Boli goes Vietnam: Chu Chi Tunnels Colone and the last night in HCMC

Today was the last day for me in HCMC. In the morning I decided to go on a tour to the Chu Chi tunnels about 60 km north of HCMC. The tour was pretty touristic though since it is one of the major sights close to HCMC. In principle the tunnels were dug into the soil by the Vietkong during the war and the moved the everything below the earth. They built underground meeting rooms, workshops for making the traps and reusing the bomb shells to produce new weapons again. The tunnels had exist every 30 meters by a small exit 30 times 45 cm – nothing for me as a big westerner. I was afraid to get stuck in this one. The tactic was also that the small Vietnamese could fit into the tunnels, but the American GI could not. So the beginning of the tunnels was made smaller that the enemy could not go inside. The best part when you could submerge into the tunnels – luckily the tunnels were enlarged so that westerns could fit through the more easily – lucky for me – but it is still a claustrophobic feeling inside and at the end you have to crawls on all four legs – I made the 200 meters and the 60 in the smaller tunnel – but it is wet and humid and hot and little oxygen. They even built kitchens under the ground and the smoke was guided by a tunnel to a place as far as 200 meters away from the submerged kitchen and released through a mud hill. So even the Americans saw the smoke they did not know were the actual kitchen was located.

In the afternoon I made a round trip to the Chinese Quarter, a different world apart. The large Chinese market is still really a market where wholesalers buy and sell their stuff and the temples are superb. After packing my stuff I finished off the evening with my new Czech friend Michael and Veronica with bia ahoi for 7000 Dong = 0,25 Euro each until 2 am watching the crowds.