I TUNNEL DI CU CHI A SAIGON
Trail photos
Author
Trail stats
- Distance
- 1.24 mi
- Elevation gain
- 52 ft
- Technical difficulty
- Easy
- Elevation loss
- 52 ft
- Max elevation
- 111 ft
- TrailRank
-
64
5
- Min elevation
- 19 ft
- Trail type
- Loop
- Time
- one hour 28 minutes
- Coordinates
- 308
- Uploaded
- March 20, 2023
- Recorded
- March 2023
near Xóm Bà Thiên, Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam)
Viewed 308 times, downloaded 3 times
Trail photos
Itinerary description
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Extract from the travel notes of two participants in the expedition, Cristina and Milena, who with patience and passion have put pen to paper, drawing and snatching information from Vietnamese guides.
Arrived in the area of the tunnels we began our visit by entering a bush. First we found a camouflaged entrance to a small wooden trapdoor, which was covered with leaves to camouflage it. Wood was used because it swells in the rain and thus prevents the water from passing through and because it was not detectable by metal detectors.
There are 3 levels of tunnels, the first at 3/4 metres, the second at 6/7 metres, the third at 9/10 metres. The ground is hard and does not sink and the tunnels were not built in a straight line.
Dogs were also used to flush out these hatches, but the Viet Cong used pepper to confuse their sense of smell and capture them. Then they also ate them.
There are 200 km of tunnels inside which fireflies were used to see us, because too much oxygen was burned with oil lamps. They used sandals made of rubber called ho chi min, they often used them backwards to confuse the tracks. Then they gave us the option to slip into a tunnel and exit from the other side. I only went to the entrance and walked a few meters, because you had to bend over. Someone has also done the long route. We then saw a captured American tank, and we always heard shots: a paid shooting gallery was set up to fire the Vietcong's H47s. It was annoying to hear the shots.
At the time of the war there were only soldiers in the tunnels, even women, but not civilians
In this area 500,000 tons of bombs were dropped, including napalm bombs, which made the land sterile for 5 generations and instead of rice fields, peanuts were planted which are a natural fertilizer, to make them productive again.
It was an exciting visit, we don't understand how man continues to make wars, and it made us understand how a people of peasants defeated the greatest power.
Retrieved from wikipedia
The Cu Chi Tunnels are an extensive underground network of tunnels, located outside Saigon City (now Ho Chi Minh), south of the Iron Triangle area.
The tunnels were used in the 1940s by Viet Minh guerrillas fighting against French forces and in the 1960s and 1970s by the Viet Cong fighting against South Vietnamese and US forces during the Vietnam War. .
These tunnels played a fundamental strategic role in maintaining the war of exhaustion against the United States, which had one of the largest bases precisely at Cu Chi, and played a fundamental role in preparing for the Tet offensive which marked the beginning of the American disengagement in Vietnam.
A disguised tunnel entrance
Although Cu Chi housed the most important of the three 25th Infantry Division (US Army) logistics bases stationed in III Corps near Saigon together with the 1st Infantry Division, the area was never completely cleared throughout the war and for some time even the tunnels just below the base were used for sabotage operations. What definitively sanctioned the end of part of the tunnels was the bombing with penetration bombs by the B-52s, which however began only after 1968, when the US Army stopped bombing in North Vietnam and aircraft were available for operations in the South[1].
On the other hand, given the extension of this network that reached the border with Cambodia and continued even beyond, many uncleared tunnels and reasonably distant from Cu Chi continued to be used for infiltration in the III Corps area, both by material and personnel from eastern Cambodia, where there were huge North Vietnamese deposits fed via the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Arrived in the area of the tunnels we began our visit by entering a bush. First we found a camouflaged entrance to a small wooden trapdoor, which was covered with leaves to camouflage it. Wood was used because it swells in the rain and thus prevents the water from passing through and because it was not detectable by metal detectors.
There are 3 levels of tunnels, the first at 3/4 metres, the second at 6/7 metres, the third at 9/10 metres. The ground is hard and does not sink and the tunnels were not built in a straight line.
Dogs were also used to flush out these hatches, but the Viet Cong used pepper to confuse their sense of smell and capture them. Then they also ate them.
There are 200 km of tunnels inside which fireflies were used to see us, because too much oxygen was burned with oil lamps. They used sandals made of rubber called ho chi min, they often used them backwards to confuse the tracks. Then they gave us the option to slip into a tunnel and exit from the other side. I only went to the entrance and walked a few meters, because you had to bend over. Someone has also done the long route. We then saw a captured American tank, and we always heard shots: a paid shooting gallery was set up to fire the Vietcong's H47s. It was annoying to hear the shots.
At the time of the war there were only soldiers in the tunnels, even women, but not civilians
In this area 500,000 tons of bombs were dropped, including napalm bombs, which made the land sterile for 5 generations and instead of rice fields, peanuts were planted which are a natural fertilizer, to make them productive again.
It was an exciting visit, we don't understand how man continues to make wars, and it made us understand how a people of peasants defeated the greatest power.
Retrieved from wikipedia
The Cu Chi Tunnels are an extensive underground network of tunnels, located outside Saigon City (now Ho Chi Minh), south of the Iron Triangle area.
The tunnels were used in the 1940s by Viet Minh guerrillas fighting against French forces and in the 1960s and 1970s by the Viet Cong fighting against South Vietnamese and US forces during the Vietnam War. .
These tunnels played a fundamental strategic role in maintaining the war of exhaustion against the United States, which had one of the largest bases precisely at Cu Chi, and played a fundamental role in preparing for the Tet offensive which marked the beginning of the American disengagement in Vietnam.
A disguised tunnel entrance
Although Cu Chi housed the most important of the three 25th Infantry Division (US Army) logistics bases stationed in III Corps near Saigon together with the 1st Infantry Division, the area was never completely cleared throughout the war and for some time even the tunnels just below the base were used for sabotage operations. What definitively sanctioned the end of part of the tunnels was the bombing with penetration bombs by the B-52s, which however began only after 1968, when the US Army stopped bombing in North Vietnam and aircraft were available for operations in the South[1].
On the other hand, given the extension of this network that reached the border with Cambodia and continued even beyond, many uncleared tunnels and reasonably distant from Cu Chi continued to be used for infiltration in the III Corps area, both by material and personnel from eastern Cambodia, where there were huge North Vietnamese deposits fed via the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Waypoints
Waypoint
28 ft
Cave
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Uno spaccato della lunga guerra contro gli americani