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Published: December 8th 2006
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Evening all.
Apologies for missing yesterday but felt too knackered to recount my day to you, so i'm making up for it now.
Caught the bus for the tunnels and after a stop at Handicapped Handicrafts- i kid you not, no such thing as Politically correct language here, we arrived without event. The tour started with a video and a model mock up of the tunnel systems. Obviously i've been reading a lot about it lately but didn't know till recently the full extent of the tunnels. No doubt all my ex's who have tried to get me to watch vietnam war films in the past are now saying see told you they are educational! Anyhow the tunnels are 100's of K's long and are on 3 sometimes 4 levels. The first level was the transport passages and viewing etc, then they had the lower accom level with big dug out spaces for eating, cooking, sleeping etc and below that were the safest levels for storage of ammunition and where the big cheeses hung out and plotted their next dasterdly move! They were booby trapped and had ingenious water traps like in a toilet so that if gas was
pumped in it didn't spread through the whole system. They really are a work of such patience and skill and without a shadow of doubt helped the VC conquor the Yanks.
After the video we were taken into the jungle to view some of the tunnels. One of them has been made bigger to accomodate Western behinds and had low level lighting put in. I climbed down in thinking this would be a walk in the park, huh, in for a shock then. The first few feet was fine, the soil felt a little damp to touch and it was still a pretty tight squeeze but i felt ok. A little further in and the light faded, the ceiling came down on top of me so i had to crawl nearly doubled up. It was quite strenuos and i started to breath deeply, the air is heavy and the smell of soil and clay pretty intense. That's about the time i started to panic!! I was feeling my way along praying for it to be over soon and the whole thing just started to close in around me. After crawling as fast as i could for around 30m's i
Now you see me
... yeah you know the rest!! saw the light!! Dragging myself up into the day light and fresh air was one of the sweetest feelings. I was amazed at my reaction, as a kid i didn't think twice about going caving in the Mendips with my Dad and have NEVER suffered from claustrophobia before but that was something else. Hard to believe that tunnel was bigger than most and lit in places and i coped with about 2 minutes (although it felt like 2 hours) the VC were down there for weeks sometimes months-not for me thank you.
So after that i was ready for a nice afternoon relaxing. Got back to Saigon and decided to go to the war museum. Again an experience i thought would be fine that turned out to be challenging on so many levels. I accept that i'm in Vietnam and so i guess the curators are going to be slightly biased but this place was something else. Everywhere you looked were pictures and reminders of the atrocities carried out by the Americans and i admit some of them were chilling. Two jars containing deformed feotuses due to the gases ingested by their mothers. One picture showed a smiling GI holding up the head and torn torso of a VC soldier, his picture taken as a momento no doubt. What wasn't shown was the "war" that the VC fought. Their war was a not one of large scale armoury but of home made instruments of torture and slow death. Traps made from spikes buried in the ground, wooden balls weighing 10kilos covered in spikes hanging just inside doorways, bamboo canes sharpened and covered with cobra venom or human excrement so when stepped on the injury would become infected. I'm not taking sides and i'm sure if i went into a museum in America the story would again be one sided but i just found it difficult to see such pain and suffering (the damage done to decades of children through the use of agent orange is heart breaking) and the obvious ill feeling that still exists today made me feel very very uncomfortable. That said i would recommend to everyone to go to these places, in the hope one day man will realise noone wins wars!!
After my challenging day i had an equally challenging night. The bus journey was pretty horrendous, just an ordinary coach and 12 hours of jabbering locals and persistant toilet stops. However finally arrived and checked into a nice hotel. Was planning to spend the day on the beach but weather not great so i've explored and chilled out. Off for food and then an early night!!!! Honest Mum!
Having probs with pictures again but will try again tomorrow when the pull of alcohol isn't so strong! Night all. XX
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My life would be
What a harrowing day, but non the less your logs always make me smile, did you get your early night.