In 1991 Billy and Akaisha Kaderli retired at the age
of 38. Now, into their 3rd decade of this
financially independent lifestyle, they invite you
to take advantage of their wisdom and experience.
CU CHI TUNNELS
Billy and Akaisha Kaderli
Hotel
127 booked our Cu Chi tour.
Going to the tunnels is not new; getting there by boat on the Saigon River
is. In fact, this particular option was only 10 days old when we
signed up for it, and the promotional fee was $9 USD each! This included
air-con bus pick up, the boat ride with commentary,
and either a boat or bus trip back to the touring office. (It did not
include the entrance fee to the tunnels.) The good news
was that 30 years later, the mines from the war had finally, and just
recently, been swept from the river.
We left from the old US Navy shipyard and began a two hour
ride up river, with our Guide, Bil Le Binh
(or Billy).
Bil worked as a US Coast Guard soldier during
the
THE LUSH SAIGON RIVER
MOCK UP OF THE TUNNELS WITH SAIGON RIVER ON RIGHT
American War, and for most of the distance traveling to the site,
he told War Stories. These were fascinating, first hand accounts of
characters, events, backgrounds of the War, and the tunnels themselves. We
could not have had a more informed guide.
Upon arriving at Cu Chi, Bil collected the 65,000
dong ($4.33 USD) entrance fee from each of us. This money goes to the
Vietnamese Army, as well as for the upkeep of these
passageways and to pay the workers there.
"The Communist Army is quite wealthy
now," Bil explains, and points to the tennis courts in front of us.
The Cu Chi tunnels were built over a 25 year period
beginning in the 1940’s, and became an underground city. They housed up
to 10,000 people who rarely saw daylight for years at a time, choosing to
live, get married, have children and then teach these children, all
underground. In the evenings, they would leave this subterranean
existence, and furtively
tend to their crops.
At the height of their usage during the war, this
subsurface network stretched over 250 kilometers, from Saigon, to the border of
Cambodia. Initially used to terrorize the French Colonizers, they were
already in place when the Americans arrived in the 1960’s. In fact, the
Americans
WHERE ARE THE TUNNEL ENTRANCES????
WATCH YOUR STEP!
unwittingly set up camp on top of these
tunnels at Dong Du. The Viet Cong were able to appear and disappear
rapidly, causing havoc inside these headquarters. The Americans never knew
when or how. It was a huge fear factor.
Before viewing the tunnels we were shown a movie and a mock up of the
system, explaining how they had been created decades ago.
Cut into the clay soil by hand, using reed baskets to dump the earth into
the Saigon river, these interlinking corridors are a tribute to the prolonged resistance
of the Vietnamese, the undaunted will, persistence, intelligence and
resourceful character of the Cu Chi people.
This is holy ground to the Vietnamese,
and the tunnels are a popular, albeit strange, tourist destination.
Ingeniously planned, with many levels, escape routes and
booby traps, the Cu Chi people even had the smoke from their underground
kitchen vented many meters away so as not to bring attention to their
entrances. Even if these “spider holes” were found, they are so small,
that it was difficult for a western man to fit inside. Segments of these
tunnels infested with cobras or scorpions awaited any enemy that managed
to enter, ensuring their demise. As for the Viet Cong themselves, they
could always escape via a route opening to the Saigon River, and swim
away, or hide in the lush covering there. These tunnels have been bombed,
gassed, and flooded, but still remained functional and inhabited.
HERE THEY ARE! (SPIDER HOLE)
GUIDE WEARING VC SANDALS DEMONSTRATING ONE OF MANY TYPES OF
BOOBY TRAPS
With these brooding thoughts in mind, we
begin our personal view of the famous Ben Dinh Tunnel, deep into South
Vietnam. These are only 60 kilometers N.W. of Saigon, and belong to the Cu
Chi tunnel Network.
Before descending into the complex itself, we were shown trap doors, small
camouflaged entrances, fox holes, trenches, a myriad of different styles
of booby traps, a captured US Army tank, and huge vegetation reclaimed
bomb craters. The subject matter is grim to say the least, and one
certainly gets the idea of what life was like for everyone, on both sides,
during these wars.
Today, some openings have been expanded to admit
larger foreigners. We were allowed to creep
through them, and were reminded of a few things before entering. They
were 100 meters long, descending three levels, to about 10 meters below the surface. If
anyone panicked, there were also two separate
exits along the way, allowing us to leave at any time. Electric lights were
added as well, so it was easier to see. In the
“real” tunnels, there were only torches or gas lamps.
