Today we visited the Ho Chi Minh tunnels but unfortunately dad wasn’t feeling well so he stayed at the hotel while we went to Experience what it was like to be a Vietcong hiding from the Americans in the war. 

Our tour guide took us in a rattily minibus for one hour until we stopped for a break at a Vietnamese art shop set up for disabled people and people living on the street to get a job. The art was amazing, it was made out of eggshells broken into tiny pieces, pearls and paint. First they added the pearls, glued the eggshells and painted the detail and then they coated it in a liquid to stop it from wearing and finally they polished it. 

We then drove another thirty minutes to the tunnels where our guide gave us a short briefing before showing us around. We started in a weapons room where they had all the weapons used by the Americans. They had ak47s, m16s, rocket launcher, bombs, grenades and meany other types of weapons. I was shocked by the size of the bombs they would drop on the Vietcong. 

Our guide then led us out into the forest where they had all the bunkers, tunnels and traps. We saw some bomb craters and we got to go down a hole where they would hide from the Americans. I went down one and it was very dark and small, there was only room for one person. When the lid was on you could brush some leaves over the top and you would never know I was there. 

After that we went to watch a short video about what it was like in the war. It was really interesting to learn that the Americans weapons were much more advanced and they dominated the sky but they didn’t know about the tunnels or the traps so the Vietcong had an advantage on the ground. When the Americans did find out about the tunnels they were to big to fit in them so they would get stuck and then shot. I also learned that one of the Vietcong war heroes was a female. 

Then we went to see some of the Vietcong traps. It was really clever how they had designed them. I was surprised by how many different traps they made. After seeing them I walked around very cautiously in case there were any still around that no one had seen. 

We then went to see some of the bunkers and tunnels. It was amazing how small some of the tunnels got. Our guide said it would take the Vietcong soldiers two hours to walk and crawl five km in the tunnels because it was so small and they would come across snakes, spiders and scorpions. The tunnels were one hundred km long and there were nine thousand people living there. 

We were then given the option to walk one hundred meters in one of the tunnels. We all started it but when the tunnel started to get narrower mum and summer turned around. The tunnel was very hot and the air felt thick. It was also very dark and the guide said that they had put new, more powerful, lights in so it would have been much darker. The tunnels weaved round left and right and it would suddenly go up or down and there were times when it split and if you went the wrong way it would be a dead end. Just as I thought the tunnels couldn’t get any tighter the guide, who was smaller than me, said you might need to crawl here because it is getting smaller. 

Our guide then showed us how they could cook in the bunkers without the smoke giving away their location. What they did was instead of having a chimney going up it went sideways so the smoke came out somewhere else. When the smoke came up they put black pepper and wet dung on it to change the smell. We then tried some tapioca and a type of tea they could easily make in the forest. The tapioca was like a parsnip and they ate it with sugar and peanuts crushed together. 

We then got an ice cream and went back to the hotel. Overall I really enjoyed the day and learned a lot. If you ever go to Ho Chi Minh city you have to go to the tunnels.