This morning, we had to check out of our room early as we've booked a bus to Nha Trang tonight. So once we'd had breakfast, we checked out and waited to be picked up for the Chu Chi tunnels. It wasn't long after we were waiting that our guide showed up to pick us up. We were the first ones for a change, so had first pick of the seats on the bus. The Chu Chi tunnels are around 70 kilometres outside the city, so it will take around 2 hours to get there. We continued to pick other people up, there were around 15 people in total on our bus. The guide introduced himself as Yhan and he said our driver was called Dho. He was a nice guy and spoke very good English. He told us a few things about Saigon; including that just in this city alone, there 10 million inhabitants. Of those 10 million, 3 million are overseas residents, and there are 7 million bikes and mopeds around the city. Perhaps that's why a bike thief tried to snatch my bag. He also told us some jokes and riddles too.

Agent orange paintings

After we were about half way there, Yhan said we'd be stopping off at a place where people affected with agent orange made paintings. John said he didn't think they would be any good paintings, but boy, was he wrong. When we arrived, a man showed us through a workshop where these people make paintings by using eggshells, mother of pearl, then polished and sanded off so the effect is either smooth, like the mother of pearl paintings, or rough edges, like the eggshell effect. I saw these people, most had some kind of deformation, mainly their legs were affected. It seems that these people are passionate about what they do, and it shows in the paintings that they produce. We got shown how they make these fine works of art, some take months to make just one, or a set of four. Like showing the four seasons on each individual painting. After the workshop, we got taken into the shop where you can buy these paintings. They were stunningly beautiful and I wish we could have bought some from them, but we couldn't right now, perhaps we will return one day in the future to buy some. They weren't pushy either, wish was refreshing to see.

Rich in natural resources

Then we continued on towards the Chu Chi tunnels. It took another 40 minutes or so before we arrived. Along the way, we passed a rubber tree plantation. There were many trees all uniformly planted with some kind of duck tape wrapped around the bark, and there was a pot to extract the latex. I've never seen one before, it was our guide who told us it was a rubber plantation, although I realised it was some kind of plantation. When we arrived at Chu Chi, we were also shown cashew nut trees, surprisingly, the fruit looks like a pepper to me. I would never have guessed they were cashew nuts growing on that tree! They also have jackfruit trees, where jackfruit grows in abundance.

Chu Chi tunnels

Our guide collected the money from us and purchased our tickets. Apparently, this place receives around a thousand visitors per day, so it's really busy. We then headed into the grounds where we had to wear a sticker to identify our group. We all have to stick together, wouldn't want to get lost down those tunnels! We got taken into a room first to watch a short video about the tunnels. We even got to see some video footage of down the tunnels, and were shown some maps of the labyrinth of the underground network of tunnels. Our guide also told us that they eat dogs because they believe they will bring them good luck when they are having bad luck.

The Chu Chi tunnels were first built in around 1948, over a period of almost 20 years. Communist forces began digging a network of tunnels under the jungle terrain of South Vietnam. Tunnels were often dug by hand, a short distance at a time. As the USA escalated its military presence in Vietnam in support of a non-Communist regime in South Vietnam beginning in the early 1960s, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, gradually expanded the tunnels. At its peak during the Vietnam War, the network of tunnels in the Cu Chi district linked VC support bases over a distance of some 250 kilometers, from the outskirts of Saigon all the way to the Cambodian border.

Life in the tunnels

The tunnels were built for families to live in throughout the war. There are three levels in which the tunnels were built; the 1st level is 2-3 metres deep, the second second level is 6-8 metres, and the deepest level is 12 metres below the ground. The tunnels used to be 80cm high originally, however the height has been increased for us Western size tourists, so are now 120cm high. The width is 50cm now, which has also been widened. It's connected to the Saigon river, which was useful for getting food supplies. It's also Located on a hill. The reason they were chosen to be built at this location was because of the hard earth in the ground, so it didn't absorb water easily.

The whole community lived underground and there were schools, homes and kitchens and stalls. They were quite clever, and would only cook in the very early hours of the morning. There were special funnels to take the smoke from the living quarters to the surface, but the funnels were built at an angle so that the smoke would come to the surface many metres away from the actual site. This was so that if the Americans saw the smoke and dropped a bomb, it would be too far away to do damage. They cooked in the early hours so that the enemy may have assumed the smoke was disguised as early morning mist. Their main food source was tapioca. Which we got to try at the end of our trip, it tasted a bit like potato to me, I liked it. The guide also said that when bombs were dropped, the people living in the tunnels would use these to create more weapons. They got their US prisoners to show them how to cut the bombs, so that they didn't go off. They really knew how to turn things around to their advantage.

