Vietnam: Cu Chi Tunnels vs Vinh Moc

After visiting both the DMZ and the Cu Chi tunnels, I would recommend Cu Chi over a trip to the DMZ. Unless you are a Vietnam Vet or someone with a specific reason to visit the DMZ, there is not much to see. Outside of the Vinh Moc tunnels, most of the DMZ has been reclaimed. Vast areas are planted with rubber plantations. We spent over an hour wandering through a rubber plantation as our guide looked for the former roads and boundaries lines of one of the US bases. (See the below post for more on our tour to the DMZ).

Secondly, one of the reasons tourists choose to visit the DMZ is because the tour generally includes a stop at the Vinh Moc tunnels and the guide books claim that in comparison to Cu Chi, the Vinh Moc tunnels are unadulterated. Whatever the guide books might say, the Vinh Moc tunnels are obviously maintained and modified for tourists. They are furnished with life sized mannequins depicting daily life underground in the tunnels: a VC family, a VC grandmother with grandchild, etc. There is also a small area set up with photos from the war, models of the tunnels, examples of shovels used to dig the tunnels, etc.

In comparison to the DMZ/Vinh Moc tour which can be a full 12 hour day trip from Hue, the Cu Chi tunnels are easily reached on 4-5 hour ½ day trip from Saigon. Although the tour of the Cu Chi tunnels is a bit of a circus, the tunnels are an overwhelming example of North Vietnamese tenacity. If I remember correctly, the Cu Chi tunnels altogether are approximately 200 kilometers in length and came as close as 30 km to Saigon. One cannot walk away from this visit without being daunted by the almost fanatical nationalism of the 16,000 men and women VC who tunneled into the earth for almost 20 years. (According to our guide only 6,000 survived the war.)

More importantly for me, the trip to Cu Chi was a window into the Vietnamese view on the American/Vietnam War. After our arrival at the Cu Chi visitor’s center, we sat down to watch a black and white video that looked like it was produced in the 1960’s. The video, set to triumphant or sorrowful music depending on what was being depicted, extols the virtues of a smiling and remarkable well-fed female VC soldier and lambastes ‘crazy mad devil’ Americans. The center also includes large replicas of the various medieval traps used in the tunnels to thwart the US and South Vietnamese troops. Our guide was particularly proud of how the Viet Cong modified farm tools and used them to defeat a superpower. (Of course, weapons supplied from China were completely overlooked.) Life sized models of VC cadres cooking, sewing, and living underground were dispersed throughout the area. The pride and, perhaps in retrospect, posturing of the Vietnamese government is evident in a trip to Cu Chi.

Since it was pretty early in our trip to Vietnam, I felt like I was beginning to understand a bit of how the war was perceived within Vietnam.

(And yes, some of the tunnels at Cu Chi have been altered so that Western bodies can fit through them. However, a large section has been left unaltered so that if you want to experience what the Viet Cong crawled through on a daily basis, you can go right ahead and plunge into the darkness. If you really want to walk through tunnels, the tunnels in Vinh Moc are much larger than Cu Chi. I could walk through them almost standing fully upright. Cu Chi is claustrophobic squat/scuttle on your hands and knees, to put it mildly.)