On this hot, humid
day, some chose to enter, and some, for reasons of their own, didn’t.
These tunnels were narrow and winding, dropping down, squeezing, and
rising again through the different
levels. Moving slowly, for fear of
getting stuck, we take our
time, in these tight spaces. Exiting via an area that was used for sleeping and
living, we are once again above ground. A model
room was then shown where the Viet Cong manufactured their weaponry - knives, bullets, traps made
of bamboo, even bombs. The VC make-shifted forges using US ordnance, and
collected snakes and scorpions to use in their booby traps.
Left with these menacing thoughts, we were then herded into a
dining/kitchen room area, again a mock up, where a staple
of the Cu Chi Viet Cong people was served; tapioca root dipped in a mixture of salt,
sugar and ground peanuts. This was accompanied by herbal tea.
Commentary continued, explaining the intricacies of Viet Cong strategy.
It was emphasized that no one, not even the local South Vietnamese, knew
who the Viet Cong were. “There was confusion everywhere”, Bil Le
punctuated. “Only the Viet Cong knew who the 'enemy' was. Everyone
looked the same.”
The VC men infiltrated the South as taxi
drivers, teachers, doctors. The women would go into town daily,
penetrating the social life at the markets, buying food, sitting on
corners, listening.
EXPANDED PASSAGEWAY (50cm by 100cm)
BILLY IN ONE OF THE ENLARGED SECTIONS
They married into the ranks of the officers of the US
military, having their children. They did this both for the money, and to
obtain information to give to the VC back at the tunnels. Many US military
men were lonely and homesick, and did not know this was happening to them;
only grateful for what they considered to be the comfort of a warm and
caring companion.
The women who stayed at the tunnels had
four crucial jobs. First was cooking, done once a day at four in the
morning. The smoke from the fires went through different filtering layers
of the tunnels and out many meters away from the kitchen. The smoke would
be dispersed, so that no one knew exactly
where the Viet Cong were.
The next job of the VC woman was to make
the uniforms for the guerilla fighters. This they did in the safety of the
underground tunnels. The VC uniform consisted of what they owned, clothing
they could sew, backpacks, and items picked off dead soldiers on the
battlefields; guns, belts, hats, bullets, fabric from the US uniform, or
any useful equipment.
Another noteworthy accessory was the famous
“Ho Chi Minh Sandals”. These sandals were made from US tires, stripped
from wreckage, and were lightweight when wet, so the VC could easily run.
This is important in a country that gets many meters of rainfall a year.
The Western military boot, although an effective protection from snake
bites, once wet, were very heavy and cumbersome. The GI could
not run quickly, and soon became tired. With the rubber sandals, there was
no problem with water weight. They would wear them to leave tracks in one
direction, then put them on backwards and return to where they
MR. BIL LE DISCUSSING THE DIFFERENT WEAPONS USED
DURING THE WAR
FOR ONE DOLLAR PER SHOT YOU CAN FIRE ANY OF
THEM!...AND THEY ARE LOUD!
came. This confused the “enemy”, making it look like there were more VC in the area, than
there actually were.
The third job of the VC woman was to “fight like the man”. There
are several hero stories of how these diminutive women lugged heavy
weaponry around, sitting in foxholes or the trenches, and shooting at the
enemy side by side with the men.
The last, and very important job of the woman was to make the maps for
the local men, showing where the treacherous booby traps were laid, and
also the deadly landmines. The VC men “let the women go first” to
check everything out, and then they marked the safe route on their maps.
Pondering all this persistence of the Viet
Cong, we then moved on to a “hospital room”, where it was explained to
us, the Viet Cong doctors would operate on the wounded. Since there was no
morphine, the doctors would tie up the injured soldier first, and then
they utilized acupuncture to stop the bleeding and induce pain free sleep.
This is where the patients were mended, hidden until the cover
of darkness, when they could be whisked away by boat to their
headquarters in Cambodia. Many died along the way, and Bil explained that
these men and women were then buried along the Saigon River, with no
identification, no marker. To this day, the Vietnamese government still
looks for the men and women buried along the river, hoping to find human
remains. “It is sad they have no cemetery”, Bil says. “They are lost
forever. We have nothing to give their mothers to show them that they are
dead or only just missing. Their families continue to wonder where, and
how they died.”
The final stop on the tunnel tour was the firing range. This is a
unique and unusual feature in that you are able to fire any number of
weapons used during the war. They charge one Dollar per bullet, which
allows you to fire, in a controlled and monitored setting, Russian made AK
47’s, American M 16’s, and machine guns, to name a few. The sound is
deafening, and ear protection is provided.
