My Malaysia: HCMC December 5-8, 2008 Part II

On our second day in HCMC, Ernie rented a van and we drove NW of the city about 30-40 km to the Cu Chi Tunnels, now a place of pilgrimage for Vietnamese school children. We had our own personal guide who took us around the area now open to the public. There are approximately 250 km of tunnels which exist in several layers in the area. They were begun in the 1940's by the Viet Minh during the war against the French. The excavations were mostly used for communications between villages and to evade French army sweeps of the area. Later on, the tunnel network became famous during the 1960's for its role in facilitating the Viet Cong control of a large rural area close to HCMC. At its height, the tunnel system stretched from HCMC to the Cambodian border and included innumerable trap doors, storage facilities, constructed living areas, weapons factories, field hospitals, command centres and kitchens. Our guide took great pride is showing us how the Viet Cong evaded the American army using the other two layers of tunnels for escape, how they set many different types of traps to snare the enemy and how kitchen smoke was exhausted through vents many metres away from the actual cooking site.