James Galvin » Vietnam http://www.jamesgalvin.com Even a Stopped Clock Tells the Right Time Twice a Day Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:54:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 This is not Bowling, this is Nam.http://www.jamesgalvin.com/2007/07/29/secret-entrance/ http://www.jamesgalvin.com/2007/07/29/secret-entrance/#comments Sun, 29 Jul 2007 14:59:32 +0000 James http://www.jamesgalvin.com/2007/07/29/secret-entrance/ I’m out in Vietnam for the week… in Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City at the moment, and will probably be heading up to Hanoi and Sapa next weekend. I visited the Cu Chi tunnels today; it was simply unbelievable. The network of cramped underground tunnels was started in 1948 when the Vietnamese were fighting the French. By the time the Americans were involved, the tunnels extended for 200km, with levels as deep as 30m underground. The design was ingenious – booby traps everywhere, tiny air holes every 10m (sometimes reached through a hollow bamboo cane), secret entrances, underground conference rooms, deeper tunnels with flaps to protect from poisonous gas and flame throwers, too deep to be reached by bombs. The American B52 bombers decimated the forest but most of the tunnels are still in tact. The Vietnamese recycled shrapnel from the American bombs, turning it into surgical instruments and spikes for traps.

Although I’ve heard about the tunnels so often in history and in the movies, the magnitude of it had never fully sunk in before. I was nearly sick just from crawling through a 20m stretch which has been widened to allow tourists to fit through… I don’t even want to consider what life was like for the thousands of soldiers who occupied the tunnels together. Saigon is great – I will write some more when I have time and will get some proper photos up too. The photograph on the left is of a hidden entrance to the Cu Chi tunnels. The guide is very small (only about 5 feet tall) but this does give an idea of how tight the tunnels were.

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