Careful in Cambodia

Though first holding on for dear life, by the time I and the scooter driver reached the Cu Chi tunnels, I was getting used to passing and being passed with consistently less than a hands-breadth to spare. The drive from Ho Chi Minh City out to Cu Chi took about an hour and a half, though it is likely we would have made better time if the driver hadn't stopped six times to ask for directions. After the second time he asked directions, he turned back to me and said it had been a couple of months since he had been out this way. I was not impressed.

The Cu Chi tunnels, used during the Vietnam War, allowed six Vietnamese villages to live completely underground as the American military razed the forest with B-52s and numerous troop incursions. At one time there were as many as 16,000 Vietnamese living in the 250 kilometers of tunnels, directly beneath the feet of the American soldiers who for the longest time had no idea how the Vietcong were able to disappear so quickly into the jungle. The network of tunnels housed infirmaries, armament centres and dining halls in three levels' worth of tunnels. The first level, approximately 3 meters below the surface, could be penetrated by the bombs dropped from the air, though the second and third levels could only be breached by men brave enough to climb down into the pitch-black darkness to fight the Vietcong hand-to-hand.

My tour guide showed me around what has now become a well-known tourist attraction, pointing out the various traps the Vietcong had devised for American soldiers. These traps were designed to maim rather than to kill, slowing down a full unit as they would have to attend to the injured soldier. There were numerous points, camouflaged in termite mounds and slight rises in the earth, that allowed the Vietcong to pop out of the ground like gophers to shoot and then retreat. There were some surprises built into the tour, the best one being a land mine that went off only a few steps away from a group of tourists. I don't think it was a coincidence that the group was American. It was a dummy mine of course, though the noise alone was enough to get some of the group clutching their chests. I was much further away from the explosion, but even at a distance of thirty feet it gave me quite a start.

The highlight at the end of the tour was being allowed to go below ground, and I followed my guide down into one of the tunnels and hunkered along for what he said was forty meters. I had my doubts about that, because it felt more like a hundred to me. My guide was about 5'5'' and he didn't have any trouble at all, bending at the waist and walking along with his back parallel to the ceiling of the tunnel. Being a foot taller meant that my legs couldn't straighten, and I improvised a sort of hopping-shuffle as best I could. With my thighs burning and dripping sweat by the time we reached daylight, I couldn't imagine living like that for months on end. And that was before my guide told me they had enlarged that section of the tunnel-works for gangly tourists like myself.

I traveled out to the Mekong Delta the next day, which didn't turn out to be as much of an experience as all the alluring advertising made it seem to be, and today I crossed the border into Cambodia. One of Cambodia's distinctions is being the most heavily-mined country in the world, so I plan to stay on well-beaten paths when I venture out to Angkor Wat.