chi. Roll the comedy! A deep voice informed us of the attempts to invade the country by the evil American Imperialists, who bombed the ‘Women and Children’, the ‘Cows and the Ducks’, the ‘Trees and the Plants’, and most ominously, the ‘Pots and the Pans’. We were then treated to 30 minutes of ‘meet the locals’ style footage, with each freedom fighter being introduced as ‘Number 1 American Killing Super Hero’…..Classic! Just as I was waiting for Chevy Chase and Steve Martin to come riding to the rescue of the locals, a la 3 amigos, the video abruptly ended. I think the VHS broke.
Even more bizarre than the video itself was the fact that only Charlotte and I, and a Canadian couple seemed to find it amusing, everyone else filtered out of the room as if they had just been treated to a key eye witnesses account of the conflict! Perhaps they were Americans who felt too uncomfortable to break a smile!
So onto the tunnels. Cu Chi has a bit of a ‘Disney Land’ feel to it, and we were herded from site to site by your guide, which included some impressively small hiding holes in the ground (demonstrated by our guide – see below), lots of nasty home made bamboo traps for the evil American Imperialists (surprisingly omitted from the informational video), a destroyed American tank, a field hospital, kitchen, Weapons cache, and various huge bomb craters courtesy of American B-52s.
We passed on the $1 a bullet opportunity to fire M16s and AK-47s at the range, which appeared tame by Cambodian standards (as posted by another member of bootsnall, in Cambodia you could fire a grenade launcher at a sheep for $100, or even a handgun at the owner for $1000, provided he had a 10 second head start – the mind boggles!), but jumped at the chance to experience a short trip through one of the underground tunnels themselves!
The thoughtful people at Cu Chi have kindly widened the original tunnels, to allow us slightly bigger westerners a more comfortable passage. On learning this, I was slightly disappointed that our experience would not be ‘real’, but headed down the hole in the ground at the back of our group anyway! Holy crap, these tunnels were tiny! Check out how scared I look in the below photo! And this was the westernised tunnels with added uplighters! After we waddled about 30m in the pitch black, scorching hot tunnels we were thankfully given the option to exit, which we jumped at! Some crazy fools in our group went further into the network where the tunnels became more authentic (i.e. smaller!).
I cannot begin to imagine how frightening it must have been to spend all day in the original tunnel network, with B52s dropping 500lb bombs overhead. It is incredible that such a vast, elaborate tunnel network was dug, literally by hand, and used to such great effect. Cu Chi is a true mark of the strength of character of the Vietnamese people which ultimately helped them to overcome the vastly more powerful American forces.
After the experience of the tunnels we spent some time checking out the tourist stalls which were selling everything from war relics to full sized stuffed crocodiles! We stumbled across someone selling ‘snake wine’ and decided to sample some to settle the nerves. Snake wine unsurprisingly sounds better than it tastes (check out Charlottes face after her sample!), although the bottles, complete with Cobra’s inside, would have made a great present for Shirley if it wasn’t for those pesky custom’s officials! With that we returned with the rest of our group to HCMC.
P.S. Watch out for our next blog posting; tales from Guantanamo Bay – probably where we will be heading next after posting a blog including phrases such as Evil American Imperialist, AK-47, Freedom fighter etc!
Tags: Vietnam
Chris and Charl
Didn’t even like to look at the bottles….Great blog
Can I know how much cost the snake wine there?
I found a bottle on this website http://www.asiansnakewine.com/ but would like to know how much in Vietnam?
Thanks.
Mum
Oh you are in for a treat – we’ve got a crate of snake wine ordered for you for Mothers Day!
Go easy though -it’s potent!
See you (very) soon
Charlotte and Chris
Counting the days
Darn it – we forgot to mention we put our flight back 😉
One, two …miss a few …ninety nine, one hundred!
Keep on counting.
Charl