Cu Chi -Home of the Viet Cong- Vietnam

A secret entrance to a Viet Cong Tunnel.
Cu Chi, Vietnam.

The next day I signed up for a tour.  Ordinarily I don’t go for too many tours when I travel for the simple reason that I usually travel alone and end up being the guy sitting on the bus who never says anything.  This tour however promised to be an interesting trip to experience a place that was close to Hell for U.S. Soldiers during the war.

After a fresh baguette (with nothing on or in it, though still delicious) I was picked up by a small tour bus.

I sat in a window seat, my legs folded up by my chest courtesy of a protruding wheel well thankful for air conditioning and nice view of the streets of Saigon.  At least I was in little danger of getting run over by 50,000 motorbikes inside of a bus.

For 30 minutes the bus drove about bustling streets, turning here and there, to pick up the other groups that had signed up for the tour.  By the time everyone had boarded and the attendance sheet was passed around I found myself thrown together with 20 or so Australians and a Chinese family. 

Our destination was 2 hours outside of Saigon.  The trip, cramped though it was, was worth the $10 I had paid for it.  We left the frantic streets of downtown, crossed a river and soon found ourselves in the somewhat decaying sprawl of the outer limits of Saigon. 

Everywhere people sought shelter from the heat and the sun in shaded hammocks.  People sat on tiny plastic chairs at the ever-present food stands eating cheap food and drinking Vietnamese ice-coffee. 

Soon, the city gave way to rice patties and the shacks of farming communities.  Even motorbikes became less and less common, replaced with the occasional water buffalo wandering on the side of the road. 

The roads deteriorated quickly.  Pavement ceased after a time and the rock covered road filled with potholes and other bumps.  More than once I found myself flying off my seat.  If this had been an airplane ride I would have been praying. 

Finally we came to our destination.

Cu Chi.

Cu Chi is a district of Saigon.  It was once farmland housing villages of rural Vietnamese.  It still has the appearance of rural farmland and is in fact surrounded by many farms, many of them passed on the way. 

The place is relaxing and at first glance looks like nothing more than a small swatch of forested park.  It looks like any campground in New England sans tents and with staggering temperatures.  This, I suppose, is what makes Cu Chi so contradictory.  It is a place that projects the peacefulness of nature but its reality is one of unimaginable violence and terror. 

Beneath the dirt, grass, gnarled roots, and trees is a series of tunnels, sleeping quarters, strategy rooms, and traps.  Cu Chi is the land of the Viet Cong.  From Cu Chi the Tet Offensive was planned.  From Cu Chi the Viet Cong brought guerilla warfare to an invading army. 

My first inclination that Cu Chi might have been an odd pick for an American was the documentary we were shown in a large canopy with a thatched roof.  The footage was grainy and the audio was horrible.  The only things I could really make out was something about “trained murderers,” “evil,” “barbaric,” Americans.

The forest and vegetation in Cu Chi and the surrounding areas was thicker at one point, but American bombing and carpet bombing campaigns has left the area with permanent scars.  In fact, strewn about the trails of Cu Chi are bomb craters filled in with trees growing at odd angles from the crater walls. 

Cu Chi is protected by the government and has been turned into a kind of open-air museum except that most of it is underground. 

The displays, some authentic and some recreated, generally relate to hiding from or killing American soldiers. 

Trap doors line the area and are so well hidden that when the guides hop down to demonstrate their effectiveness and then close the door above them, they are completely invisible. 

Pits full of sharpened and poisoned stakes are cordoned off. 

There is an entire building dedicated to spiked booby traps designed to maim the unfortunate to such a degree that it is impossible to free one’s self from cris-crossing spikes without removing all of the skin from the bone. 

There is a door that if opened will send barbed spikes swinging crotch level.  Behind each display is a painting of what an American soldier might look like if he was the victim of such devices.

Termite mounds provided air to the subterranean maze and many of these things still exist in Cu Chi. 

What struck me most about this place was that along side with tacky exhibits of poorly made animatronic mannequins demonstrating such things as how to turn an unexploded bomb into a mine was this air of genuineness.  The place is a tourist attraction but the place is also authentic.

