CU CHI, Vietnam (dpa) – Bursts of automatic weapons fire ring out through the eucalyptus northwest of Saigon, and camera-toting tourists are ducking for cover.
“A.K., A.K.!” croaks a learing Vietnamese tour guide, referring to the make of machine gun shattering the serenity of Cu Chi.Dozens of international visitors to this outlying district of present-day Ho Chi Minh City have come to see the Cu Chi tunnels, the notorious underground honeycomb which served as command centre and communication network for communist Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.Two hundred metres away, several trigger-happy tourists are shooting off AK-47s and M-16s, emptying clips at a dollar per bullet.During a recent visit to the site, the gunslingers were not American war veterans, whose pilgrimages to Vietnam’s war-related sites are to be expected. They were young tattooed backpackers from Australia, Europe, the United States and east Asia.An earnest Japanese woman could be seen getting hands-on instruction from an army officer before letting loose with an M-16, the ubiquitous machine gun that was standard issue for most American GIs during the Vietnam War which ended nearly 27 years ago.“This attracts a lot of tourists,” Le Van Phuoc, office chief at Cu Chi, says of the firing range. “Even those who have no idea about guns want to try the shooting.”A lot of tourists, indeed. The “Iron Land of Cu Chi”, where over 200 kilometres of tunnels for several years confounded the high-tech American military machine, has become Vietnam’s most popular tourist attraction, boasts Phuoc.Run by state-owned giant Saigon Tourist, the Cu Chi Tunnels hosted 795,000 visitors last year, including over 201,000 foreigners.It’s all a far cry from 15 years ago, when the only outsiders were communist party cadres who lauded the “army of moles” who lived, worked, fought and died by the thousands in the tunnels.Dug in the 1940s as underground redoubts of the Viet Minh who were fighting French colonisation, the tunnel system was expanded in the late 1950s by the Viet Cong, the southern guerillas driven by a communist push for independence by revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.By the mid-1960s they stretched from near Saigon to the Cambodian border; they held living quarters, hospitals and munitions factories.Washington discovered the labyrinth in early 1967, then spent billions of dollars and hundreds of troops lost trying to destroy it.By 1970 Cu Chi was one of the most bombed, gassed, defoliated and devastated places on earth. An estimated 12,000 Viet Cong and their supporters were killed, but the tunnels served their purpose and Saigon fell to communist troops in 1975.A decade later much of the complex was overgrown and all but forgotten. But when enough foreign tourists started showing up unannounced, authorities realized they were sitting on a cash cow.By the early 1990s, Cu Chi district had successfully marketed the tunnel complex as Rambo’s playground, complete with firing range, enlarged tunnels to accommodate the wider girth of foreign tourists, and menacing displays of booby traps used to maim and kill GIs.And what of security concerns, with the firing range just a few dozen kilometres away from Cambodia, from where anti-communist “provocateurs” are accused by Hanoi of staging attacks into Vietnam?Phuoc brushes them aside. “The guns are put in locks, they’re very safe. This facility has been in place 10 years but there have been no accidents or security incidents.”Cu Chi is now on the well-worn path of Lonely Planeteers, who are bussed out from Saigon on five-dollar tours by budget travel agents.Upon arrival, visitors are ushered into a reception room where they are subjected to a barrage of propaganda about Cu Chi.A grainy black and white film chronicles the “unwavering spirit” of the tunnel diggers and dwellers. “Anyone who went in to these tunnels had to admire the talent, the determination, the passion of communists,” a film narrator says.Outside, tour guide Liem escorts a group through the complex, pointing out perfectly camouflaged trap doors, setting off trip wires attached to firecrackers, and encouraging picture-taking.The featured attraction, the tunnels themselves, have been enlarged to accommodate the girth of Westerners, but Liem brings the group to what he says is an “original tunnel”, measuring 70 cm high and 80 cm wide.“Sometimes old people try to get down there, and when they come out, they’re unconscious,” Liem quips.Members of this group survived the claustrophic 50-metre crawl unhurt, with Japanese women bending over with happiness at seeing their friends emerge from the tunnels.“It is ingenious, incredible,” huffs one Australian as he steps out, the crack of machine-gun fire in the distance. “It’s amazing how they did it.”Equally amazing, perhaps, is how Vietnam managed to turn a secret communist revolutionary gambit into such a money-spinner.Phuoc wouldn’t divulge any profit figures from the 100-hectare complex, but he made it clear that, unlike most tourist sites in Vietnam, Cu Chi needs no funding from the government.Instead it submits an undisclosed amount to local and state coffers, and helps build charity houses for war invalids, he says.
