Lost in Cu Chi Tunnels

I woke up this morning not remembering what day it is. Is it Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Saturday? I think it is good to be lost when you are on vacation. I think it means that you are not counting the days and just relaxing and having fun. And boy am I having fun. Yes, that is right, I am having fun. To those who helped me plan this trip, listen and listen carefully…you were right, I was wrong, there was nothing to worry about. Although, I think it was from all the planning that is making this trip fun!

Today, I jumped on a tour to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels. The drive wasn’t too bad because I had read that even though the tunnels are 70km away, it talks about 2 hours to get there because of the traffic and the bad roads outside of Ho Chi Minh City.

B52 Bomb Crater at Cu Chi Tunnels

It was a small group of us, two couples from Australia and one lady from Austria. The Australian couples were quite nice as we chatted about our current trip, places to see, places to eat and how to bargain at the markets. The whole trip to and from the tunnels, we all chatted up a storm. Maybe that is why the ride was a quick one.

As for the tunnel, it was quite an interesting and amazing site of Cu Chi to see. The entrance whole are very small, the original one that is. They had made some entrances large enough for us North Americans with our broad shoulders to get into the tunnel. After you manage to get into through the entrance, then there were the tunnels itself. They were super dark and super small. If you wanted to go through the tunnels, you basically have to crab walk all the way though. And they mentioned that it could be about 20-40 meters from a room to another room. What is amazing is that, you have to do this in the dark. You absolutely cannot see in the tunnels so you have to know which way to turn or you might crawl right into a wall or crawl into different connecting tunnel and get lost (see, lost is the subject of the day!).

Lucky for us, they let visitors into the largest tunnel section. Now you may say, that is nothing, I can go through the tunnels, let me say this, it is very claustrophobic in the tunnels, once you are in and people are behind you, you cannot turn back as everyone behind you have to turn back. And, you can’t really turn back because there is not enough space to turn back, you have to crawl backwards! You may not know the feeling till you experience it yourself, for the 7 of us in my tour group, only 2 people actual when through the tunnels. Most of us got about 3 meters in and we were done!