Vietcong 3: Tunnels

 Day 3 - Tunnels

There is a day where authentically local becomes too authentically local, and that day was this morning.  We started off the day with a breakfast of Pho around the corner, which sounds good, but "authentic" pho means they're throwing tripe (stomach) in there even if you order "Shrimp" (a noun which can be disappointingly singular).  

Actually, lets back up. I fell asleep at 3-something (maybe 4-something) in the morning, because living three deep in a one room apartment means the lights and noise don't stop until the last person goes to bed - especially when one of those people will pull the pillow off your face because she's video-chatting and wants to tease you for her friends.  Then we all woke at 6:30am because the lights and noise start when the first person rises... Hopefully that puts the rest of today's post in jet-lagged context.

The next flaw with authentically local is deciding to take the bus (meaning three busses) to save 90% over a taxi. 90% which is also known as $35 round trip. And this journey (along with the rest of the day) is undertaken while wearing stupid-looking rice-hats and carrying 3 bags full of food and water. Not backpacks or purses, bags you have to carry in your hands the whole time. An entire day's worth of groceries, because groceries are cheap, restaurants are expensive, and the price-gougers at the gift shop will charge you $0.35 for a bottle of water. 

Now we add the neighbor kid deciding to tag along. /Tai/ is 9 and was super excited, and his mom figured it was fine to send him off with Lou, Mom, and I. This was actually adorable and a great example of the close-knit community they have, so we can strike that from the "too-authentic" list.  Unfortunately, his teacher was unwilling to let him skip class today despite the educational nature of this outing, so we got a panicked call on the bus and hopped off a few stops down the line so his dad could scooter over and collect him. Anyways, the feel-good reprieve is over, back to the rant:

I know what you're thinking - there's an easy solution to all this! Sleep on the bus! That imminently reasonable suggestion is complicated by sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, the quality of the pavement (or lack thereof), the quality of the suspension (or lack thereof), and the propensity to use the horn as a greeting, a threat, a warning, or - and I swear I'm not exaggerating - at least once on a completely deserted stretch of road, just for the fuck of it. In case that wasn't enough, the turn signal is hooked into a siren. It's a polite siren, not as loud or as piercing as an emergency siren, but there's no other word for it, and apart from a few sporadic reprieves it spent the whole trip singing it's heart out. So I saw an interesting slice of life across the city followed by some great views of the farmland around Saigon. Rice patties, of course, but also a lot of oxen and rubber plantations. 

Finally (after another hike), we arrived at our destination: The tunnels of the Viet Cong! My first priorities were to find the gift shop, buy a coke, and pound it. The caffeine worked a treat, but it's worn off by now, so I wrote this back in the 3-hours-of-sleep temperament. You know, for authenticity.

The plan is to rewrite the rest of this when I'm not sleep deprived (or more likely the deprivation is masked with caffeine) but here's the notes:

Background: 100km of tunnels, started decades earlier for the previous war, US destroyed 10km, etc etc

1st was a diorama show. Massive diorama. All in Vietnamese obviously. Probably propaganda. But the diorama was hundreds of square feet, featuring smoke machines, airplanes and helicopters on wires, tanks driving around - it was super fun even if I didn't understand a word.

2nd was a short film, in terrible CGI, showing the tunnels. This one was definitely propaganda, but at least it had subtitles.

3rd was the walking tour:

•          replica period village
•          punji pits (they never mention biocontamination, apparently that's a step too far)
•          more replica villages
•          single short tunnel - slightly enlarged for tourists - you can duck over and walk decently
•          stop for lunch where we saved at least $2 by carrying everything all day
•          whatever at least the bags are slightly lighter now
•          the stupid hats came in clutch though, super hot out
•          landscape is reminiscent of  Pont-du-Hoc - craters everywhere

4th was a reenactment. They had a field full of broken tanks, and two Viet Cong soldiers stalked around the field between smoke machines, while speakers played the sounds of helicopters, bombs, and gunfire.  Suddenly, two American soldiers show up with m16s on the far side of the field. "I bet they die." Seconds later, they're shot by the plucky rebels, to cheers and applause in the crowd, ending the reenactment.  This was the end of the tour, and I was slightly disappointed we only saw one short tunnel, however: 

5th was the tunnel tour

         Apparently the tunnel tour was an on entirely different ticket! This one starts with us being assigned to various pavilions (we got the English language pavilion) to watch a propaganda film. Legit propaganda, no nuance.... Period footage of men smiling and planting rice with rifles on their back. Some small girl with a sniper rifle being awarded the "Status of Hero for Killing Americans" - No lie that's what it's called. 

