The Lawrence Clan are back in Vietnam for another experience / holiday and all is well. Currently we are in Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, depending on who is asking. When I brought Edwin and Trixie here in June we all felt that our trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels was an all too brief experience and so we were keen to go again, and explore the place more thoroughly. Instead of joining an organised tour we hired a car and driver to take us to the less visited Ben Douc centre and somehow managed to get on to a tour run by an excellent guide. (All things considered it certainly worked out better value travelling this way.). As well as being informative about the tunnel network of 250km, day to day life, above ground versus below ground happenings he also managed to infuse his tour with gentle humour, not easy when working in a different language and in a place full of grim history.
The tunnel designers and diggers were an ingenious lot, creating a three level system, interspersed with meeting rooms, kitchens, operating theatres and ventilation shafts. The smoke filtration arrangements were cunningly designed to prevent cooking smoke from being detected by aircraft. The ventilation pipes were disguised as rocky outcrops and littered with cigarette butts belonging American soldiers, who had carelessly discharged them, only for their North Vietnamese enemy to collect them up and use to confuse sniffer dogs. Pretty ingenious considering the whole area had been blanket bombed with napalm, cleared of foliage and left as a desert for the South Vietnamese and American armies to patrol and defend.
Probably the most chilling act of ingenuity were the defensive booby traps inside the tunnel systems. Reasoning that the meeting / planning room in the tunnel complex was a major target for attack the tunnel makers put booby traps, filled with sharp bamboo in the four corners of the room so that any offensive invaders entering would immediately back into the nearest corner to take up the most effective shooting position, as per their training. The attackers would then soon find themselves falling into a deep pit and impaled on bamboo.
The tour today did make me ask myself this entirely reasonable question: if the level of ingenuity that went into the design and building of Cu Chi could have been combined with the same ingenuity that brought napalm into the world and then that collective ingenuity applied to diplomacy could the whole sorry conflict have been prevented?
On a more cheery note Ho Chi Minh City is still bustling with life and energy and we had a splendid dinner this evening.