No ground from the Vietnam war is as hallowed as the tunnel-ridden earth of Cu Chi, where 18, 000 peasant guerrillas waged war from 125 miles(200km) of handdug-passageway and chambers. It was in Cu Chi that Viet Cong planed their momentous assault on Saigon during the 1968 Tet New Year celebrations. In 1990, the government opened two tunnels sections to the public, including the command center at Ben Duoc, an area known to U.S soldiers as the Ho Bo Wood and Ben Dinh.

Cu chi’s peasant soldiers started burrowing into the district’s clay ground in the late 1940s during the French War. By 1967, they’d excavated a network of tunnels, aid stations, kitchens, theaters dormitories, weapons caches, wells, printing shops,and other chambers. So extensive is three-tiered network, 10 to 30 feet(3-9m) underground, that the 25th U.S. Infantry unwittingly situated its base partially above the tunnels just northeast of Cu Chi.

The U.S.Army sent volunteers known as tunnel rats into this Viet Cong netherworld to root out intelligence and destroy the guerrillas’ base. During Operation Cedar Fall in 1967, Army bulldozers razed more than 4 square miles (11sq km) of neighboring forest to deprive the VC of cover.

At the war’ heigh, more than 200,000 shells rained down here each month, transForming Cu Chi into the “ most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated, and generally devastated area in the history of warfare. Though bombing disabled some 70 percent of the tunnels, Cu Chi remained a staging area for VC operations throughout the war.

Most day trips out of Ho Chi Minh city visit the reconstructed tunnels at Ben Duoc, 60km northwest of the city. The first stop on a guided tour is often at a camouflaged (25 by 30cm) hatch atop a tunnel entrance. Nearby, a larger hatch covers a booby trap of bamboo spikes driven into the bottom of a pit. The VC cooked up grisly ways to kill and maim Gis, as an exhibit of eight boody traps makes painthfully obvious. American Gis fell pray to traps both outside and within the tunnels.

Above the ground, the tour winds past an American M-41 tank, disabled by a mine in 1970s, as well as a manequins of VC cadres, resting in hammocks and working in excavated weapon-making shops. The guerrillas mined a good deal of gunpower from duds dropped by American bombers and hurled from artillery cannon.

Though some tunnels had been enlarged to accommodated tourists, following in the footsteps of Cu Chi’s guerrillas often means having to crouch or crawl through close, humid, bell-shaped corridors. The passage’s many zigs and zags were designed to thwart weapons fire, while interior hatches served as a defense against flames, chemicals, and water blown through by the U.S Army. The earthen walls retain a consistency of cement, a natural attribute that made the district particularly well suited for tunneling. As excavated earth was a dead giveaway of tunneling activity, the guerrillas would dispose fo freshly dug dirt by raking it into rice fields and pouring it into streams and bomb craters.

The tunnels at Ben Dinh. 30 miles(50km) northwest of Ho Chi Minh city, are also opened to visitors. This small, renovated section of the real tunnels, unlit and cramped, are not for the claustrophobic.

Both Ben Dinh and Ben Duoc are known for their target ranges, where for a dollar a pop you can fire your wartime weapon of choice-an M-16, AK-47, Chinese carbine, shotgun, etc.