Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City November 27, 2002

The Cu Chi tunnels are about two hours outside of HCMC. This network of tunnels stretches some 250km underground, on three separate levels, and with all sorts of protection devices. This is the trap door for one entrance. You can see the door at left, lying on the ground. After the guide put the door back in place, even though we knew where it was, we could not see it.

Just barely tall enough to walk through hunched over, and some places just large enough to crawl through, these were the meeting places and living quarters for many soldiers from 1945 to 1975.

This is a termite mound – except that it also is the exhaust for a kitchen that is entirely underground

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The tunnels were fundamental to the Vietcong forces in the area around HCMC, and the US and French both tried to get rid of them. At one time the US actually built part of a military base directly over a tunnel system, and didn’t figure it out for quite a while. The Vietcong troops were divided into 24 person squads.

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