Cu Chi Tunnels

I wanted Mia to learn about Vietnam before we went. She was very resistant, so I didn't make her. I figured that maybe during our travels something would peak her interest and she would learn after she got home. I especially wanted her to learn about the Vietnam War (they call it the American War there.) She had no interest.

Then we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels near Saigon (the city has been officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City, but all the Vietnamese I talked to still called it Saigon.) It is a historic site they have preserved for education. The Cu Chi Tunnels were a tunnel system used by the Viet Cong during the war. Because of Agent Orange, Napalm, and the continuous bombing, it became impossible to liv

e on the surface of the earth in that little part of the world, so they moved underground. Whole villages with women, children, old folks, and soldiers all lived underground. They had underground kitchens, wells, barracks and living quarters, safe rooms, and escape routes. That particular system had 250 kilometers of tunnels that went into Cambodia, under American military bases, and had escape routes into the Mekong River. They shoveled the excess earth into the river so that they would not leave hills of earth to give them away. They used bamboo to create ventilation systems. They had three levels of tunnels. The first had the best air and they lived in them. The second level was for moving down to a safe level if invaded, and the third level were the escape tunnels. According to our guide, the Cu Chi tunnels were just one of many tunnel systems that spread all over Vietnam.

Mia was initially interested in seeing them because you could go down and crawl around in tunnels. How cool is that? I had heard about the tunnels during my own study of the Vietnam War, but I had no idea. All our minds were blown.

They had a film they showed us before we went on the tour. It was made in 1967 and there was no white washing or political correctness. The American soldiers were referred to as "the enemy" and were talked about as being ruthless beasts that killed women, children, and old people. They showed a sweet class of Vietnamese kindergartners while talking about this. The Vietnamese soldiers were all brave and strangely beautiful. I say strangely beautiful because almost all the soldiers I saw in the film were lovely young women. I asked my Vietnamese guide about that and he said that during the war there was no difference between men and women. Everyone was a soldier and fought. They talked about one woman who had been injured as a young girl in a bombing and so dedicated her whole life to killing Americans. The film ended with a surreal scene of these beautiful women soldiers doing a traditional dance in their army fatigues.

Mia was horrified. The Vietnamese got awards for killing Americans?

It got worse for her. After the movie we went to another section of the site that showed the different booby traps built by the Vietnamese to protect themselves. They were simple mechanical traps, adapted from the hunting traps they used for killing tigers. There were pit traps that swung on a hinge and had spiked bamboo on the bottom. There were 6 different types of foot traps that had bamboo spikes for stabbing the unfortunate person's foot or leg to disable them. There were door traps that would swing down and slash a person who was trying to enter a house. They were all simple designs using the materials easily found in the jungle, elegant even, but vicious, invisible, and deadly. My mother added that the spikes were often dipped into excrement in order to infect wounds. Those booby traps surrounded villages, homes, and were all over the tunnels.

The tunnels themselves were amazing. They had to seriously expand them to make them big enough for Western sized bodies. There was a small section we could go into and crawl around to see, but most of us were too claustrophobic to get far. One of the tools the Vietnamese used for this type of fighting was their body size. I am 5'4" and was taller than most Vietnamese people I saw during my travels. I counted two women in my entire time there that were taller than me, and only about half the men were taller than me and not by much. (The Thai and Japanese people I saw on my travels were much bigger, to give you an idea of how small these people were.) Their bone structure is tiny, too. Add this to the fact that there were food shortages throughout most of the war and you have little, little people. They used this to their advantage by making little, little tunnels. The entrances were tiny. A full sized Vietnamese man had to wiggle in with his arms over his head to squeeze in. None of the American, Canadian, or Brittish people in our group was small enough to get in except the children. On the bottom level of their tunnels, the escape routes, they routinely put in smaller sections, like girdles, to keep out the chasing enemy soldiers. Think of a rabbit disappearing into it's burrow. A fox had to dig its way in and by then the rabbit was far away.

Mia had a hard time with this whole display. She kept picturing in her mind the men in her family that she knew who had been in the military (like her father) getting trapped by these booby traps, shot at, called "ruthless beasts." It was not an easy place to be American. I had to explain that the Vietnamese were fighting for their freedom, that this was their Revolutionary War. These people were protecting their homes and their families. They didn't bring the war to us; they were the ones invaded.