Bad things happened in Cu Chi to everybody involved.  People died in this place.  I have been to Gettysburg and I have seen musket ball craters on graves in the Boston Common but it is hard to relate to things that happened so long ago and have been so well ground into us in history classes. 

People died in Cu Chi and it wasn’t so long ago. 

I found myself thinking about the numerous other foreigners I had seen who seemed to be the right age to have been a veteran of this war.  I thought about the men I saw drinking beer in melancholy air in the cheap restaurants.  And further I thought of how many Vietnamese I passed in the street who were also veterans of this war.  For those people who were here during such a violent time, Cu Chi is still a fresh wound.

A destroyed U.S. tank.
Cu Chi, Vietnam.

Towards the end we came to a U.S. tank.  It sat at the edge of an alcove of trees.  Kids climbed over it like it was a jungle gym and people posed for photos at the top.  I don’t know the story of the artillery at the War Remnants Museum but the story of this tank was included in the tour. 

This tank was a casualty of war.  It was the real deal.  It had been occupied and driving along when it hit the trigger of an improvised mine likely made from an American bomb.  The back of the tank is blown out.  Jagged metal protrudes where the explosion hit.  Paint is chipped and faded and bullet holes dimple much of the body.

People died here. 

A lot of people died from both sides.

My guide spoke with pride of the resistance of the Viet Cong.  It really is incredible.  They were farmers drawn into battle, living in horrible conditions fighting a horrible war.  He spoke with pride about how many Americans they killed and the ingenious simple but fatal traps they used to kill them, to kill us. 

It is fascinating to hear the other side of a story but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be difficult too sometimes. 

I thought again of the veterans who make the trip back to Vietnam.  Why do they do it?  Closure?  To see that the place really isn’t the hell that it was during that time?  What must it be like for them to come to Cu Chi and see all of this? 

My guide motions to me and tells me that he will take my picture if I want to hop onto the tank and pose.  An Australian is sitting atop pretending that he is operating the gun.  I decline.  It just feels, I don’t know, wrong for me to do that.

One attraction of Cu Chi is the option to shoot a number of weapons that were used in the war.  It is phenomenally expensive so I didn’t partake, but it adds to the atmosphere of Cu Chi.  The jungle is thick, the heat is oppressive and always there is the sporadic burst of automatic rifle fire and the quick whiff of gun powder. 

There was one thing I was determined to participate in.  The government has maintained some of the Cu Chi tunnels so that they are safe enough for visitors to pass through them.  The path from start to finish is obvious with optional exits every 10 meters or so.  Traps have been removed or cordoned off. 

In Cu Chi you can wander the tunnels and into the rooms where the Viet Cong lived, died, killed, and planned during the Vietnam War.

It is billed as a simple way to get a little closer to history.

The tunnels at Cu Chi are a nightmare.  Some have been widened a touch to make way for western visitors but they are still overwhelmingly claustrophobic.  Their curved ceilings are too low to do anything but stoop and waddle, knees level with your belly.  The air is still, thick with humidity and hot as hell. 

I got the impression that these tunnels would be well lit and a breeze.  I was wrong.  There were low powered bulbs where the tunnel turned 90 degrees but the light was overcome by darkness a few feet later.  To walk in the tunnels is to walk in darkness.

Viet Cong tunnel.
Cu Chi, Vietnam.

Claustrophobia set in pretty instantly.  By the time I bowed over to get into the tunnel I wished that I hadn’t but already there was a line of people behind me.  You can’t turn back in the tunnels.  You can’t go forward either if the line of people in front of you have stopped for god knows why.  So I sat there in pitch black, oppressive heat, unable to fully extend my arms even if my elbows were folded. 

We waddled along a few steps and then stopped again.  This continued until we came to a turn and then a drop into a tunnel further still under ground.  We came to a larger room, something only obvious with the change in the echos and people bunching up and bumping into each other.  It was a nightmare. 

You could hear voices ahead and behind but often you couldn’t see anything in front of you.  Closing your eyes made no difference in visibility.

