the cu chi tunnels

We left by bus at 7:00am yesterday going northwest of Ho Chi Minh City to the Cu Chi Tunnels. I included the wiki link in the last blog, but the Vietnamese have set up a site at http://www.cuchitunnel.org.vn/index.php. The drive was most interesting in terms of moving through the traffic. The little video that is attached was taken from the bus window -- you can see that we are not moving very fast, but the motorbikes are progressing well. Note that some of them move up to the sidewalk to get around the slower traffic. I suppose a few years ago these would have been bicycles.

It took about an hour and a half to travel the 70 kilometers to the site of the tunnels. Our guide, Jimmy, gave us some information about the tunnels on the way, then once we arrived we hiked down a path through trees and brush to a model of a tunnel opening. Jimmy picked one of the smaller young women in the crowd and invited her to step into this opening so that we could see how really small it was -- it was of a size to accommodate the small Vietnamese people, but not the larger American soldiers who were enemies of the Viet Cong. This was a model of the real openings, because the real tunnel openings in the area have been enlarged in order to accommodate the bigger people who come to view them now. We moved on to see samples of the sorts of booby traps that were set up around the area and sometimes inside the tunnels in case the enemy got too close. These were the sort of traps the Vietnamese had used for hunting in other times and involved lots of sharpened bamboo. Pretty gruesome. There were many samples of underground rooms -- meeting rooms, hospitals, eating areas and so on. And we had the opportunity to experience the tunnels for ourselves by climbing down into them. I did go into one of the shallower ones, climbing down about 3 meters, then moving along the tunnel until the ceiling became so low I would have had to crawl and where it was getting quite dark. At that point I decided it would not be a good idea to go further, and I turned around and came out again.

The tunnels are certainly a testament to the patience and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people. A few of the tunnels originated with the French occupation, but many more miles of tunnels were added during the war with the Americans. We were told that four people would work on a tunnel at a time -- some to dig, some to carry dirt in baskets, some to run to dump the dirt into the nearby Saigon River. This area was heavily bombed during the war and there are still a couple of large B52 bomb craters, but most of those are gone since the bombing had destroyed the trees and erosion filled the craters. Until a few of the students went into the craters it was hard to appreciate how big they are, since all of the vegetation has returned. At the end of the tour we were shown a film that had been distributed in the 60's by the Viet Cong to the South Vietnamese people. It was very interesting to see the messages people were receiving.

Current relations between the US and Vietnam are very good, of course. Although there was a lot of talk from a few professors about the war in the days before arrival, these students are actually two generations away from this war. The tunnel trip did give a feel for some of what happened during those years, but as the guide said, the Vietnamese people feel that the past is the past, and now they love Americans and are very happy they come to Vietnam (and happy Americans spend so much money here!). What we have seen of the country is very beautiful. The city is very green with lovely plazas and parks, and it is also very clean and well kept.

Following the tunnel trip John and I decided to spend a couple of days at a nice hotel in the city. This has given us a chance to have a bit of a break from the ship, use faster internet, and be closer to things in Ho Chi Minh City. It has been very warm here -- in the mid 90's and above (sorry, Calgary!), but we move slowly and take lots of breaks. We will return to the ship tomorrow. I will be doing a Mekong Delta trip, so will write on that in the next couple of days.