Total Miles Traveled: 46,286
The Cu Chi tunnels are a network of tunnels that the Viet Cong soldiers and Cu Chi people lived in, hid in and fought from, when they were fighting American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Located about an hour outside of Ho Chi Minh city, it’s definitely worth a visit to learn how resilient and resourceful the Vietnamese were, and to fire some machine guns.
Note to future travelers: to get there, you can take a cheap bus tour with 30 people, or go via speedboat with a smaller group of 8 people). We did the latter, but we’re not sure it was worth the extra cost, which was 5-6x more. The boat cruise was much like the cruise we would eventually do on the Mekong delta, and even though you’re in a smaller group, there are large tour groups once you get to the tunnels, so you feel like you’re in a mob anyway.
Now back to the story… the original tunnels had tiny entrances that were covered with leaves.
It’s a bit of a tight squeeze, even for me!
The park ranger decided it would be funny to trap me down in the tunnel for a bit. I’m not claustrophobic, but it wasn’t comfortable down there!
Then a woman in our group, let’s just say she was a little bottom heavy, tried to get in the hole. Bad decision. After a little shimmy, she dropped in to the hole. But getting her out was a spectacle. Our tour guide and the park ranger had to lift her out by pulling on her jeans because she was stuck and couldn’t get out herself. I didn’t take a photo because it was not pretty at all – I had to look away.
Along the way, we saw some of the resourcefulness of the Vietnamese soldiers. They put together a number of nasty booby traps for the American soldiers. Many were camouflaged with leaves and you would fall in to these trap with spikes in them <shudder>
But one of the cooler things we saw was how they were able to cook meals underground. The smoke from their fires would be a dead giveaway for B52 bombers looking for a target. So, the Vietnamese built their kitchen chimneys such that the exhaust would be far away from the kitchen and tunnels. They also covered the outlet with a stone and wet leaves so that the smoke would seep out slowly, dissipating quickly across the forest floor. Here’s a photo of the chimney outlet:
We Shot Machine Guns!
One of the neat things you can do at Cu Chi is shoot a series of machine guns. You can choose from M16s, AK47s, M60s and many others. We chose M16 and AK47, the most used rifles during the war.
It’s big business for the Cu Chi park – about $1 USD per bullet. Here’s one small pile.
Here’s Lisa shooting the AK47 – it had a wicked recoil. And these guns are LOUD. Really really loud.
Here’s a video of me with the M16 doing single shots.
I must say though, firing the AK47 on full automatic was more fun, even though it ended in 3 seconds. Can’t imagine it being fun during the war though.
The Tunnels
Finally, we got to crawl through a 100 meter segment of the tunnel system that had been enlarged for tourists. Even so, it was still quite hard to crawl through. At some points, you had to get on your hands and knees because it was so little. Other times, you would crouch over and walk with your body in a 90 degree angle or walk duck style which was a great workout for the quads.
Definitely not for the claustrophobic, and it was actually quite a workout crawling through the tunnels because they would go up and down and side to side. Here’s Lisa, relieved to be out of the tunnel.
Have a look at all of the photos in the slideshow below:
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