The Cu Chi Tunnels were an elaborate system of tunnels built outside of Saigon and took some 25 years to build, initially started by the Viet Minh. The soil in the Cu Chi area is red earth and was ideal for creating tunnels during the war against the French. The VC took over the old tunnels, made new extensions and created this extremely organized network for basing attacks.
If you ever go to Saigon, definitely go on the Cu Chi tour. Our tour guide was this crazy guy who worked as an information officer for the Americans and after the war he was thrown in jail for 4 years. He was very outspoken and interesting. We have a couple of short films of him talking, I'll try to upload them here later (when I figure out how to do that!)
Another thing about the Cu Chi tour is that if you want, you can pay a dollar (US) a bullet and go fire off Russian AK-47s, 30-60 machine guns and many, many other guns from the war in the firing range. So while you're walking around the jungle looking at the tunnels you can hear gunfire off in the distance.
Check out the "klipping armpit" trap and then the kind of childlike illusration of such traps in use! Eeesh.
Here's Olivier in the destroyed American tank.
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