The tunnels are panic inducing.  Illogical as it was, I developed this nagging fear that some moron at the head had taken a wrong turn and was leading us to hell or some other humid and black tomb.  Certainly we were underground for a hell of a lot longer than I expected and the turns had disoriented us. 

When at last we felt a breeze (still almost 100 degrees, mind you) I had had my fill of the Viet Cong.  When I could finally stand in sunlight I was covered in sweat and dirt.  My knees were scraped from the tunnel floors.  My legs hurt.

An Australian behind me muttered the sentiments of everybody when invited to enter another tunnel.

“Fuck this.”

  The next day I hopped a bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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Vietnam: Museums and Amputees

Ben Tahn Market.
Saigon, Vietnam.

The man who split his time equally between standing behind the desk at the Giang Linh Hotel changing my U.S. dollars to Vietnamese dong, and sitting on a sofa watching TV and smoking told me that the War Remnants Museum was 1. Not very far, and 2. Cheap.  It basically met the minimum requirements for the sort of activity I was looking for.

I had spent a couple of days wandering around Saigon trying half-assed not to get lost.  I got lost routinely, but that is the point sometimes.  I would set out before noon or whenever I woke up, and return to my hotel for a couple of hours after eating lunch in one of the identical alcove restaurants to avoid the heat.  I would then head out again and find a market or some other place to walk around, take photographs, or just eat.  I was looking for some sort or tourist activity and the War Remnants Museum seemed to be the answer.

I walked as far as the Ben Than market, which has existed in one form or another since the early 1500’s, before succumbing to the heat and hopping into an official looking cab that did not screw me.  Fifteen minutes of snarled traffic and dilapidated buildings covered in grime and foliage later I was walking onto the War Remnants Museum compound.

Ben Tahn Market, outside.
Saigon, Vietnam.

The museum has one tall cinderblock structure that looks something like a parking garage (admittedly a pretty nice parking garage) that is surrounded by various vehicles and devices of the American war machine.  It seems to be the most heavily guarded parking garage in history.

Everything on display in the perimeter seems to be from the American military.  Amongst the landing craft, fighter jets, tanks, and attack helicopters are piles of unexploded ordinance.  Families take turns posing for photos next to giant machine-gun turrets. 

Off to the side is the recreation of a South Vietnamese political prison.  It is a hard thing to take in.  There is a guillotine that has seen heavy use.  The cages, regardless of being recreations, induce a feeling of intense claustrophobia when mixed with thick, hot air.  Every here and there are tools of torture on display next to photos of their results. 

Through the sights.  War Remnants
Museum.  Saigon, Vietnam.

The museum itself is largely dedicated to the reality of war in the eyes of the Vietnamese who suffered through it.  Walls are dedicated to the My Lai Massacre and in remembrance of the innocents of unknown villages who died at the hands of the “murderous, savage American aggressors.” 

It is a hard place to take in as an American.  While it is now called the War Remnants Museum it has had a few other names that were less subtle, for instance: The War Crimes Museum, The Museum of American War Crimes, and The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government.  The name has been changed to its current as part of Vietnam’s “normalization of relations with the United States.” 

Other exhibits include an extensive look at the results of Agent Orange, napalm, and unexploded ordinance.  Haunting black-and-whites depict children born with extreme mental and physical defects.  They are almost all wide-eyed and smiling, seemingly unaware at the horrible predicament they were born into; victims of a war long over. 

Another exhibit displays the photographs of the many photographers who died in Vietnam from dozens of countries. 

Outside, before I leave to get screwed over for the final time by a taxi driver, a man calls to me.  I see him first out of the corner of my eye.  As I turn I am taken back, shocked for a moment and then embarrassed that the man might have seen my surprise.  The man is a double amputee.

The Guillotine.  War Remnants Museum.
Saigon, Vietnam.

He tells me in quiet, fast, broken English that he had the misfortune of stepping on a leftover landmine.  His arms are cut to thin nubs of purple and bulbous scar-tissue just below his elbows. 

