We reached Cu Chi district at about 9:50am. The tunnels of Cu Chi are an immense network of connecting tunnels which were the location of several military campaigns during the Vietnam War, and were the Viet Cong's base of operations for the Tết Offensive in 1968.
The tour started with our English speaking guide giving us a briefing on what to expect later in the tour and also a brief history lesson. The walk through the jungle to the tunnel system is about an hour but along the way, we will be stopping at a number of interesting sites.
Below you'll see one of the many booby traps with punji sticks used against the enemies during the war.
Then we came to a trap door on the jungle floor that leads down into the Cu Chi tunnels. When closed and camouflaged, it is almost undetectable.
I got to experience it myself by getting through the trap door and hide below the jungle floor. The video at the end of this post shows how it was down. :-)
The design of the tunnels and the strategic use of trap doors and air filtration systems had made it extremely difficult for the enemies to deal with.
Notice the holes on these mounds?
We then arrived at a site where we saw an actual tank used during the war.
We were allowed to climb into the tank and take some photos.
The next exhibit show all the different types of traps used during the war.
We continued on through the jungle and arrived at a shooting range.
Visitors can purchase ammunition here and try out real life shooting at the range with various types of rifles and machine guns.
Throughout the tour, our guide had been explaining how the Viet Cong fighters fight against the enemies using different tactics. One interesting tactic was that they intentionally wore the sandals the opposite way so that when they ran and left the footprints on the ground, enemies will go after them in the opposite directions.
Towards the end of the war, some of the tunnels were so heavily bombed by B-52 bombers that some portions of the tunnels actually caved in. However, the bombings were not able to destroy most parts of those tunnels.
The 75-mile (121 km)-long complex of tunnels at Cu Chi has been preserved by the government of Vietnam, and turned into a war memorial park. We finally reached the entrance of one of the tunnel systems where visitors are welcome to crawl inside. We decided to give it a try and what an experience it was. While we were inside the tunnel system, we had to duck walk all the way to the exit. It was really tiring but I'm glad we did it because I'm not sure if I can still do such a crawl in a few years' time.....
This photo below shows how narrow and low inside the tunnel. Watch the video below to see how we actually did it.
After we exited the tunnel system, we continued through the jungle to a resting place where we were provided a simple meal of food (Tapioca) that Viet Cong fighters would have eaten.
The following video shows some of the highlights of this adventurous trip. Enjoy!
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