Textick

The following is a draft of a creative non-fiction piece. The laptop is extremely difficult to edit on, so this is the first draft I wrote last night. Apologies for thinking reading my ramblings would only take a few minutes! I’ve been spending a couple of hours every night typing, and my journal is already almost 30 pages long! And it hasn’t even been a full week yet! So enjoy my creative non-fiction tale of tourism, tunnels and travelling!

Thursday, 1st December, Bee-Saigon Hotel, 7:45pm

AK-47’s are really fucking loud. I have never felt more sick than when I stood, watching bright-eyed tourists buying bullets by the clip, then rushing to the firing range. We’d just spent an hour watching how the South Vietnamese had stood against the US and the North Vietnamese, the elaborate traps they had set, the fear they had lived in from these exact guns that people were now getting a cheap thrill out of hiring. I am passionately disgusted.
Only days before, James and I had been debating whether we would fire guns if given the opportunity. He said that in Cambodia, he refused to fire guns because chances were that the weapons were used to really kill people. I said that chances were that the guns here had really been used as well. Before we came, I had once also wondered whether it was wrong to fire an AK-47 if given the opportunity, and I had leaned towards thinking it would be a fun and exciting experience. I am truly sickened by the knowledge that I had ever thought that. James had started saying no, leaned towards yes. Even yesterday he was contemplating it. He had a friend who had done it when she was here, and nowhere else in the world offers the same opportunity. But then we went to the War Remnants Museum.
“Still want to shoot a gun?” I asked.
James just shook his head resolutely. So I thought we would consequently be avoiding all firing ranges.
But then we went on a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, and found ourselves unwittingly being given the chance.
The tour began early, from Happy Tours agency on Bui Vien St. for $3.60US per person, we got an air-conditioned bus, a guided tour and a free lunch. James gestured for me to get on into the bus seat first, and I wondered why. I thought he was being kind, and offering me the window. But then I saw the raised section for the wheel, wedged my knees in under my chin and prepared to be very, very tightly compacted for the next hour and a half. Which I could have handled. Had we not got lost. We circled the city for at least an hour before we got onto the highway that lead to the Cu Chi Tunnels.
Our guide was Jackie, an Asian Cowboy who looked like an extra in a David Lynch film. He was 54, his hair was a floppy, layered affair, and he frequently flicked it out of his face with a showy toss of his head. His shirt had a pointy collar and his pants were tight. All he needed were spurs and a string-tie. Or fangs, to be Cat from “Red Dwarf.” He spoke a lot of what he was going to show us, and often ranted about his time in the war. He was difficult to follow, and I didn’t find him completely trustworthy, but I thought he said he was an interpreter. He mentioned his time on the Mekong, when he would ask fellow soldiers not to shoot, because it was impossible to tell whether people were North or South Vietnamese. He stroked his face, folded with gentle wrinkles, and said,
“All same, okay? All same, same, but different.”
Backpackers are easy to spot, because they’re the ones who fall asleep on the tour buses. They’ve seen so many, they can’t stay awake through the banter that fills the time until the bus reaches the main location. Those with less time, those who are spending more and expecting greater things, listen alertly and ask questions.
The Cu Chi Tunnels were a labyrinth of tiny passages, spanning 250km. Now only a few kilometres remain, due to bombing. The tunnels were the home of the Viet-Cong, serving as a safe haven from the attack of the US. The tunnels were so narrow that only the Viet Cong could access them; US soldiers shoulders were too broad to fit down the 20cm square entrances. Soldiers that tried often got stuck, or fell prey to macabre traps. As it was a guerrilla-controlled area outside of Ho Chi Minh City (then Saigon), the US were determined to exterminate. They carpet-bombed the area, and saturated the town with Agent Orange. Despite this, the Cu Chi people survived and fought on; if a tunnel collapsed they would rebuild the next day. They were resolute, recycling everything (even old tyres became makeshift shoes), and they lived by Ho Chi Minh’s motto “a gun in one hand and a plow in the other.” At the end of the war, the town was gone. Nothing existed but wastelands. Now it has been rebuilt, exhibiting classic 1970s architecture and shanty-houses.
Our first stop on the way to the tunnels was a small rice paper workshop. A young woman smiled at us as she spread invisibly thin rice paste onto bamboo mats. And I had my first experience with squat toilets. I had so far managed to avoid this experience, but after getting lost and driving around for half an hour longer than expected, I couldn’t hold on a second longer. I gazed down at the dirty blue bowl and thought, How am I going to do this, manage not to touch the seat AND not pee on myself? Without too much extraneous detail, I managed. It took awhile to get the whole urination thing happening in a position that squished up my bladder so much. Then I looked for toilet paper. Hmm.
A small girl ran around our feet, but made no real eye contact. She seemed shy, but fascinated by our presence. We feasted on cracked pepper rice paper; it was like the lovechild of prawn crackers and poppadums. We ate more than everyone else. It was at this point that I noticed that, due to our being non-smokers, we often start off tours by being a little isolated from other backpackers. They huddled together, sharing lighters and breathing in each other’s toxic fumes, while we stood back pigging into the rice paper. As we stood, eating, three girls cycled past on their way to school. They almost rode straight into the parked bus as they stared at our touristy selves.
As we drove to the tunnels we passed the ex-US army base, which the tunnels lead up to. It was 6km from the main tunnel base, which would take 11 days of crawling to reach. Now a communist banner flies brightly over the gates.
The tunnels are one of the most popular tourist attractions in Vietnam, so there were dozens of tour buses in the parking area. We began with a short video and a brief talk, then walked through the jungle to view some tunnel entrances. Sweat was like a permanent coating on our faces; the trees managed to cool us down a little, but soon the humidity still overcame us all.