I notice them for the first time as he pulls out a book that he is trying to sell me.  The book is about the legacy of unexploded ordinance and mines that remain in Vietnam.  I look to his face and am again shocked, sickened, and then embarrassed.  His face is scarred to hell.  Purple lines and tears run from his chin through his lips to the rimmed hat that he is wearing.  His right eye is cloudy, faded, distorted, and dead.

I feel that I should buy his book but it is expensive.  He is persistent and becomes irritated when I tell him as polite as possible that I won’t be buying anything from him.  He takes the book from me and puts it back into an old saddle bag with his forearms.  He asks me where I am from and I tell him I am from Canada.

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Food and People in Saigon

An empty Street in the Backpacker
District.  Saigon, Vietnam.

The food in Saigon is cheap and everywhere.  I spent much of my time in Saigon just wandering around with my camera or trying to cross the street and I found that I was never more than a few meters away from food.  Pho stands seem to dot the overcrowded pavement in front of every other door.  Under foggy glass a collection of fresh vegetables and questionably fresh meat sat gathering a collection of flies.  In a minute you could have a bowl of pho for much less than a dollar. 

About these stands was an array of multi-colored plastic chairs and tables that were probably meant for little kids but were perpetually full of people enjoying their meals under the beating sun.

Courtesy of its history as a colony of France, fresh baguettes can be bought anywhere for next to nothing. 

The restaurants I frequented were largely across the street in the backpacker district.  Roads full of cheap restaurants, guesthouses, laundry, and booking services ran parallel to each other, forming this village of travelers, beggars, and more than a few dirty hippie drifters. 

The smells were intoxicating.  Lime and basil accented the smoke of burning meat.  Alcohol hung in the air as though the place were a giant open-air bar, which it basically was.  This place, the backpacker district was a little place of comfort for travelers without the luxury of a nice hotel or cloth napkins. 

Each restaurant had someone outside asking everyone who passed by if they were hungry, trying to drag in business as though they were fishing.  This is necessary because every restaurant there is almost identical: a long open room like a long garage, filled with tables and plastic chairs and cheap table cloths if there is one at all.  They lack ambiance but they deliver in quality food at low cost and the ability to watch as the night wears down. 

An Alcove Restaurant.
Saigon, Vietnam.

I sat towards the back of the alcove restaurant beneath a fan and still sweating.  Outside people laughed or shouted as twilight deepened.  The waiters and waitresses dropped all manner of dishes, pho and pineapple fried rice to burgers and meatloaf, in front of patrons from who knows why. 

Every now and again as I waited for my bowl of pho and pulled swigs of my warming Tiger beer a merchandise peddler would come in.  They usually had a tray of knock-off sunglasses or fans and they were usually visibly pissed off when you refused to buy anything. 

An American guy flirted with my waitress.  He is some sort of writer he said.  I blame him for my growling stomach. 

People walk in front of the entrance with loads of laundry or with backpacks that weigh more than half that of their owners.  So many dreadlocks. 

It is interesting to see who comes to these places.  For most people I do that thing where I try and figure their story out.  Do they live here?  Are they here for work?  Are they just passing through? 

The thing with Vietnam is that it has this weird mix of people.  The backpacker district is a good example of this.  Nobody here belongs but they don’t look entirely out of place.  Here and there are people in nice clothing wearing nice shoes and cargo shorts, but most people, including myself, have a layer of grime to them.  There are wild eyes in Vietnam and a sense of community. 

Then there is another population. I was eating lunch one day and they came in.  There were four or five of them.  Americans.  They wore Harley cutoff shirts or some cheap Saigon shirt that exposed black tattoos that had faded to a dull green.  They drank beer and talked and ate beneath a fan in the shade away from the sun. 

They were in their 50’s and 60’s I could guess and they were somber.  They laughed now and again but it was never the gut busting laughter that came from younger people who frequented these restaurants. 

As the meal wore on they became quiet.  Maybe they were tired and hot but they spent a long time drinking beer in silence staring out into the street.

Obviously what I am getting at here is that it is my assumption that some of these guys have been to Vietnam before under less than happy circumstances.  I wonder what it is like for the veterans of the war to return to a place that was so violent and horrible for them.  I wonder what brings them back.

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Saigon Traffic



The rotary. Saigon, Vietnam.



