Necessity is the mother of invention

I was very disappointed with myself that I did not manage to finish my Vietnamese history book, although I endeavoured on several occasions, it was just to complicated; first the French, the English somehow got involved and then the Americans waded in… The best thing, I thought, was to get it from the horses mouth, so to speak. So, my days itinerary for Ho Chi Minh City involved a visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels and the War Remnants Museum. If this did not help me to understand the recent history of Vietnam then nothing would.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are located 40 north west of Ho Chi Minh City and are a vast network of underground tunnels and chambers stretching 250km under Vietnam. First constructed in the 1940s, they were extended in the 1960s and were used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.

What first struck me about them was the sheer ingenuity of them! I’d imagine that people have used tunnels to hide in other places, at other times, but constructing 250 km of them (some stretched to the Cambodian border) using rudimentary implements and then living in them for years; coming up only on evening to find food, or to set traps… Pure genius. They say necessity is the mother of invention and hey were the Vietnamese ingenious?

In order to survive they used what materials they had at hand (utilising the debris from American warfare to create traps and bombs) and constantly adapted to evade capture.

Living and eating in the tunnels meant fire smoke had to escape somewhere. Once the Americans realised they were living underground they were obviously on the look out for any signs of life, so what did the Vietnamese do? Create separate tunnels to filter the smoke out far away from the kitchen areas, so if they were found and bombed, they were safe. To detect being found by sniffer dogs, they rubbed American clothes on the air holes (which were cunningly shaped like snake holes), so the dogs could not detect them. My own personal favourite piece of cunning was the ‘special sandals’ they made – the rubber sandals made from tires were specially designed backwards, so that if Americans found foot prints they looked as if they walking in the opposite direction.

We got to venture down a tunnel and although I’m quite tiny, it was still so claustrophobic to navigate and I was just went 100 metres.

During our visit there, in the background was the constant noise of gun shots which created a surreal atmosphere. The shots came from the firing ranges set up so tourists could shot from guns? WTF? Given that over 10,000 people lost their lives there it felt so distasteful that people could pay to fire a round from a AK57… Hey, who am I to question?

With that contradiction and sick feeling in my stomach we visited the War Remnants Museum. Not an easy visit. To be confronted by graphic images of war, victims and paraphernalia was tough. Then to find out about Agent Orange…

During 1962 – 71, 20,000,000 US gallons of Agent Orange was sprayed across Vietnam (as well as Laos and Cambodia). This was part of the American’s military strategy to defoliate rural areas so that guerrillas had no cover or food. It was also contributed to their forced draft urbanisation strategy whereby the contamination of the countryside destroyed the peasants way of life and forced them to flee to the cities which were under US control.

As a result over 3 million people have been affected and 150,000 kids born with birth defects. It was heart breaking to read that today, three generations on from the war, that children are still suffering from the side effects of Agent Orange. I can totally understand the sentiments of this poster.

Feeling totally emotional, I reluctantly visited the final exhibition. It was a drawing competition held in association with a local school which showcased the kids hopes for the future. Sometimes a picture tells a thousand words; this is one of these cases…