         Finally, we finally came to the tunnel-tour! You start with a simple tunnel, only 8 meters long, and enlarged like the tunnel in the previous tour. Obviously a strainer tunnel to sort the tunnelrats vs the surface-rats, but at least it's what we came here for.

The second tunnel was about the same length, but with original dimension - including the opening. The tourguide pointed to the ground, where hidden under the leaves a small rectangle of wood was hidden. And it's small -  you lower your rifle in first, followed but your feet, body, head, and then arms. You need to do arms-last both to rotate your shoulders narrow enough to fit in, but also so you can replace the lid behind you.  If you're fat (or kitted out like a modern soldier), you're out of luck.  Not to mention, it'd be super easy to get shot doing any/all of this. The tunnel itself is duckwalkable, which is a slow and cumbersome process, but definitely easier than any legit spelunking. 

We then did a few more tunnels, these were long enough to feature multiple rooms/cubbyholes, artificial (and not period-correct) lighting, and definitely wore you out. One of these cubbyholes had a well (you didn't want to risk getting shot over potentially contaminated water). Luckily the off-shoots were blocked off so you couldn't get lost, but it would have been a maze back in the day - and these were all the top-level tunnels, during the war there were 3 levels of tunnels reaching 10m deep. These tunnels would let you out in various medical shelters and fighting pits - or occasionally craters.

Another photo Lou just threw in a groupchat :/

The last tunnel was the longest. A short start lead you into a large meeting room - which featured a punji pit in the corner.  Cleverly, this feature was because they knew American troops would automatically flank upon entering rooms, so a hiding a pit in the corner adjacent to the entrance had a 50% chance of eliminating an attacker. From the meeting room, you could take a short tunnel to the surface, or the long, tiny tunnel. Obviously, we took the long tunnel. Bear crawling was definitely easier than duck walking, though a few sections forced you to walk hands and knees. Again, one is reminded how utterly suicidal it would be to attack these.

This last tunnel spit you out at the end for the snack break, where they served Cassava  - the local delicacy. Cleverly, cassava - just like crawling through 100m of tunnels - makes you thirsty and they have water for sale right there! But we saved that $0.50 AGAIN.  And then mom stole the leftover cassava, slipping it into our bags and saving even more money.

We took a brief look at the kitchen so they could show off the smoke tunnels - which would cool and filter the smoke, allowing it to emerge 100s of meters away from the cooking fires - even so, they would only cook just before sunrise, so the smoke would blend with the early morning mists. And that wrapped up the tour. We retraced our morning route, hiking down to the bus stop and catching several rides back through the worsening traffic. Lou - like a true local - slept the whole way, 

Once back in the neighborhood we stopped by the parents of one of Lou's childhood friends, who have a stand selling coconuts full of coconut jelly. It was, for someone who likes neither coconuts nor jelly - better than expected but still gross.

We then said hi the boy we couldn't bring with us, who was still sad over missing out, and had a dinner at home, with cassava for desert. They were in a videochat with ??? in Vietnamese the whole meal, so I don't know if I said a single word the entire time.

We considered heading downtown for the NYE celebrations, but since we're already exhausted and we have an early flight tomorrow morning... we elected to stay in and pack. Possibly because mom would have murdered Lou. We did head out at midnight to walk a lap of the block with her sister, which was quite calm. We could hear some fireworks in the distance, we saw a handful of people chilling like ourselves, but everyone was largely at home and asleep - apparently Lunar New Year (3 weeks away) is the one that matters, and NYE is a non-event outside the bar districts.