Saigon is set up in districts. District 1 is the main drag of the city and where the bulk of accommodations for visitors are located. The place is full of stores, sites, and people of every level of poverty and affluence. It was a dynamic and mad place and I am happy to have spent my time in Vietnam there.



Saigon, regardless of district, is controlled chaos, organized entropy. The mindset of Saigon is realized through the total shit show that is rush hour traffic. In District 1 there is a major rotary. In the center is a sculpture of a man who I assume is probably Ho Chi Minh. Five or six different roads pool into this rotary so that it looks like a nightmare to negotiate under normal circumstances.



In Saigon, like the rest of the world, rush hour is the plague of the day. The thing is rush hour seems to last most of the day here. Also, there are not too many cars. If there is some hidden population of four-wheeled transport then they know well enough to avoid this rotary.

Ajummas: not caring who is behind them internationally.
Saigon, Vietnam.

Instead of cars there are scooters and motorbikes. Thousands of them. When the traffic is bad, which is always, scooters clog the roads like blood pumping through excited veins. They ride as many abreast as possible and sometimes more than the road can hold. In effect, the street becomes a river raging in a flood, spilling rapids over its banks.

I made several trips to this artery. Firstly, because the spectacle of this traffic and the ragtag businesses that spring up about it (air-compressors, petrol in liter bottles of cola) is fascinating. Further, on the other side of the street is the backpacker district, full of cheap lodging, laundry, food and other logistic vendors. It is the place to be.

To get to the other side of the road, especially at the peak, is a lethal Why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road joke. It seems impossible. There are not many pedestrian crossing signals and if there are they are usually inoperable or universally ignored by drivers and pedestrians alike.

To cross the street is a test of faith and steadfast nerves. The trick is this. Find an opening and start walking. Do NOT change your speed. It might even be helpful to look forward and pretend that there are not 800 scooters whizzing by you. Reach the other side and thank god that you made it. The other option is to wait for a local to cross and hope that they soften the blow when that hit comes.

Scooters.  Saigon, Vietnam.

There is a constant peal of anxious horns. Drivers on these roads seem to beep not so much as a warning or threat so much as an acknowledgement that they are entering into your space. Given that the roads are total gridlock (very fast moving gridlock to be true) the sound of whiny horns is constant.

Every so often a man in a pedal operated tuk-tuk or a salvager pulling a car stacked impossibly high with junk will come on and mess everyone up.

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Saigon Part One

Well, I have been home for a few days now.  It feels very bizarre.  It has taken me a while to get internet in my room (but not so long to buy a giant ass TV and spent a bunch of money) so this is all really late.  I tried really hard to take a lot of notes on my way through SE Asia.  Here it is.  Part one of "What the Crap Was I Thinking?"

Vietnam was my Vietnam. 

Hours earlier I had woken up in familiarity at a little hotel in Seoul.  The sun had risen to what looked to be a nice day on the peninsula.  Now, my plane is bouncing around a runway at night.  Trees that look like palms are silhouetted by the lights of run down and abandoned buildings with a distinctively French architecture that dot the area around the airport. 

I walk off the plane and am blitzkrieged by the heat and humidity of Saigon.  My skin becomes moist and my jeans suffocating.  As I stand on the bus that will take us to the arrival terminal of the airport I am pressed against the window Publish Postby the crowd of people piling in.  It isn’t so bad really.  There is air-conditioning and it I am in little danger of falling given that I can’t move.  And the view is good, so my eyes dart around as my cheek squishes against the window.  Behind a green fence are a couple of old bombers.  Their windows are smashed and the war-green paint is dinged up in a few areas.  Their identifying numbers are barely visible, but they are there.  They look like movie props from every Vietnam flick ever made but they are probably the real deal. 

Welcome to Saigon.

It is a strange transition between Korea and Vietnam.  I think it must be a strange transition for anybody to go from East Asia to Southeast Asia, or the opposite.  My first experience in Saigon, now officially Ho Chi Minh City (but Saigon sounds oh so much cooler), was a pretty good example.

