Cu Chi Tunnels

Our second post for today was supposed to be written by Alisia but she fell asleep at dinner! After our visit to the center for the blind, we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are a series of underground tunnels that Viet Cong used during the Vietnam War to surprise the enemy (us!). They showed us all of the traps they set for our military men, calling it psychological warfare because it was intended to scare them and keep them from pushing forward.  This one was a trap that would be placed in a hole. When a soldier fell into it, his leg would get stuck. When he lifted his leg, the whole unit would come out and cause a bomb that was hidden underneath to explode and kill many men. 

This is the see-saw trap. When a soldier fell in on one end, the spikes would hit him in the head as he fell. 

Pretty nasty stuff. They are quite pleased with their cleverness and ingenuity in crafting these materials to beat the "devilish Americans". Let's just leave it at that while in still in their country (and would like to come home!) In all honesty, though, we have seen nothing but kindness from the Vietnamese people. A surprising amount speak English and they are quite nice to us. 

The Cu Chi tunnels they built during the Vietnam War were quite masterful in the sense that they were well hidden and nobody knew all of the paths. Typically a women would keep the map for each set of tunnels and tell the Viet Cong where to go. As they dug the tunnels, they did so in square shapes to be sure they knew which way to turn to meet the next pathway. Here you can see approximately how far apart two openings might be. If soldiers discovered an opening, the Viet Cong would go to the other opening and shoot them from behind!

These tunnels were so small that even Alisia had to get down on her hands and knees at one point as we were crawling through some of them!  They widened the opening for today's "larger" people but our guide kept telling us how small his father and grandfather were and how these tunnels were extremely small. Here are pictures of Alisia and I where we climbed into the super small openings that were used during the war: 

This next one is at the wider opening, and I believe they widened the tunnel a bit too, although it didn't seem like it! Just past where Alisia is standing, the ceiling drops to about waist level and you need to crouch or crawl. 

Soldiers actually lived below ground in these small openings during the day while waiting to attack the enemy!

One last picture is a picture of a B52 bomb crater. This picture doesn't really do it justice for how large it is since there isn't a person standing there as a reference. But you can see a handrail to get down into the crater so you can have a little idea of the size. These bomb craters are where they used to hide the soil from digging out their tunnels. Clever, aren't they??

It was definitely interesting to view this from the Vietnamese perspective. They are very proud of their guerrilla warfare.