Cu Chi Tunnels

In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain relates a story of a young traveler's enthusiastic exercise in journal keeping. The kid involved is certain that a well-kept travel log is worth a million dollars. For the first few days, he carefully reports longitudinal climate updates along with intricate re-countings of goings on both aboard the ship and on shore. Of course, by the time the boy reaches Paris he finds the notebook a complete nuisance and can think of no worse punishment than forced travel reporting.

I am currently laboring through the great American author's 500 page account of his voyage through Europe and the Holy Lands. If Mr. Twain included the above anectode as a barely veiled commentary on the tedious process of completing The Innocents Abroad, it certainly shows in the writing. It is boring as hell. And it is funny because out of all of Twain's classics, Innocents was the best seller during his lifetime. I guess back then folks didn't have much in the way of travel blogs and the 'pickens was slim.

Like Twain, I set out to document every aspect of our voyage, noteworthy or not. Unlike Twain, I lacked the discipline and am now forced to go back weeks in my mind, recount past happenings to the best of my ability, and try not to teeter too far into the realm of fiction (or facial hair).

Luckily, in this great digital age of ours, I have the ability to scroll through the hundreds of pictures recently saved on our laptop. Surely a few will jog my memory. Like this one for example...

Yes, it is just yet another picture of me, but look closely and you will see the beginnings of an Ethan Hawke inspired mustache and chin whisker growth. I wished to look like some made up "Communisto" during my time in communist Vietnam. I even bought a green NVA army hat and a tin of cigarillos to complete my look. The idea failed miserably, or maybe it didn't and I just wasn't prepared for the results. First off, a mustache will never work for me because I have 1) A weak chin and 2) Very little space between the bottom of my nose and the top of my upper lip. Just think about the great mustaches of the world. Tom Selleck comes to mind right?

See there? His face is made for a mustache. Strong chin, easy thumb distance between nose and lip...it's only natural. Now let's try without...

Good lord, he looks like a camel. Hey, come to think of it, old Sam Clemens sported one of the most famous 'staches in American history. Observe:

Look at that old white bushy bastard. Just goes great with the Bea Arthur permanent. You know, growing a mustache like that takes discipline. It gets dirty. It tickles. It makes you look like a perv at first. You just have to persevere. I couldn't do it. Barely lasted a week. But in writing, we press on...

We took a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels on our third day in Ho Chi Minh City via jet boat north up the Saigon River. Click on the link in the last sentence if you are interested in learning about the history of the tunnels. It is quite interesting, but I won't bore with the details other than to say they were a network of tunnels used by the locals in guerrilla fighting- just one more reason why Vietnam was such an impossible place to fight.

You could tell that our tour guide had been around for awhile. Although he was only in charge of an Australian family of five along with Sami and myself, he took the reigns in the video room and explained the layout of the land to anyone who would listen. He was a funny guy, always looking for an extra second to take a puff of his cigarette. He said that he fought for the South Vietnamese Army during the war and mentioned on numerous occasions that he had family in the US. It was difficult to understand him at times, and at one point he said something secretive to us along the lines of "I am not supposed to tell you this because we are communist and I could get in trouble, but..." I wish I would have been paying better attention.

A few things stuck out on the tour. First, there were giant craters left in the cleared forests, the results of US bombing.

Bomb Crater

Second, there were all kinds of hiding areas and they were always very small and narrow. To get down into one you had to hold the cover straight over your head as you lowered yourself.

Third, there were a number of vicious looking traps designed to batter, impale and trap intruders.

Fall into the rolling trap and you are gonna get cut.

The actual tunnels themselves were an extremely narrow and intricate network. I had to either crawl down on my hands and knees or duck walk the entire time.

The tunnels spider off into a number of exits but I wanted to make it all the way through so I stuck to the main passage. I eventually ran into a group of Korean tourists. Go figure.

Here is the Korean tourist I got stuck behind

Later on we ate tapioca which grows in the woods. There is also a popular firing range there where for about ten bucks, you can fire off 10 rounds of an AK-47 or an M-60. We passed on the guns but said yes to the tapioca. It's not that I am against shooting automatic weapons, it's just that my wife is against spending ten dollars.

Tapioca

We got back to Saigon early enough to check out the market, and after taking a couple of laps, I settled into a stall and ordered a delicious bowl of crab soup. If only I had a thick mustache to help me savor the flavor, I might have been more eager to describe it in this blog entry. As it turns out, I only have the picture to look back on. And I probably would have put it off for a month anyway.

This was some awesome crab soup