A trip to Cu Chi Tunnels outside Saigon

A trip to Cu Chi Tunnels outside Saigon
Cu Chi, Vietnam

Cu Chi, Vietnam


This morning, before setting sail for Malaysia, we took a quick optional trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels. These were used by the Vietcong, the Vietnamese people in support of the Communist North during the Vietnam War. Apparently, if there were US forces walking through the jungle, the Vietcong would jump up in small groups to attack, blast away at the US forces, and then disappear back down the tunnels.

Just a note in case you haven’t noticed: If you click on the pictures included with each entry, you will find additional comments and details attached to each picture. And they can be displayed in a mini-slide show.

These tunnels were originally hidden by the lush tropical jungles of the Cu Chi district of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). The jungles were completely burned and destroyed by massive US bombing (defoliation), and the area is now forested with patches spindly trees. The tunnels on display in Cu Chi are part of a very large network of tunnels that lead from the Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia east all the way to the coast, a total of 160 miles of tunnels.

They are in 3 levels – 10, 20 and 30 feet under the ground. Many of the entrances are hidden trap doors. You can see a little movie here of JB coming out of one of them. We were also able to walk inside of one about 20 feet underground and 50 feet long, open for the public to experience. Life was very difficult for the soldiers living, working or fighting in and around these tunnels: it was tough to keep them ventilated at all, there were lots of strange bugs in them, and they needed to make sure that cooking smoke seeping from underground did not give them away. This section was bombed heavily in an unsuccessful effort to destroy the tunnel system. There are bomb craters all over from the B-52 raids. According to one account we saw, something like 60% suffered from malaria and 100% were afflicted with severe intestinal parasites.

Enlarged a little now in some areas for tourists, most of the tunnels were originally only a few feet high, so that a Vietcong could walk fairly comfortably hunched over a little to his destination. However a US soldier, larger and carrying a pack, could not do so. A Vietcong’s destination was usually very close to his (or her) local village and most only knew the tunnels in their local area. If they needed to travel, they would have to use local tunnel experts in other areas to guide them because it was so complicated. Then supplies would be passed on to someone else who knew the next leg.

The displays at the tunnel area included thatch-covered structures that showed how the Vietcong lived and worked in this area during the war period, and also had a shooting range where tourists could fire M16s or AK47s for about $2 per bullet, sold only in packs of 10. This noise in the background was quite disquieting, because you were touring Vietcong sanctuaries, with the noise of machine guns going off, just feet from where you were waiting for a Vietcong soldier to pop out of a trap door covered with leaves!

Even scarier were the displays of various traps designed to either sever or skewer your foot if you stepped in them, drop you on vertical spikes if you found a trap door, or maybe to make them even more lethal, perforate you with shish-ka-bob spikes if you opened a door where you did not belong! Not to mention that the spikes were often covered with poison or excrement

We were glad we went for the trip, but these were scary displays. Not to mention that the jungle in this whole area was fairly sparse (having been replanted) and not even close to being as dense as some of the forests and jungles we viewed from the bus driving there. So, experiencing the real thing at the time (having an enemy pop out of a hole in front of you in that darkness), must have been horrifying.