Mosquitos and a little bit of tunnelling?

This morning I woke up with a bite on my right eyelid that had caused it to swell up so much, I looked like Karen had punched me in the eye. But alls quite fair really as the little bastard mosquito had also bitten her across her left cheek, which has swollen enough to make it look as though I slapped her back. So it was no surprise that we got strange looks from the others when we went down for breakfast!

Today we were off to the Cu Chi Tunnels and having been so upset the day before at the War Memorial Museum, I was a bit nervous to actually go ahead with the tour - a couple of people from our group had decided they would prefer to do their own exploring of the city that day. But at the same time I was intrigued.

You see the tunnels were dug out by the Cu Chi villagers (who were all farmers) and used by the Viet Cong guerrillas during combat to hide out in, as well as to serve as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for many.

The tunnel systems were of great importance to the Viet Cong in their resistance to American forces, who would describe the conditions in the tunnels as "Black echo".

Life in said tunnels was far from easy. Air, food and water were scarce and there was constant infestations of ants, poisonous centipedes, scorpions, spiders and vermin.

The guerrillas would usually spend the majority of the day in the tunnels working or resting and then come out at night to scavenge for supplies, tend their crops or engage the enemy in battle. Sometimes, during periods of heavy bombing or American troop movement, they would have no choice but to remain underground for many days at a time. Sickness and disease was rampant among the people living in them, including malaria and intestinal parasites. However, the tunnels played a major role in the Vietnamese winning the war.

The Americans launched several major campaigns to find and obliterate the tunnel system as well as anyone found living in them. However this was not a simple task.

On the occasion when troops found a tunnel, they would often underestimate its size, the tunnels were tiny and narrow, as were most of the Vietnamese - particularly as their food was in short supply.

We stared down at one of the camouflaged openings! There was no way I was going to get in there, I mean literally! I'd be lucky to get my thighs past the entrance let alone my hips!! But both Nicola and Andrea - the skinniest in our group - showed us how it could be done.

Searching the tunnels during war time would prove pretty hazardous - often they were rigged with explosive booby traps or punji stake pits. Thankfully these had been removed from the ones we inspected! However there was a nice little display of the various 'Punji stake Pits' devised during this time. Each involved a trap door over a hole big enough for a man to either step or fall into with numerous BARBED spikes sticking up through the hole, be they lying vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Which ever way, they were generally meant to seriously maim as opposed to kill the US Soldiers.

Ironically it seemed that all the weapons/traps that the Viet Cong used were made out of those left behind or dropped by the US!

We were then offered the opportunity to climb through one of the tunnels -allegedly some of them had been modified to allow the slightly 'wider' tourists through!

I agreed to give it a go under the proviso that I did the short one, with a torch and someone had to come with me. Nicola seemed quite relieved as she was thinking the same thing. And so we climbed down the steps and entered the dark tunnel.

Nicola was ahead of me, shining the torch, crouched down on her haunches and waddling through like a duck. I was close behind and obviously not as fit as her; my thigh muscles didn't seem to be able to do what my brain was telling them to do (even though I've been doing yoga for the past few months!) and I kept falling forward every time I tried to waddle. And so instead I had to resort to crawling on my hands and knees, hoping that I wasn't going to break any of my nails that had been growing so well since I got out here.

The torch went out and I screamed, so did Karen who was suddenly right behind me. Nicola apologised explaining that her finger had come off the button and she switched the torch back on again. But by this point I had already conjured up various horrible images in my head of how we were going to be trapped down there in the dark and I advised Karen that it probably wouldn't be such a good idea to stick too close behind me! My heart was pounding, the sweat started to drip down my forehead, I could hear the blood rushing through my head and my heavy breathing. Were we ever going to reach the end? I heard Nicola call out: "I can see a light, I can see a light". Then we heard Andrea calling through to us from the exit. "Don't worry you're nearly here, not long now". I heaved a sigh of relief, it was nearly over ... Finally we were out, I was exhausted, it seemed to take forever, a lifetime ... I looked at my watch, it had taken us three minutes!!!

The temperature was getting hotter and I think we had all seen enough to know that for either side, The Vietnam War was horrific and shocking.

It seems to me that Vietnam has been a country constantly at war be it with the French, Chinese, French again, the USA or even themselves. Lets just hope that from here on in it will experience a future of peace and harmony. But then again, who knows what the people really think. I mean they still don't have the freedom to say!

And so this was our last tourist stop in Vietnam, the following day we were off to Cambodia. Another country torn apart by war ... And apparently good for shopping!