{"id":1209,"date":"2011-01-11T10:49:44","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T03:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2011-01-11T10:49:44","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T03:49:44","slug":"cu-chi-tunnels-vietnam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/2011\/01\/11\/cu-chi-tunnels-vietnam\/","title":{"rendered":"Cu Chi Tunnels, Vietnam"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

Total Miles Traveled:<\/strong> 46,286<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Located 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.<\/p>\n

Note to future travelers:<\/strong> to get there, you can take a cheap bus tour with 30 people, or go via speedboat with a smaller group \u00a0of 8 people). \u00a0We did the latter, but we’re not sure it was worth the extra cost, which was 5-6x more. \u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n

Now back to the story… the original tunnels had tiny entrances that were covered with leaves.<\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s a bit of a tight squeeze, even for me!<\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

The park ranger decided it would be funny to trap me down in the tunnel for a bit. \u00a0I’m not claustrophobic, but it wasn’t comfortable down there!<\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

Then a woman in our group, let’s just say she was a little bottom heavy, tried to get in the hole. \u00a0 Bad decision. \u00a0After a little shimmy, she dropped in to the hole. \u00a0But getting her out was a spectacle. \u00a0Our 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. \u00a0I didn’t take a photo because it was not pretty at all – I had to look away.<\/p>\n

Along the way, we saw some of the resourcefulness of the Vietnamese soldiers. \u00a0 They put together a number of nasty booby traps for the American soldiers. \u00a0Many were camouflaged with leaves and you would fall in to these trap with spikes in them <shudder><\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

But one of the cooler things we saw was how they were able to cook meals underground. \u00a0The smoke from their fires would be a dead giveaway for B52 bombers looking for a target. \u00a0So, the Vietnamese built their kitchen chimneys such that the exhaust would be far away from the kitchen and tunnels. \u00a0They also covered the outlet with a stone and wet leaves so that the smoke would seep out slowly, dissipating quickly across the forest floor. \u00a0 Here’s a photo of the chimney outlet:<\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

We Shot Machine Guns!<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the neat things you can do at Cu Chi is shoot a series of machine guns. \u00a0You can choose from M16s, AK47s, M60s and many others. \u00a0We chose M16 and AK47, the most used rifles during the war.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s big business for the Cu Chi park – about $1 USD per bullet. \u00a0Here’s one small pile.<\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s Lisa shooting the AK47 – it had a wicked recoil. \u00a0And these guns are LOUD. \u00a0Really really loud.<\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s a video of me with the M16 doing single shots.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

I must say though, firing the AK47 on full automatic was more fun, even though it ended in 3 seconds. \u00a0 Can’t imagine it being fun during the war though.<\/p>\n

The Tunnels<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, we got to crawl through a 100 meter segment of the tunnel system that had been enlarged for tourists. \u00a0Even so, it was still quite hard to crawl through. \u00a0At some points, you had to get on your hands and knees because it was so little. \u00a0Other 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.<\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Here’s Lisa, relieved to be out of the tunnel.<\/p>\n

\"Cuchi<\/a><\/p>\n

Have a look at all of the photos in the slideshow below:<\/p>\n

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”tony-chen” id=”72157625912741118″]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u00a0Located about an hour outside of Ho Chi Minh city, it’s definitely worth a visit to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}