Daddy, what did you do in the war..?

In stark contrast to the previous two days to save some money we headed into the backpacker district and booked ourselves onto a $4 tour to the Cu Chi tunnels. Wikipedia has a great article on the tunnels that explains all about them and their role in the war against the French and later the Southern coalition.



The tour starts with a video which I expected to be something along the lines of the Wikipedia information. Instead, what you are presented with is quite frankly a propaganda video from the North Vietnamese which could have been made during the conflict. It takes a hard line tone 'evil American soldiers here to kill the innocent farmers' and also talks about killing the Americans via traps and what have you. It was amazing that given the countries opening up to tourism, and the relative neutrality of the War Remnants museum that this was still being shown. I would say that 30% of the tourists actually walked out during the showing, I assume the Americans. Still, if you win the war you get to write your own history right?

We then went onto the tunnels area proper. We were shown an actual size tunnel, and allowed to get into it, but (thankfully) due to the whistle stop, pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap nature of the tour weren't allowed to go through it for times sake. As one guy remarked 'I didn't spend $4 to watch a bunch of people in a hole' but not being one for spaces where I can't turn round in, I was glad.

Its a hard call to make as to how people feel about the war and the 'liberation' as it is referred to when you consider that the people in the south lost the conflict. I really would have liked to ask the people we met what they were doing at that time but I think it's the one question you just can't ask. Sadly a group of Dutch(?) did just that of our guide who clearly would have been fighting age at the time. No matter what your role, the memories that this is going to bring up must be horrific. Our guide, clearly unhappy with the question said that he hadn't fought (which may or may not be true) but was conscripted as an interpreter. Even if that's true, my guess is that he would have been present at interrogations and the Americans were prone to dealing out proxy justice to suspected VC.

When you tour the tunnels you have the opportunity to buy and fire live ammunition on a firing range. When the guide asked who wanted to do this most of the tour group muttered and dispersed to the gift shop and interestingly, the only group who actually wanted to do this were exclusively young, American and male. How could they possibly miss the self parody of PAYING to go to Vietnam to fire guns in the jungle? The youngest had a look of sheer joy on his face from the moment he was handed his rounds and throughout the experience. I preferred the attitude of one of the younger girls in the group who had decided to make a blown out tank barrel into a makeshift slide.

And so to the tunnels. Well, we went into the tunnels and I made it all the way (90m) to the end which I was very proud of myself for. Beatrice elected to leave after the first 30m and I can see why. Even enlarged for tourist frames they were hot, cramped and hard to move through. In places they were totally dark and you can imagine what it might have been like to be living or fighting in them. Just. At the end of the day the hardships that both sides endured were evident and I'm glad that Vietnam has finally put it's years of conflict behind it. As you can tell from the number of pictures I took and the amount I wrote from a short visit it's a truly beautiful country and I hope to go back to see more of it. Go and see it now before their desire to become 'modern' changes it everything.