Cu Chi Tunnels

Saturday, the plan was to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cu Chi Tunnels was a tunnel system used by the North Vietnamese during the war. It spans something like 100 km and is completely ridiculous. The tunnels were actually expanded for tourism, but they were tiny during the war. They were lined with traps and filled with different holes to pop out of and had a complete ventilation system. I cannot imagine living in extremely tight darkness like that, but these people did. This first picture is some Vietnamese countryside on the way there.

These other pictures are from the area surrounding the tunnels. One of the things I noticed from the area is that all of the bomb craters looked exactly like jasper pits, which are all over the woods near my house, so it felt just like normal to me. It was a war history site, so there were all sorts of military paraphernalia around the site.

Here are some rocket launchers and machine guns on display. They also had M16s and AK-47s, as well as some other assorted weaponry. 

Inside the tunnels was crazy. We had to crouch to varying heights, but I never had to go hands and knees. One of the tunnels was 70 m and my thighs were on FIRE. There were also bats which was freaking people out. These tunnels are a brilliant military strategy though. A person can pop their head out, go back under, and pop back up again 10 feet away.

All of traps and the entire north's strategy was well put together. Their goal was to break morale, by slowing people down and traumatizing them. And traumatize they did. All of the traps were non-lethal or at least not immediately lethal. There was one that was a circle of downward pointed spikes. That one made me shiver.

After the tunnels we went to a war memorial-temple type thing on the grounds. It was really cool but strange to realize how devastating the war was for Vietnam. On the walls of the temple was the names of all of their dead, and it was massive. It lined the entire way around and went all the way to the ceiling. 

Here's the temple from the outside.

Here's Greg with a giant bust of Ho Chi Minh, and you can see a tiny fraction of the names in the background.

A random picture of Greg with a bell.

We had lunch on the river which was really cool. It was more traditional Vietnamese food but it wasn't bad. Here we all started to get sick of Vietnamese food. Besides a few meals, it was all we had been eating, and all of the meals were practically the same.

The sun reallllllly beat us up, and between that and being out late at  Lush, everybody totally crashed on the bus. It was a pretty mellow ride. After that, I'm pretty sure everybody took a much needed nap.

After getting a little sleep we went out to a French restaurant to change things up a bit. I was pretty disappointed with my food but everybody else really enjoyed it. I got some pasta with salmon and a white sauce. I might add I have no idea what French food is. But the dish was just totally mediocre. Really bummed me out, but after dinner we just had a mellow night and caught up on sleep.

Sunday was the beach, and no one could not be looking forward to that.