We went to the famous Cu Chi tunnels today, which was quite an experience.\nYou get to crawl through the same tunnels that the Viet Cong used during\nthe American War, which results in one having a lot of respect for what\nthese people endured.<\/p>\n\n
While we could only navigate the tunnels painfully on our hands and knees,\nthe Viet Cong guerillas ran upright with head bowed, while carrying a\nrifle. They cooked, ate, slept and lived in these tunnels, venturing out\nto the Mekong River to have a bath.<\/p>\n\n
250 km of tunnels they built, a couple of which ran directly under the\nAmerican base at Cu Chi. They would attack by night, then disappear\nwithout trace. When the tunnels were eventually discovered by the enemy,\nthey were too small for the American frame, so the Americans sent in the\nsmallest people they could find, but these people often fell victim to\nbooby-traps and land-mines.<\/p>\n\n
As a solution, the Americans started to use dogs to sniff out the\nentrances to the tunnels, but the guerillas also managed to thwart that\napproach by taking the uniforms from American corpses and rubbing them\nover the entrances to mark them with smells that the dogs would associate\nwith friendliness. They also dropped chilli powder over the entire area to\nmake the dogs’ nose swell.<\/p>\n\n
Again, I have to say that the ability of these people to fashion solutions\nfrom anything that happens to be available — no matter how seemingly\nuseless — leaves me thinking that we are very pampered in the West, often\ncomplaining and unable to cope when we are forced to forego our little\nluxuries, while the people here can devise much more intricate solutions\nto their problems than we can, even though they possess much less in a\nmaterial sense. It seems that the raw materials to fix your problems are\nalways there, just so long as you look hard enough.<\/p>\n\n
Our tunnel guide was excellent, by the way. He was a former army officer\nand possessed a great deal of knowledge and experience about the war. He\nhad seen all of the famous American films about the Vietnam War and\npointed out inaccuracies in all of them. They are not to be trusted, in\nhis opinion.<\/p>\n\n
After the tunnels, we went to the American War Crimes Museum (or the War\nRemnants Museum as it seems to have been renamed). That made for about as\ngrim an afternoon of exhibit viewing and placard reading as I can possibly\nimagine. I’ve done a fair amount of reading on the subject in the past,\nbut nothing could really prepare one for the photographs and other\nexhibits on display here, with everything from snaps of GIs holding up the\nheads of beheaded North Vietnamese soldiers to preservation jars\ncontaining the pickled, mangled bodies of babies born with fatal birth\ndefects, the victim offspring of parents who had ingested dioxin when\nAgent Orange defoliant had rained down on them from the spray-planes\nabove.<\/p>\n\n
Outside, a war victim with no arms below the elbows, a mangled leg and\nonly one eye greeted me and shook my hand with his stump, before trying to\nply me with counterfeit copies of novels whose plots take place in\nVietnam.<\/p>\n\n
After that, it was back to the hotel (a new hotel, since the last one was\ncharging more than it was worth) for a short period of relaxation, before\nhitting the street again for dinner and then taking a cyclo elsewhere for\nice-cream.<\/p>\n\n
Tomorrow, we depart for three days to the Mekong Delta, which is — by all\naccounts — a great experience. When we return, we’ll spend one last night\nin Saigon and then depart for Hong Kong the next day.<\/p>\n\n
I expect we’ll write more during our last evening here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We went to the famous Cu Chi tunnels today, which was quite an experience. You get to crawl through the same tunnels that the Viet Cong used during the American War, which results in one having a lot of respect … Continue reading