posted by Unknown at 3:09 AM
0 comments
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Monday, January 02, 2006
Have you ever been in a situation when you suddenly realise "I really don't want to be here" - but there's nowhere to go. This was when I realised that pot holeing and confined spaces are not for me. I was in this tunnel just large enough for me to crawl along. It was pitch dark, damp & very hot & hummid. There was a distinct lack of air & oxygen, or were my lungs just going into overdrive. The tunnel was 50 metres long. It was about 25 metres into the crawl that I really had to focus because to be honest all of a sudden I was shit scared. These tunnels don't go in a straight line ( for obvious reasons) They vere off to the left and the right and go up and down as well - and all in the pitch dark. Sod that for a game of soldiers. And to think that the Viet Cong lived down here for weeks / months on end ... quite unbelievable.....
The Cu Chi Tunnels system is an underground network of tunnels dug in the 1940s by the Vietnamese as a place to hide during the fight against the French. The network was later expanded and used in the American War. The system consists of more than 250 miles of tunnels and unlit offshoots, secret trap doors connecting narrow routes to hidden shelters, local rivers and tunnels to the Cambodian border. It was a sprawling city of improvised hospitals, living quarters, kitchens and fresh water wells, with some tunnels barely large enough to wriggle through. The plan was to launch surprise assaults on the enemy, and then disappear; so successful a hiding place were the tunnels that first the French and then the Americans struggled against these sudden attacks in which the assailants seemed to vanish into fresh air. Today many of the tunnels have been enlarged to allow visitors the dirty and claustrophobic experience of crawling through a portion of the underground network, past secret trapdoors and booby traps laid against invasion.