The tunnels were made without wood or nails. The soil is a hard clay, and even as we walked we marvelled at the firmness of the land beneath us. The VC dug through this rock-solid earth using bamboo shovels and woven mats for gathering the excess sand. I must confess, however, that I am quite claustrophobic. As we gazed down at the 100 metre tunnel that tourists are allowed to crawl through, I could feel the panic already setting in. Hell, I break into a cold sweat just watching people crawl through air-conditioning vents in movies!
“I’ll watch the bags,” I said. One woman told me that you could see the light as you crawl, it’s not that bad. I told her,
“The whole time I’m down there, I’ll just be wanting it to end. There’s no point; I know my limits.”
I took the backpack and snapped photos of James descending into the tunnel, then I walked to the end to await his emergence. After about 1 minute, he climbed up again. He had only crawled twenty metres. Others had crawled the 100 metres. He was dripping with sweat when he came out, out-of-breath, exhausted and looking decidedly relieved.
“You would have hated that,” he said. “It was hot, stuffy and very, very dark. It was awkward to move because there were big dips and I kept hitting my head. The bottom was flat and the roof was arched, and I started off waddling like a duck, but gave up and ended up crawling on all fours. The guy in front of me kept stopping as well; he had a video camera and he was going so slow that I just gave up and climbed out as soon as I could. It would have been fine if you could have just crawled straight through, but there were too many people down there, and I was probably too tall.”
We walked over to join a couple of Irishmen who knew me fear and said,
“You would not have liked that!” They had gone further with James, and said that later the tunnel got so low that you had to lie flat to get through. And apparently this tunnel has been widened for tourists.
The oxygen to the tunnels was received through bamboo tubes, and the tunnels were at three main depths; three metres, five metres and ten metres. The first level was for day-to-day living, the second level and third levels were for hiding, moving and attacking. Every tunnel was connected, and Jackie claimed that someone had once said that even the greatest architect couldn’t design anything as wonderfully intricate as the tunnel network the Viet Cong had made. Seeing the tunnels was an extraordinary experience, and it is clear why they are such a drawcard for tourists. The sheer manpower, dedication and intensity with which they must have been built is worthy of high admiration and respect. Even if it is as an external viewer rather than a crawler, the Cu Chi Tunnels are a must-see attraction in Vietnam.
Once the US found out about the tunnels, they set about attempting to destroy them. Thus, the Viet Cong concocted traps, both to lay in the jungle and to set up in the entrances to tunnels.
The traps were stomach-turning. One hinged trapdoor swung around to reveal a pit filled with ½ metre spikes of bamboo. Metal and wood contraptions were placed in pits to capture soldiers as they walked. Some tunnel entrances were booby-trapped. If the VC went right, they were safe, if they went left it was a trap. During the day, they would change the side the trap was on, to confuse and outsmart any spies. The spikes were placed at a downward angle, so the soldiers would fall to their waist and then be unable to get out, the spikes stabbing into their sides. Our tour guide assistant, a young soldier who walked around with us, held up one wooden frame covered in spikes.
“Souvenir,” he said, and demonstrated how a soldier’s leg would go through the downward spikes, the sole of the foot landing on a spike at the bottom. When he would have tried to pull his leg out, the downward spikes would have stopped this, leaving the trap stuck on the soldier’s leg. The tour guide placed the frame on his leg and hopped up and down on the spot.
“Souvenir!” he said again, with a grin. One swinging trap was designed to hang from a branch. It was hinged, so if the soldier was particularly quick and managed to stop the trap by grabbing the stem, the bottom half would swing forward and stab him in the stomach, groin and legs.
After seeing all this, my whole body still aching with the horror of these contraptions (James told me that often excrement was spread on the spikes, so if a person was injured, the wound would become infected), we headed toward the shooting range.
“Are you going to do it?” I asked James. He shook his head. He didn’t need to say anything.
Over half the tour group eagerly opened their wallets to buy a ½ dozen AK-47 bullets. Two racks of guns stood beside the counter, sinister and grimy. The ends looked sharp, the handles looked scaly, with a banana-shaped clip. This is too playful and child-like a term. It was like the unseen half of a waning moon in a starless sky. It was one big, black gun.
And here were people excitedly parting with their holiday money to hold one of these heavy weapons, to become for one split second a part of the war. Cheap thrills.
“This is war tourism at it’s worst,” I said to James.
“I can’t believe I ever even thought about doing it,” he said. We sat on a row of chairs, facing away from the range. It was concealed behind flimsy canvas, but even the knowledge it was there was enough to make me feel ill.
James and I were chatting to the Irishmen, who had also opted not to shoot. We discussed how it was so different to visit places of war and allow yourself to be affected emotionally by the horror of the past, to empathise with the suffering and attempt to understand the experience of war. It is another thing entirely to hold a gun up and fire as adrenaline courses through you. Then suddenly the shed rocked with the echoing blast of a gun. We all fell silent. I closed my eyes, tried to consciously slow my racing heart and settle my twisting stomach. Another gunshot. Then another, and another. With my eyes closed I could imagine villagers crouching in tunnels beneath me, feeling the ground vibrate with explosions, feeling the air quiver with the shudder of bullets screaming past. I imagined held breath, thundering hearts, crying children being muffled by mother’s hands.
I opened my eyes and watched those who weren’t shooting looking silently at their feet. AK-47’s are really fucking loud.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Travel, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.