Yesterday afternoon we visited the Cu Chi tunnels, after the temple. It was an interesting day all around, as the first part of the tunnels tour is a video explaining their role and significance in the "war with America". They described the bomber pilots as "crazy American devils" and couldn't understand why "US bombs from Washington D.C. were coming when the states were so far away". The whole video looked like it had been shot in the '40s, and was narrated in very humorous English, with an extremely anti-American sentiment.
The tunnels were interesting and the life there seemed unbearable. We got to crawl through 30 meters of tunnel - and a crawl it was. I could stand up if completely bent over at the waist and crouching just slightly. But, you can't really walk in that position, so it was more of a squat and drag - squat and drag. To make matters more difficult, the lighting was a simple bulb placed every 10 meters or so. We had read in the book that life in the tunnels was always full of mosquitoes and scorpions, so as we squatted and crouched you could always feel a little tickle of a bug crawling up your leg or the back of your neck!
My favorite part was the demonstration on booby traps - seeing as how I have so much experience with them in my past. My sister, Jill, and our neighborhood friends would dig great booby traps to catch our arch-nemesis, the teenagers, when we played backahindefence (back behind the fence)! Jill, you will be happy to know that they used bamboo here too!
My favorite booby trap was the "Arm Klipping Trap" where as you try to climb out of a hole in the tunnel many bamboo spears would 'klip' your arm double fork style - trapping you to be found by the VietCong.
We are learning a lot about the war, even though we are getting a biased perspective.
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