Saigon photos and Cu Chi Tunnels

As mentioned before, Saigon seems to be dominated by motorbikes. So I've put a photo of a SMALL parking lot for motorbikes. They are everywhere.














Trying to cross the road (the picture doesn't do it justice)









The wiring system in Saigon seems very unsafe. I can imagine that one day one of the telephone poles holding all of the wires is going to break creating lots of problems.






From Saigon I took a half day trip out to the Cu Chi tunnels which are located just to the North of Saigon. The tunnels here are a remainder of the tunnels used by the Viet Kong during the Vietnam war. In this area only they extended for over 200 km and were all dug using small hand shovels and baskets to move the waste material. The most difficult job was disposing of the waste material as any large piles or newly dumped soil would be visible from the sky and American bombers could easily bomb those targets. Therefore to keep the tunnel locations hidden the Vietnamese could only dump the waste material into existing bomb craters or carry it all the way to the Saigon river and dump it there. The tunnels themselves are all quite tight and the deeper underground they go the smaller they get. The average height of the tunnels is approximately only 60 cm high and 40 cm across, a tight squeeze for someone like myself crawling through them. They also went to depths of 30 meters to be able to survive bombs; however, they contained several "fighting rooms" at only a few meters depth from where they would attack any soldiers.






Entrance to one set of tunnels
















Tunnel system (60 cm high x 40 cm wide)







In addition to the tunnel network in the area the Vietnamese created several traps for any American soldiers to fall into and die. Most of the traps were some sort of covered hole in the ground filled with sharpened bamboo stakes ready to impale anyone that fell in.



Trap with bamboo stakes