Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Exploring the Vibrancy of South Vietnam, part 3

Roughly 70 kilometres north-west of Ho Chi Minh City lays the sleepy, hamlet studded, lush green district of Cu Chi. Peaceful and tranquil, Cu chi provides a pleasant day trip into the Vietnamese countryside.

Roughly 70 kilometres north-west of Ho Chi Minh City lays the sleepy, hamlet studded, lush green district of Cu Chi. Peaceful and tranquil, Cu chi provides a pleasant day trip into the Vietnamese countryside.

In wartime years, however, the Cu Chi district was the stage for some of the fiercest and most intense battles of the Vietnam War, as it was a Viet Cong stronghold uncomfortably close to the South Vietnamese and American troops in Saigon.

Cu Chi became famous for its tunnel system that, at its height, contained over 200 kilometres of multi-level passageways that allowed the Viet Cong to literally disappear underground, becoming an elusive, invisible foe. Coupled with their ingenuity and will to prevail, the Cu Chi guerillas became an inspiring force to their comrades of the North. The Cu Chi tourist brochure proudly describes this: “The tunnel system embodies the undaunted will, intelligence, and pride of Cu Chi people, a symbol of Vietnamese revolutionary heroism.”

American troops and their allies, of course, saw things differently. As regular ground offensives failed, the Americans made several attempts to flush out and destroy the Viet Cong in the Cu Chi district. They tried bulldozing, flooding, bombing, using thousands of dogs to locate the tunnels, employing smaller soldiers as “tunnel rats” and even scattering the landscape with grass seed in an attempt to disrupt the topography.

But the Viet Cong were resourceful. Largely cut off from northern supply lines, those in the Cu Chi district utilized everything available to them, living off a meager diet of rice, tapioca tree and tea. Old tires and inner tubes were used to construct sandals for the battle field, with the tire being the sole and the tube being the lashing to hold it in place. Metal was scavenged from American bombs and destroyed equipment, which was turned into crude mobile traps that could then be used against the enemy. Women farmed by day and then fought alongside the men at night. No moment of the day, no scrap of material, no morsel of food was wasted.

But years of fighting and hardship took their toll. The people of Cu Chi suffered high numbers of casualties and heavy bombing campaigns transformed the area into a lunar landscape. When the war ended, the people and the landscape of Cu Chi district showed their scars.

However, following the war the region was recognized for its roll in the North’s victory. The tunnels of Cu Chi were one of three national remains regions the government of Ho Chi Minh classified almost immediately after the war. More than three decades later, roughly a million visitors frequent the grounds of the Cu Chi tunnels annually to learn about the violent struggle of the past.

“Foreign visitors to Vietnam are welcomed to Cu Chi to understand the hard and protracted struggle of the Vietnamese people as well as their keen desire for everlasting peace, independence and happiness,” a government brochure states.

Arriving at the tunnel site, our knowledgeable guide toured us around the grounds offering an eye-opening view into the past of the Cu Chi people. Many guides themselves lived through the war and several of them were actually South Vietnamese soldiers fighting alongside American troops. They attempted to provide a balanced view of the war.

The tour starts by heading into a sub-soil bunker covered by a thatch roof where a short video on the wartime struggles and victories of the Cu Chi people was shown. A large map in the bunker highlighted both U.S. and Viet Cong positions in the surrounding areas.

After the video guides lead the tour to a tree and ask everyone to gather round and look at the dirt immediately beside it. After a few minutes everyone wonders what we are looking for. Then, with a shuffle of one foot, the guide unearths the wooden lid to a tunnel and removes it, revealing a tiny entrance to the subterranean world. The entrance is so small that it must be entered with one hand at your side and one raised above your head; most people’s shoulders are too broad to squeeze through. Life in these tunnels would have been a claustrophobic soldier’s worst nightmare.

Walking around the grounds provides an eerie view into the past as the sound of machine gun fire echoes through the jungle, louder and more real than any Hollywood movie has ever depicted. During part of the tour, tourists can opt to fire an AK-47 or an M-16 machine gun, the weapons of choice for the Viet Cong and American soldiers respectively.

Coming across what appeared to be an anthill at the base of a tree, our guide explained the ventilation system of the tunnels and how they were effectively concealed. An American or South Vietnamese soldier would pass the main ventilation point for a multi level underground system, assume it was an anthill, and never be the wiser.

Moving on to another thatch-roofed bunker, the tour passes an immobilized tank lying in ruins since it struck a mine during the height of the war. Guides then proceed to trigger several simple yet deadly traps, with names like “the folding chair”, made of bamboo or salvaged metal.

The following bunker featured automated mannequins performing a daily task of the Cu Chi guerillas, processing weaponry.

Leaving the bunker, there is the option to finally enter the subterranean world of the tunnel system. The first section of tunnel has been widened from the original size, while the second section remains the same narrow passageway used during the war. The tunnels are now fitted with electric lights, another luxury that did not exist during the war.

Once in the tunnel the temperature rose a few degrees due to the traffic of tourists. And after descending a few levels the air became dusty and increasingly stuffy. Some people opted to exit before the tunnels narrowed to their original size, where turning around became difficult.

All along the length of the passageways were shafts that allowed the Viet Cong to pop out of the ground and surprise their enemy. It became all too obvious how difficult it would have been to fight an enemy that could not be seen or heard and that had the ability to engage, regroup or retreat in a matter of minutes.

Exiting the tunnels we regrouped and headed for the last section of our tour.   We sat at a table and sampled a cup of the local tea and some tapioca tree that was dipped in a mixture of crushed peanuts and spices. Here our guides explained the kitchen setup and how they came up with the design for the smokeless kitchen. Smoke was piped away from the stoves and then dispersed through several tiny holes covered in wet leaves, preventing enemy bombers and scouts from obtaining the location of these key structures.

While crawling through the tunnels for a few minutes was definitely interesting, it would most certainly have lost its novelty during the many battles won and lost in the Cu Chi district.