There is so much out there about the brutality of the Americans against the Vietnamese during the war. The soldiers were called baby killers by their civilian peers when they got home. This experience at the Cu Chi Tunnels wasn't what I would have chosen as Mia's entrance into that part of our history, but it was really eye opening. How can you vilify soldiers for killing women and children when anyone in a Viet Cong family could be a soldier--the wife, the husband, the children, the uncles, the aunts, the grandparents?

Ho Chi Minh told his people that if they lost the war, they lost nothing. If they won it, they won everything. They were fighting for their independence, their liberty, freedom from foreign rule. They believed in what they were doing.

It will be interesting how Mia applies this experience to her future studies of the Vietnam War.

Ho Chi Minh and the war

We went to see Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum yesterday. It was an experience that I will never forget. Such ceremony and honor!

The Vietnamese Communist Party venerate Ho Chi Minh and his picture is on every single domination of their money, the Dong. His mausoleum is protected by a great number of men and women (soldiers?) in elegant white uniforms. His mausoleum was built in the Russian style with their help and is a dominating stepped block of gray stone, flanked on the left side with a row of communist flags, red with the yellow sickle in the middle, and on the right side a row of Vietnamese flags, red with a yellow star in the middle. It is impressive.

Everyone must pass through security to go to see Ho Chi Minh. There is a fabulous sign in several languages that insists that people need to wear "serious costumes." A woman came down the row of people waiting to go inside and checked our "costumes." I almost didn't get in. I was wearing a sleeveless shirt, a modest one, but sleeveless. A wonderful Australian woman behind me came to my rescue with a white blouse she let me borrow. No cameras were allowed and no purses, backpacks, or other baggage. Our guide held our things for us, but there was a place to check such things otherwise.

Two by two we filed in to the mausoleum, passing many soldiers that checked that we were following other signs of respect. We weren't allowed to speak once we were inside. Our hands were to be at our sides.

Ho Chi Minh's body is still being displayed. He died in '69, the year I was born, in the midst of the Vietnam War (they call it the American War here.) Our guide said that President Ho wished to be cremated and buried in three different locations, in the north, central, and south of Viet Nam. Unfortunately, they weren't able to honor those wishes because of the war, so they decided to preserve his body instead. The Russians had the technology to do this and helped the Vietnamese. He is kept underground at a certain temperature for most of the day and only brought up for display for a few hours in the morning. One month of a year he is taken off display to have maintenance done. It used to be done in Russia, but the Russians shared their expertise and now the Vietnamese do it themselves.

He looks like he died yesterday.

The mausoleum is a complex of buildings. One is the presidential palace, a beautiful yellow stone French colonial building that our guide called "The Yellow House" that no president lives in. It is for visiting dignitaries. Ho Chi Minh's house is in the complex, too. It is a simple wooden house on stilts, two rooms above, a bedroom and study, and a open air dining room under the stilts. It is also guarded with soldiers in white uniforms and has been lovingly cared for.

Our guide, Ha, told us a story for our amusement about one visiting dignitary that stayed in the "Yellow House." It was a certain President George W. Bush who visited a couple years ago. Apparently he wanted to bring 2000 body guards! There wasn't enough room to accomodate all of them, so they negotiated down to 700. Then, at some point President Bush wanted to go somewhere (I forget where, but it was only a few blocks away.) Any other president, apparently, would have just walked. But no, George W. needed to have a car and an escort and it turned into a parade.

Ah, to be the laughing stock of the world.

After we went to the mausoleum, we went to a Military Museum for the American War. It was a simple museum, not large, with an assortment of helicopters, tanks, destroyed airplanes, and the like on the outside. Inside they showed a movie about the war in English. I've seen so many showing the American perspective that it was fascinating to see the Vietnamese perspective. Apparently, the Vietnamese are very proud of their ability to fend off larger enemies. I've heard it described as a "David and Goliath" syndrome. They fought off China for a thousand years, fought for their independence from France, and then defeated the mighty Americans. They are very proud of themselves.

There was one item on display that I had a visceral reaction to. I am not a paint me red white and blue patriot. I am not terribly proud of my government and their policies, especially recent ones. But I do love my country. It is my home.

They had a captured American flag on display. It was a simple exhibit in the corner of the museum, of all the flags of the "puppet" South Vietnamese government. Among those was an American flag they had captured during some battle during the war.

I wanted to take down that flag, stuff it under my shirt, and take it home with me. (I didn't, of course.)