The one thing I really wanted to see while we were in Ho Chi Minh was the Cu Chi tunnels so I signed us up for the half day trip. I was able to get a ridiculously cheap price of $84,000 dong which was about $4USD. We were picked up by the van at 8:15am. There were about 15 other tourists in our group which wasn't too bad as far as tours go. It was a few hours drive out there during which our guide tried to provide us with information about the war and the history of the tunnels. Unfortunately his English was pretty hard to understand so some of the information went over our heads. It was fine though because once we arrived at the tunnels, the first thing we did was watch an informational video about Vietnam's involvement in the war and what the Cu Chi tunnels were used for. It is very different to hear an account of the war where the Americans are the enemy and people are being celebrated for the number of Americans they killed. Admittedly, I found it hard to watch at times because it became so personal.
The tunnels were dug with simple tools and bare hands during the French occupation in the 1940s, and further expanded during the Vietnam War in the 1960s to provide refuge and a defensive advantage over the American soldiers. Despite all the bombings in their town, the Cu Chi people were able to continue their lives beneath the soil, where they slept, ate, planned attacks and lived their day to day lives. Over 10,000 Vietnamese lost their lives there during the war.
The first thing we checked out were the tunnel entrances themselves. These were extremely small holes in the ground which they would close up with a piece of wood and cover with leaves. You really couldn't see it unless you knew it was there. I thought it was insane that adults could fit into such a small space but I guess most Vietnamese people are much smaller than I am.
We got to go down and check out the tunnels through a much larger, American sized entrance.
We learned about all of the traps and weapons the local people used to defend their land. Many of the things they did seemed a little primitive (and were previously used for hunting animals) but proved extremely effective since the Americans were traipsing through unfamiliar jungle. There were lots of traps where you would step on a trap door and fall into a pit of steel spikes or have a steel trap take off your leg.
There were 250 kilometers of tunnels and at times, thousands of people living in them. They constructed breathing holes that looked like termite mounds so that they could get air without the Americans suspecting anything although air, food and water was usually scarce.
The trees in the area are all young saplings because all of the trees that had been there during the war had been destroyed. The Americans aerially sprayed the area with chemical defoliants ("Agent Orange") and a few months later ignited the tinder-dry vegetation with gasoline and napalm. There were many areas we stopped at as we drove through Vietnam that sold items to benefit the victims of Agent Orange. Clearly there were so many people effected by Agent Orange but we had a hard time distinguishing between which places were legitimate charities and which people were trying to use American guilt as a sales tool.
There was only one American tank left after the war (the rest had been sold by the local people for parts). It was so strange to see it and be in a place where so many Americans had died. When some young kids on our tour were in the tunnels, they would pop their heads out and scream "die Americans!" and pretend to shoot us which was just surreal.
At one point, we went through a large section of the tunnel to get a feel for how it would be to live down there for a long time. I had to crawl of course because I was far too tall to even just bend over. I can't imagine being down there in the dark for so long, it would have been incredibly claustrophobic although I guess better than being killed.
We sampled some tapioca root which is what they ate a lot of during the war. They were able to maintain a lot of their farming efforts while fighting which is the only reason they were able to endure.
The tunnel tour was definitely very interesting and I was glad to learn a little more about the Vietnam War (the Vietnamese call it the American War). We headed back to the hostel and took showers so we could be ready for the New Years celebration our hostel was throwing at 6:30pm. Since we didn't know what the hostel party would entail, we were still planning to go out for a nice dinner and got dressed up. Downstairs, we found that the hostel had cooked tons of food and gave everyone a free beer which was really nice of them. All the travelers staying there congregated for the first time since we'd been there and we got to know everyone. We immediately became friends with a guy named Simon who was traveling by himself. Since we were no longer going out to a fancy dinner after eating so much at the hostel, he joined us for drinks at a restaurant around the corner from our place.
We then headed into the main street where there are ordinarily tons of shops and restaurants. The entire street was filled with people and motorcycles. Bars were spilling over into the streets and chairs had been set up everywhere.
We hung out and danced in front of one bar for a while but the music was getting too loud for Jessica, so we moved down the street. There we sat down at a bar along on the sidewalk. This bar had no music and we were just sitting on the street watching people try to pass through the crowd. I was bored so I decided not to drink anymore. There's not much point to getting a hangover for no reason. Alyssa did not feel the same way and ordered a giant fishbowl drink just for herself. We were hanging out very peacefully until the cops showed up. All of a sudden, the people who worked at our bar were telling us we had to sit inside. We said no, we wanted to stay on the street. No one else at any of the other places was being asked to move so it didn't make any sense. They kept arguing with us so everyone but me relented and got up. I of course refused since there was still an entire group of guys sitting right next to me that weren't being asked to go anywhere. Some old woman who worked there came up behind me and ripped the chair out from under me, throwing me to the ground. This was outrageous enough but then she went over to Jessica and was trying to force her to put her drink into a different glass. She trying to wrestle it out of her hand so I went over and grabbed onto it as well. Of course the lady went nuts and flung the drink all over me. She was fucking crazy. New Years was over for me at that point. We went back to the bar that had music and though I didn't wanted ruin the party for my sisters, I couldn't have been having less fun. Jessica and I went back to the room shortly after midnight and left Alyssa and Simon to party the night away.
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