On our second day in Ho Chi Minh City we took a trip out to the Cu Chi Tunnels. We booked through our hotel, Vinh Chung Hotel (excellent hotel btw, with really kind helpful staff) and it was 100,000 vnd ($5) each for the return travel & guided trip, plus another 90,000 ($4.50) for the entry to the tunnels. It was well worth it.
We got collected from our hotel at 7.30am by our guide and led to a coach. After a few more pickups we were on our way out of the city on the 45 minute drive to the tunnels and our guide got on the mic to give us some information about Vietnam, the war and the tunnels.
Obviously I can’t speak for any other guides but our guy was brilliant. He said no westerners could ever remember his name so he changed his name to ‘John Wayne’ and now no-one forgets! He was joking around all day; tapping people on the shoulder and running off, tripping people up etc but also gave us really good info and, as he explained his whole family lived and grew up in the area and in the war, it did seem like a really genuine explanation.
Before the tunnels themselves there is other info on the area and activities of the Vietcong fighters. There was a huge bombed out tank which, unlike the War Museum, you could climb all over for photos (above). We saw many different trapdoor traps which the Vietcong laid out for the American soldiers, some of them quite gruesome like this ‘clipping armpit trap’. The victim would fall through the centre, rotating the spikes upwards to lodge into their sides & armpits. Grim!
Then we got to a part I was quite excited for, the shooting range! I’ve never fired a gun and would never wish to in anger, so this was a good opportunity to try when it is cheap and safe! It was pay per bullet so we just opted for a standard rifle rather than the bigger pricier machine guns. It was a pretty fun experience, I was expecting a big recoil but as the guns were fixed to the platforms there wasn’t much. I think Ali enjoyed it a bit too much!
Finally we got to the tunnels. Our group got the option of going through a tunnel made bigger for westerners or an original tunnel. Thankfully we all voted for the original ones. The entrance to the tunnel is quite big, not the original size at all, but once you get in it gets claustrophobic quite quickly. It ends up at no more than 3ft tall and about the same across. To get through you have to squat and do a kind of waddle, although anyone over 6ft would have to go on hands and knees. The air is very stuffy and it gets hot and humid quickly. A 10m crawl was enough for us but some Vietnamese would have to go under for kilometres at a time!
After going through we got to see what the real entrance would have been like, only slightly bigger than a shoebox!
Finally we watched a strange, bad propaganda movie for 10 minutes and headed back to Saigon. The trip was fun and informative and well worth $9.50!
