One of our goals in visiting Vietnam has been to better understand what happened during the Vietnam war (called the American War here). To this end, we decided to take a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels.
Vietnam has done an amazing job of turning these tunnels, 20 years of war in the making, into tourist attractions. They’ve done a good job of it.
Much like the War Remnants Museum, the experience is strongly pro-independent Vietnam. For example, our guide stated that “If you support independence, then it is Ho Chi Min City. If you support the United States, it is Saigon.”
Upon arrival, we are given the option, for an additional fee, of shooting an AK47. I was the only one in our group to avail myself –
The tour started, and turns out that didn’t want anyone over age 70 to go into the tunnels. Our guide wanted us to,, but we chose not to break the rules. Dodged a bullet on that one.
We were shown some of the traps the Viet Cong set in the jungle. Not only would they try to trap an enemy soldier, they hoped the trapped soldier would call to compatriots to help and themselves become targets.
The soldiers ate taro root every day. We were given a sample –
It wasn’t offensive, but every day…
Though we didn’t crawl through the tunnels like some of the group did, it was easy to see how amazingly clever they are. We were very outsmarted in this war in so many ways. It was just wrong. These are definitely worth going to.
