Day 5: Friday 13 Oct 2000
Cu Chi, Ho Chi Minh City

This entry posted on:
15 OCT 2000 at 1000	Vietnam
15 OCT 2000 at 0400	UTC
15 OCT 2000 at 0000	EDT
14 OCT 2000 at 2100	PDT

After wandering back home late last night, with a short stop-off to retrieve Mike from the internet cafe along the way, I promptly passed out from drink and lack of sleep. But, like the trooper he is, Mike stayed up to insert the photos into our update. Quick props to Mike, who's really doing the Lord's work on this site. All I gotta do is brain-ralph into this computer once a day, but Mike...whoa Mike. The poor guy has some ponderously tedious hoops to jump through every night. Alright, alright, enough arse-kissin', we got tunnels to discuss. We arrived for our Sinh Cafe bus to Cu Chi at 8 am and off we went. It took about 2 hours to get there and by the time we arrived, I was getting very excited. I knew that most of the things I really wanted to do on this trip were there and I couldn't wait. But first, we had to sit through the Cu Chi propaganda. Those folks over at the War Remnants Museum are amateurs when it comes to propaganda. The Cu Chi boys are the pros. We had to watch this hilarious video before they would let us go to the tunnels. A video full of brave Vietnamese soldiers who "only wanted peace", and scared Americans running for their very lives in the face of the "intelligent and fierce Vietnamese Revolutionary heroes' counterattack." Our favorite bit came when the narrator mentioned that "even the American press agreed that it took people of great skill, intelligence, and natural ability to build such a tunnel system", and that "many architectural experts agreed that nothing like them has ever been seen before." Guys... they're tunnels for Godsakes. Cool tunnels to be sure, but still big long holes in the ground. After the video, the first stop on the tour was the "homemade weapons" display. This was full of a disturbing array of the nastiest booby traps I've ever seen. Though our guide Duc, as well as the video and pamphlets we were given, pointed out that these traps were designed, not for combat, but to protect the villagers from dangerous jungle animals, like tigers... and, well, I guess if marauding Americans prosecuting a war of aggression happened to fall into them in the process, well then the intelligent, peaceful farmers of Cu Chi could hardly be blamed could they? The worst trap was the one nicknamed the "hamburger maker." Thank god we got a picture of this one, because I could never hope to do it justice with a description. When Duc demonstrated how this little bastard worked, I felt physically sick. Imagine falling straight down into a two meter pit with this thing hovering at the top of it. Ugh! Duc was an interesting character. He looked fairly young, but later, I was talking with him and was surprised to learn that he had served in South Vietnam's 21st ARVN Division in the Mekong Delta and that, after the American withdrawal, he'd been forced to spend six months in a re-education camp, all of which gave Duc major street cred, as far as I was concerned. There was also a pretty entertaining piece of propaganda in the "home made" room, in the form of a picture of a group of US Marines medevac-ing their wounded out of an LZ. Pretty standard soldier-type stuff, but the caption read "Terrified American soldiers run in fear from the brilliant Cu Chi counter attack." Great stuff. And then, finally, we were led into the tunnels. There are three levels, each smaller than the last. The top level is about a meter high, level two 65 cm, and level three narrows to a slim 35 cm. in places, and stretches for about 100 meters. It is extremely hot inside the tunnels and as you reach the lower levels, you are very sweaty and are crawling on hands and knees through sticky mud, pushing your day back ahead of you so you don't get bottled up in the narrow spots. Not for the claustrophobic. There are escape hatches every 30 meters and only myself and one other person (a young Japanese woman) made it the whole way, through all three levels, without bailing. Alright, so I'm bragging. Sheesh! After the tunnels, we took a quick break for tea and tapioca, which is actually a sort of fruit with the consistency of a banana and the taste of stale caulk. Neither Mike nor I ate more than a tiny bit. And then came the highlight of the day, in my humble opinion. Duc announced that, if anyone wanted to fire a VC weapon, he would be happy to take us to the firing range. I, along with a smattering of others, raised my hand (most balked at the price of one dollar per bullet, minimum of five), and Duc suggested that we all trek over to the range to watch those of us who wanted to "burn our money." At the range, we had our choice of an M-16, AK-47, M1 Carbine, Thompson Sub-Machine Gun, a .45, or--for a mere 100 dollars flat-- the standard American grenade launcher of the period, I don't know the actual military designation, but I've heard it referred to as a "thump gun." I'm tellin' ya, if there had been a credit card reader at this place, we would've had some serious trouble on our hands. As a compromise, I chose ten rounds of AK-47, grabbed the weapon off the rack, and Schwartz and I marched off to the range. As you can see from these pictures, security around these lethal military assault weapons was alarmingly lax--I was particularly horrified when a young guy from Chicago who had just revealed to me that he had never fired a gun before, lowered the business end of a loaded M-16 and absent-mindedly pointed it right at me and Mike. I mean, at least when I goof off with a fully automatic weapon, I'm careful about it, dammit! :-) When it was my turn, a soldier loaded the magazine for me, pointed out the target I should aim for, and told me to go nuts. I would guess the targets were a good fifty feet away and maybe more (we took pictures so that y'all could judge for yourselves the level of my exaggeration). I hit the lion I was aiming for on the third shot and the soldier was so impressed he told me to start shooting for a much smaller target, a tiny red ball on top of a stick. Two rounds later, I hit that too, and the ball exploded in a red flare to let me know I'd hit it. Well, that was so cool, I decided to try and hit another one, which I did with my very last round. Three for ten my first time out on the AK. Not bad a'tall. Goddamn, but that was cool! And finally, our Cu Chi fun for the day ended, we hopped back on the bus to head back to HCMC. On the way back, we were chatted up by the strange guy from Chicago (the only other American we've seen in country so far) and a couple from Holland. They were very nice and actually tried to talk us into going to Hoi An rather than Hue, which we are actually considering doing. Hue, they said, is boring and very expensive, market forces seeming to have discovered the tourist appeal of the old French capital and adjusted prices accordingly upward. Arrival back at the Sinh left us the entire afternoon to shop and walk around HCMC. Both Mike and I remarked on how acclimatized we've become. We feel totally comfortable walking around this incredibly busy city no matter what the hour. And the aggressive street vendors don't even bother us that much anymore. We are also becoming quite proficient with chopsticks. At one point during dinner, I realized that I was holding a chicken bone with my sticks and pulling pieces of the meat off with my teeth. I could never have pulled that off a week ago. We actually ask for chopsticks now whenever they give us forks. Unfortunately for our wallets, during our shopping excursion, we discovered the wonders of the Southeast Asia pirated CD market. They're so cheap, only a buck-fifty each, but it just seems so wrong. Not that we didn't go ahead and indulge anyway, of course, but we wanted you to know that it really bothered us for about five seconds. We also did laundry today... well sort of. "Sort of" in that we paid the hotel staff to do it for us. That's one of the really great things about traveling in Vietnam. Everything is so cheap that you can afford to live like a five star customer on a two star budget. For both of us to do all of our dirty laundry is going to cost us just a few dollars, and we won't have to endure the hassle of sink-based laundry or the indignity of having our wet skivvies hanging all over the hotel room for the staff to view like a modern art display. Mike makes the solid point that sooner or later market forces will intervene as the locals start to figure out that they are severely undercharging tourists for things they would be willing to pay much more for. When that happens, the jig is most definitely up. Mike's advice, book your trip early and often. So anyway, tomorrow is our last day here in the former Southern Capital, as we fly out to Danang at 5:30 in the afternoon. See you tomorrow for Cho Lon and the Binh Tay Market and then on to Da Nang.

On to Day Six...

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