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.