The Tunnels of Cu Chi

At the urging of my husband, who wasn't able to make the trip, and another former Army Ranger he served with in Vietnam, I visited the tunnels of Cu Chi.

An amazing feat of low-tech engineering, these manmade tunnels stretch for miles just below the surface in and around the village of Cu Chi. Built during the war, the maze of tunnels made it possible for the Viet Cong to escape to safety whenever U.S. or South Vietnamese forces were in the area.

Arriving at the site, our tour group was ushered into a room filled with hard chairs, where we sat through a creaky propaganda video that appeared to have been made shortly after the war. In addition to actual war footage, this relic of the 1970s featured pretty young women shouldering AK-47s who managed to stay spotlessly clean while flinging themselves into bunkers and low crawling through tall grass and smiling resolutely the entire time.

The video concluded by calling the citizens of Cu Chi heroes of the liberation, although a Vietnamese-American I met offered a different take on history.

Calling Cu Chi "a national disgrace," she said the villagers were forced by the Viet Cong to dig the tunnels. "They would take a parent or child hostage, so the people did whatever they had to to save their families," she said.

In any case, the video ended and we headed out to see the tunnels, the centerpiece of this curious war theme park.

Clearly defined trails wind through the jungle covering the once defoliated landscape. Scattered along the trails in clearings are tableaus featuring lifelike Viet Cong mannequins.


In a bomb-making bunker, mannequins creaked noisily into action when our guide flipped a switch. Up and down went their arms as they hammered away on bomb casings clearly left over from the long-ago war.

As if this wasn't disconcerting enough, shots suddenly rang out. It seems there's a rifle range on the site. In addition to military practice, it accommodates tourists who can fire various weapons for $1 a shot.

Additional displays included booby traps, mines and a destroyed American tank.

The tunnels themselves are big enough for a skinny person to slip into, arms raised so the shoulders can slide through the astonishingly small rectangular opening. When covered, it's virtually invisible.

In order to accommodate the ample European behinds of tourists, a couple of sections of tunnel have been enlarged and we were able to go through one.

Despite its relative roominess, it was small, confining and claustrophobic. Quite a few tourists quickly backed out rather than spend the few minutes it took to crawl through 40 meters of darkness to the other end.