The Cu-Chi Tunnels

Up early (again!) for our trip to the Cu-Chi tunnels just 20km north of Saigon. It took over an hour to get there due to all the motos, then bad roads outside the city.

The Cu-Chi tunnels were where the Viet Cong hid from the Americans while staging their attacks on Saigon. There was a labyrinth of 220km of tunnels with areas to sleep and cook as well as hidden entrances.

We were first taken to see a video (thankfully nothing like as bad as the one in the presidential palace which we only sat through two minutes of before leaving). It was still full of propaganda though.

We then entered the main area of the tunnels. We were shown one of the secret trapdoors that the VC used to escape from the Americans. We couldn't see anything under the leaf litter at all until the guide cleared it away to reveal this tiny little door - only about six inches wide by fifteen inches long. He climbed into the hole and brought the door down over his head. A few other people went down but there was no way Dave or I would have fitted in there. A couple of fairly petite girls got in but one less so petite girl (and she was not in anyway fat) only just fitted in (her hips got a little stuck). We saw a couple of the not-so-secret entrances where they could bolt if surprised. The entrance was still tiny. If the Americans found the entrance and blew it up with a grenade it wouldn't matter as the tunnels led away quickly so no VC would be injured.

We saw a VC trench with tunnel entrances and a typical VC camp. The guide showed us some 'dead mines' which were essentially suicide grenades for taking out American tanks. There was a wrecked American tank in the middle of the forest too. We had a short break by the firing range where you could fire an AK-47 amongst other things. It added something to the atmosphere of wandering round the site because you could hear the firing all over the place.

After this was the opportunity to go through a section of tunnels. The entrance was fairly wide and we all stopped for photos at the entrance. The main section of the tunnel was about 3 foot high and so while it wasn't crawling on hands and knees it was still fairly claustrophobic. Dave didn't help by nicking the torch!! The tunnel went on for about 100m but there was an exit at 30m which everyone came out at except Dave and a guy called Mike who bravely pushed on for the whole 100m. Especially Mike who we'd had to persuade to go down in the first place!!

We finished off the tour with the kitchen area and a taste of some of the roots they ate - did taste a bit like potatoes. They showed us how they prevented the smoke from cooking escaping and being seen, which was by placing a large stone over the whole and thus the smoke escaped in tiny puffs all they way round. The stone was covered in leaf litter which further prevented the smoke (and the stone) from being seen.

We exited through our third gift shop for the day and headed back into Saigon. We met up with a few of the people from the tour including Mike and a collection of Irish teachers in a bar and had a good drinking night. Randomly saw several people from a travels in the bar including Ben and Scott who we watched the first England game in Hanoi with and two other English guys from the same game who's names I can't remember.