However, life in the tunnels was difficult. Air, food and water were scarce and the tunnels were infested with ants, poisonous insects, scorpions, spiders and vermin. Most of the time, they would spend the day in the tunnels working or resting and come out only at night to hunt for supplies, tend their crops or engage the enemy in battle. Sometimes, during periods of heavy bombing or American troop movement, they would be forced to remain underground for days on end. Sickness was rampant among the people living in the tunnels, especially malaria, which was the second largest cause of death after battle wounds. Most people had intestinal parasites of some kind. Only about 6,000 of the 16,000 who fought in the tunnels survived the war.

Being shown booby traps and how tunnels were dug out

We were shown around outside, above the tunnels first. There were many booby traps that would have been set incase the US troops tried to invade their land. We got shown a number of these traps. Lots of metal spikes, covered completely by grass, wooden posts, anything they could make to cause serious injury, or death to their enemies. What is fascinating was that when the US troops sent dogs in to find the enemy, you'd think they could hunt them down. However, ingeniously, the Chu Chi people would collect rags of their enemies who they caught in the booby traps, so the dogs would only smell the US troops and not their enemy. Then we got shown model men of the types of tools they used for making the tunnels and the process in which they made them. They worked in threes, one used to dig, one would shovel away what they dug, and the other person would be at the top, sending someone to dispose of the soil into the river, cleverly disguising any evidence of ever digging the tunnel!

Shooting range

While walking around the area, we heard gun shots. They were coming from the shooting range here, but it did give it more of an authentic feel walking around hearing guns being fired. It's what it would've been like for people living here at the time. Then we were able to go to the shooting range. John wanted to shoot some bullets, but I wasn't fussed, so he went down to get fired up. I got to go and watch, so put on the ear defenders, as it's super noisy. While John watched the other guys firing, he forgot his so said it was deafening. He then remembered to put his on while firing the gun. He was shooting with a M1 gun, some kind of gun which was used in the Vietnam war. He really enjoyed it, although I think shooting guns is a boy thing!

Going down into the tunnels

So afterwards, we got shown the original size tunnel, it was tiny. They got one guide to jump into the hole. It was half his height, and just big enough in width for him. Then he went and crouched down in there, our guide shut the lid, so you'd never know they were down there. There would have been leaves to disguise the entry point of the tunnel.

The guide asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to go into the tunnel. John was first to say yes, so he jumped down into the hole. He was just about able to fit into there! Then being clever, he asked if he can he crawl through the tunnel. Yhan said yes, so he went down on his knees and crawled through the tunnel. As this was the original one, it hasn't been widened, or cleared of debris. We waited patiently, hoping that he hadn't taken a wrong turn and continued on to Cambodia! We were shouting to ask if he was ok, but no reply! A few minutes later, he had appeared at the hole and came up the steps. We clapped, then a few moments later, one of the other guys followed John out of the tunnel. We asked him what was like, and he said it was pitch black, there were bats flying about, and he didn't know if he'd taken the right tuning, but he did, so it was all good.

We left the real tunnel, then it was time to go to part of the tunnels that have been widened for us tourists. I don't think I could have handled going into the real one that John did with all those bats flapping around me! We were led down some steps, there was a girl who is really claustrophobic, so he wanted to go in behind us. I didn't know how I would react down the tunnels, so I went near the back too. When we got down the steps, it looked fairly clean and there were some small lights to guide the way. I didn't mind it down there. The other girl got scared and wanted to get out, so we went up the steps with her. We went back down, as we could go a little further into the tunnel. This part became narrower and there wasn't any light. I didn't really like it, but I was in front of John, so he said keep going. So I did, and we made it our of the other side. I'm glad I got to go in the tunnels to experience what it was like down there, although it's nothing compared to how those people felt living in them.

After visiting the tunnels, we got driven back to Ho Chi Minh city. It was around an hour journey and the traffic was busy as always. Once we got back, we relaxed for a few hours in the hotel lobby. I just wrote the blog for a while, then we went to get some dinner. We sat in a restaurant on the backpacker road. Parked up outside our restaurant was a cyclo driver, he was just laying in it sleeping, waiting for a client! I guess a bit like the tuk tuk drivers. We returned to the hotel to be driven to the bus terminal. Our sleeper bus picked us up and we were off to the beach- Nha Trang! Let's hope we get some sleep at least!