I had become soft in Korea; too trusting.  You could probably leave your wallet in any bar and stand a pretty good chance of it being returned with nothing missing.  I rarely locked my apartment door (until my students started to come around towards the end).  I never thought twice about getting into a cab because they are all the same, and they are all cheap.

I hoped that the airport in Saigon would have a kiosk where you could arrange pick-up to a cheap hotel.  That was my plan after I had my visa processed.  Incheon Airport in Korea has said kiosks every thirty feet.  Saigon had zero. 

It was late.  Everything was closed and besides there wasn’t much to the airport in Saigon.  Just a long corridor with a few little rooms, most of which were abandoned.  I changed some of my Korean Won into Vietnamese Dong and walked out again into the heat.

There was nobody in the airport because everybody was outside.  Hundreds of people were mulling around waiting for arrivals. 

I walked away from the crowd to stand for a moment and formulate a game plan.  This was something I should have probably done before arriving in Vietnam but I was not yet worried.  I had a 3 week jaunt through Southeast Asia and not a single plan.  Immediately I was approached by this rotund guy who spoke pretty decent English. 

While Korea made me soft it did not make me stupid.  In defense of what happened I have to point out that I was exhausted.  I was pulling two big pieces of luggage.  I was wearing jeans and sweating profusely and had taken a decent amount of xanax for the plane ride.

The mind is quick to accept a way out of duress, even if that way is something you would not have gone for under normal circumstances.

The round man was a taxi driver.  He spoke with me for a while and I spoke back.  He seemed to be a genuinely nice guy; a little pushy but nice.  He spoke of Saigon with a lot of pride.  He asked about the handkerchief I had attached to my camera bag and he seemed interested when I told him it had come from Seoraksan in Korea.  Eventually one of his buddies, a thin and loud sort of jerk came over and began chatting too. 

The thin guy grabbed my arm and started running his fingers over the tattoo on my arm and asking me questions, particularly if I was traveling alone and why. 

At this point the first guy started to grab my luggage and walk towards his car.  Given that I had yet to agree to a ride this should have been my key to bail and find an official taxi company as opposed to a couple of goons in the shadows.

I grabbed my bag and asked him where he was going.  He told me he would take me to a cheap hotel near downtown.  I thought on it and decided, against my gut, that I might as well ride with tubby.  I had to get to a hotel and this guy didn’t seem all bad.  Or maybe he did, I didn’t know.  I was exhausted.

I got into his car.  It had no taxi markings on it.  It bothered me a little but not enough to send any sort of alarm. 

I closed the door and the thin guy jumped into the passenger seat up front and said something real quick.  For a moment I thought I was about to get robbed.  I became very self-conscious of having an absurd amount of cash on me.

The thin guy spoke again and then told me I had to pay a fee to him because he was the boss.  I gave him money and he told me that he would keep my change as a present.  He then smiled, jumped out of the car and ran away. 

Shortly after this the cabbie hit me up for the cost of the exit toll (this is pretty standard).  He then took me to a hotel that cost $80 a night in the middle of a colony of homeless families.  The taxi cost almost as much as the hotel.  I didn’t pick up on this until I looked up the exchange rate. 

The next day, after paying for water I drank from the mini-bar and becoming extremely depressed over a rocky start to my trip and losing quite a bit of enthusiasm for the entire thing, I took a reasonably priced cab back to the airport to try again.  My debit card was sitting somewhere in my old apartment in Cheongju so my wad of cash was all I had for the duration. 

$80 hotels were not in my budget. 

The second cab driver looked like a 90 year old mole.  He spoke in this high-pitched whine that reminded me of the old man in the Adam Sandler Chanukah cartoon.  He led me to his car (totally thread bare, by the way), charged me the exit toll, and brought me at last to a cheapish hotel.  He told me he had gotten me a deal because I had been good to him and that he thought I was nice.  I thanked him for finding what looked to be (and actually was) a safe and legit hotel.  He then made a valid effort to scam me out of a lot of money (and was successful to a certain extent) before he drove off.

I was then led upstairs to my tiny $20 a night room.  I moved my luggage into a corner and relaxed for the first time since leaving Korea.    

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