We decided to take a half day tour to the infamous Củ Chi tunnels down to the south of Ho Chi Minh City.  We figured half a day was long enough to see the tunnels, without taking up the whole day and without the risk of losing a whole “Vietnamese day” if the tour turned out to be… well… crap.

It was an 8am pick up time, a fact that was making the holiday feel like less of a holiday. Up at the crack of dawn, we popped to the bakery around the corner and picked up the most incredible pastries for breakfast. Not very Vietnamese you may think – to be honest the thought of a hot meat broth in the morning makes me feel ill – but in fact the cafe culture in Vietnam is a leftover relic from the French colonial times. A relic I was definitely starting to love.

We had to wait quite a while for our ‘pick up’, aka the woman that came to the hostel and walked us around the next alley way to our waiting coach.  We bundled in and sat there waiting for all the admin to be sorted, the stray tourists rounded up and the inevitable ‘oooh can I just pop to the toilet?’ questions to be answered (for once, it wasn’t me guv’nor).

Our tour guide came on board and introduced himself – and what a tour guide! I can’t even remember his Vietnamese name, but no matter as he answered only to his nickname – Slim Jim. He eats like a bird, smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish he informs us loudly and enthusiastically.  I warmed to him instantly – a former teacher who loved to pepper his conversations with cockney rhyming slang, an affection slightly lost on the bus given we were the only Brits there.

What was interesting about Slim Jim was his aspect on the war and the state of Vietnam. He was very open about the fact he fought for the South Vietnamese in the army, and you could get an instant sense that he was hugely capitalist and still does not agree with the communist way of living. A fact enhanced as he told us how, although Vietnam is a communist country, it has a capitalist economy, with private shops and business. State workers do get better pay, cars, conditions etc but people still fundamentally have a right to own their own businesses and keep their own profits. He talked us though the attempt at having a fully communist country, about how land was taken and is now given back to it’s owners and about how the economy is doing much better with foreign investment. He told the story about how after the war he was sent to camp to be ‘brainwashed’ into the communist ways (and how his cousins, who had reached higher ranks in the army, were eligible to move to America and have since lived in sunny California). Don’t get me wrong, he was careful not to say anything directly against the Vietnamese state, but he was certainly a character and certainly someone who stood up for his beliefs.

We didn’t realise the trip to the tunnels would take so long – 3 hours (with the obligatory half hour stop off at a government-run institution). This time, the stop off involved at the Handicapped Handcraft Centre where we could see the work, purchase pieces and visit the toilet. I normally hate these things, but in fact the handcrafts we saw I fell in love with. Traditional Vietnamese plates, benches, sculptures, ornaments, silks… they were all so beautiful, so colourful and so well made. The only problem was the vastly overinflated prices.

Back on the bus… the trip didn’t drag on too long, and luckily Slim Jim didn’t talk the whole time (as much as I loved him).  We pulled up at the entrance of the tunnels and traipsed our way into the start of the jungle. It was surreal. You entered via a large tunnel, saw lots of other groups of tourists around, but yet it still felt quite remote. Despite the clear course, of which given the number of potential unfound mines / traps in the jungle I was quite thankful of for once, and the clear ‘tourist stops’, the jungle was alive and all around. I had some bizarre moments of clarity when I stood still and imagined what this place would have been like during the war. Terrifying.

We saw the entrance to a ‘real’ tunnel. It was tiny. I didn’t even attempt to lower myself in there as I was pretty convinced my spring-roll-enhance waistline wouldn’t make it back out! We saw an American tank that had gone over a mine and blown up. We saw Viet Cong traps – and what traps they were. The aim wasn’t too kill – that would be too merciful in their eyes, but simply to maim and scare. Traps that drove excrement smeared poker sharp bamboo canes into legs, chests, and more scarily manhoods. Traps to make sure you were poisoned, lost a leg, lost an eye, could never have children again… but you didn’t die. This just seemed so barbaric to me.

We went down some ‘Western’ tunnels, that is tunnels that have been expanded to twice their original size so that the tourists can fit down. That makes it sound luxurious and something that an overly obese American could fit down easily – rest assured this was not the case. We still crouched. It was still dark, claustrophobic and baking. I couldn’t even imagine how they coped down there shuffling along on stomachs and elbows, hiding for as many hours as the oxygen would allow and not knowing what was going on feet above your head. It was pretty suffocating, in fact so much so that there are ’emergency exits’ on the left and right every 100 metres for those that freak out.  We came to a fork in the path – one very dark and looking increasingly small, and one that seemed to widen up to a lovely shaft of light.  We decided that we must have come to the end of the tunnel and the way forward was no more, so took the exit, only to find this was only the first emergency exit and we had only actually shuffled along 100m. Cripes.

We had a snack of tea and cassava spiced with salt and spices – delicious!

After the obligatory ‘those devil breathed Americans’ style propaganda film, we were on our way back to Saigon.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

CatDog xxx