So today you really felt the trip beginning to wind down. We had to be up at 7:30 to take a bus to the Cu Chi District of Ho Chi Minh City, to the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are the tunnels that the Viet Cong hid in during the war in which to attack the American base camps stealthily. We got to the tunnels and first watched a movie about the history about the people of Cu Chi and learned about the area during the war. Then we toured around the site seeing the secret manholes, traps, B52 bombshell holes and just got a general feel of the camp. Then we finally got a chance to crawl in the tunnels. It was incredible, completely dark and soooo small. You had to crawl on your knees the whole time; I can’t even imagine how it was to crawl miles in army gear and with a pack in those tunnels. We only were in them for ten minutes and I was dripping in sweat when we got out.
In the afternoon we went to the War Remnants Museum, which was only a block away from our hotel. The history of the War Remnants Museum is extremely interesting. Dr. Berman explained that about ten years ago the museum was called the “American War Crimes Museum” and was extremely anti- American and very graphic. Then the Vietnamese government changed the name again more recently to the “War Crimes Museum” which was a museum that had different sections based on the different countries that have been in wars with Vietnam. Now it is less vulgar and is more general towards any specific country and just shows the history of the wars Vietnam has been involved in.
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