On my recent trip to Vietnam, I got to take a guided tour of an area called the Cu Chi Tunnels. Most of the tour was above ground; it was a site where local villagers had turned guerrilla and violently opposed the US army. They dug over 150 kilometers of tunnels, where many of them lived in hiding for over a decade.
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We saw a number of these bomb craters in the area. |
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One of the guides showed us this secret entrance to an underground tunnel. The “lid” was well camouflaged! |
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Guerrilla fighters created many hidden traps like this one to catch and kill enemy soldiers. |
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Notice the sharp spikes inside! |
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We got to see and even climb in an old American tank. |
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The guide explains a series of recreated traps that the guerrillas set for American soldiers in the forest. Every one was ingeniously designed – and horrible to imagine falling into. |
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At last we got to actually explore one of the tunnels. That was my favorite part of the tour! It wasn’t nearly as big as it looks in the picture – definitely not for the claustrophobic! (Several people in our tour group chose not to go in.) |
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The tunnel got even lower and narrower than this! Needless to say, it was pretty dark (though the camera flash lit it up nicely). It was hard to imagine villagers living in these tunnels for so many years. |
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Looking up toward an exit from inside one of the tunnels. |