Today, we had the longest drive ever. We had to sit on a bus for two hours. Twice. Two hours. What did I do? Nap both times. We were on our way to the Củ Chi tunnels, a network of connecting underground tunnels in the Củ Chi district of Ho Chi Minh City. These tunnels were the Viet Cong's base of operations during the Tết Offensive in 1968. The tunnels began as bomb shelters and then expanded into something much greater. The expansion began during the attack from the French, and then the tunnels began to expand a final time during the attacks from the Americans. At this point, these tunnels were basically underground cities.
Before we got to the tunnels, Dr Berman gave us a spiel on the history of the tunnels and the war, and then we watched a video that was made in 1968 from the perspective of the Viet Cong. The video was pretty crazy. Of course, the views expressed in the video were completely different than those expressed in America. The narrator was sure to emphasize how peaceful the village was prior to the American attack, in order to portray the Americans as savages. I think it's safe to say that we all felt pretty weird when we heard "American killer hero" over and over again.
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| Rachel and Akhil going in |
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| I didn't think he would ever come back up |
Once we made it to the tunnels, I was pretty excited to hear that we would be able to crawl through them. The first one started off as a reasonable size. But later, they got a lot smaller. And apparently, they were meant to support two way traffic. Fortunately, there were rooms every now and then and these were pretty large. There were also a lot of bats, so it was basically the Vietnamese bat cave. Seeing us struggle to squeeze through these shows how different in size we are form the people that were using them originally. Of course, the Vietnamese that used to live in these would've had no problem and definitely wouldn't have been as bothered as we were.
During the war, the American military had people who were required to traverse these tunnels. They called them "tunnel rats" and they would've been the shorter soldiers (5'5 and shorter). Speaking of the American soldiers, it was pretty strange walking through the jungle and seeing giant craters caused by American bombs. If I had to guess, I'd say they were 20-25 feet deep and they were scattered everywhere.
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| Vietnamese Memorial |
After traversing through the tunnels, we went to a memorial honoring all of the lost Vietnamese soldiers, as well as some American soldiers. We were all reminded of the memorials in DC. They were definitely pretty similar. Afterwards, we went to the cemetery where all of these guys were buried. It was nice to see some pictures of the fallen soldiers, as well as their tombstones which allowed us to learn a little bit about them, like their age, where they were from, etc. It was however a little awkward seeing the soldiers regarded as heroes, since all that meant is that they killed a lot more than everyone else.
Despite burning up outside and in the tunnels, it was an amazing, informative day. Plus there was some awesome food.
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| Praaaaaawwwwwwwwwn |
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| Behind the memorial |
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