Cu Chi, Cu Chi, Cu

On the way to our tour today, we stopped at a lacquer factory. Normally, this is a frustrating necessity of a discount tour. But this one was actually pretty interesting. They lacquer a piece of wood and then either paint the piece or glue egg shell fragments to the piece to make the design.

Then they glaze and polish the piece...
… making something like this.
Now on to the main event...

Cu Chi is a village in southern Vietnam that was occupied by the Viet Cong, who dug tunnels under the village and surrounding area.

This is our animated tour guide explaining to us about the tunnels. The tunnels had as many as three levels for moving and living. The only thing that could penetrate all levels was a B-52 bomb, which could reach 10 meters under the ground.

Then we watched a propaganda film that went something like this… Cu Chi was a happy village with lots of fresh food each season. The families were happy and the children played and went to school. Then the Americans came, like devils, and bombed this happy, innocent village. (That is nearly a direct quote.) Of course, there was no mention that we were there to defend the South Vietnamese against the invading Viet Cong. Then it went on to praise villagers who were awarded medals as “American Killing Heroes”. A waste of celluloid, but I guess in their country, they can say what they want to.

The tunnels were dug by the Viet Cong during the war with the French and then expanded to both fight and hide from the Americans and South Vietnamese armies. Here is an entrance to a tunnel with a volunteer demonstrating how they were used. The entrances were so small that it made them pretty hard to find.
This picture of Jennifer gives you an idea of how small these tunnels were. The Viet Cong moved through these tunnels for miles and at times lived in them for weeks.

After Cu Chi, we went to the War Remnants museum. It was weird to see US vehicles in someone else’s museum. Again, the level of biased inaccuracy was high at this museum.

Jennifer had been itching to go for a cyclo ride since we arrived, so we really got ourselves into the middle of the traffic.

Since it was our last night hanging out together, we sat in an open air café drinking, playing cards, and listening to great music. I have to admit that it was a little spooky to sit in an outdoor café in Saigon when Paint It Black was played. It just reminded me of all of those movies and TV shows I watched as a kid, where this happy, relaxed scene was followed by a child dropping off a bomb and running away. But we tried not to think about things like that and just enjoyed our evening.