Nam - Cu Chi Tunnels

My second day tour was out to the Cu Chi Tunnels. They were used by the Vietnamese against the French back in the 50s and then again by the Viet Cong against the Americans and South Vietnamese in the 60s and 70s. When they were at their most developed they consisted of a network of 3 levels of over 240 km worth of intertwining and booby trapped tunnels. It gave the North (communist side) a stronghold in the south that was never broken. The Americans eventually became so frustrated with trying to fight on the Viet Cong's terms that they blanketed (aka 'carpet bombed') the entire area with Agent Orange (a defoliant that killed the vegetation) and then dropped 30 tons worth of bombs. 30 tons is a lot. Craters still litter the ground in the area and aren't fully overgrown yet. Agent Orange was no slouch either. Over 11 million gallons of it were used in the war and it's a nasty substance. It's worst ingredient is TCDD which is short for 'Kills stuff Dead'. Seriously, it's known to be one of the most dangerous substances ever created by man and 1 tablespoon of pure TCDD could kill millions of people.

Fast forward to today. The jungle has grown back and the tunnels are now a tourist attraction.

"To start the tour we were shown a war propaganda video. Only thing is it was from the Viet Cong's side. It showed many war heroes (both men and women) who were awarded the medal for 'Killer of American Invader'. It was different to say the least to see that little film. I imagine it somewhat akin to seeing Nazi propaganda....except the Vietnamese may actually have had a point."

"We were shown all kinds of traps that were used against the invading forces. All of them were poky and all of them would not feel good. This one in particular seemed pretty nasty. It was called a door trap. When a soldier kicked a door open or opened it all the way the trap would swing down. A natural defense mechanism for a soldier is to hold his gun out to stop something from hitting him in the face or chest. That would stop the top half of the trap. The lower half would then swing on its hinge and hit, well, you know....down there. As our tour guide so eloquently put it, 'No more man.'"

 "A B-52 bomb crater. Remember that they get monsoon rains in Vietnam and that this crater has had a lot of sediment wash down into it....and it's still huge (that crater is about 6m across)!"

"This was a legit tunnel entrance. You put that lid on there and cover it up a bit and it would be damn hard to find. I barely fit inside the opening and I think my shoulders would have made it through with some effort. Big American soldiers would have been like a square peg in the round hole, it just wouldn't have worked."

"I crawled through two tunnels. The first was a '5-Star' tunnel that was usually over a metre high and went for 100 m. This photo was taken in the '4-Star' tunnel. It was mostly less than a metre high and ran for about 50 m long. There wasn't much light in the larger tunnel and basically none in the second one. If ever there was a test for claustrophobia, this is it. Once you start getting down to the '2-Star' tunnels they're so small that you have to lie down and shuffle through them. I think that's where I would have hit my limit. Now try to imagine people living down here during the war. Kitchens, gathering rooms, hospitals, it was all down there and the only way to get from place to place was by the tunnels. People were only ever allowed to come out at night and cooking had to be done at 3 am when the smoke would be mixed in with the morning mists."

"I may or may not have fired an AK-47 at the end of the tour. And it may or may not have been cool."

Fun fact for the day: Australians call redheads 'Rangers', pronounced rang-urs, because the hair colour reminds them of orangutans. They've clearly evolved beyond the term 'ginger'.