Rustic Pathways | Vietnam

One meter high and less than a meter wide...

I carefully walked down the dirt stairs that had been built for tourists like myself. The passage grew smaller as I went and eventually I had to duck into the tunnel. It was completely dark inside. I knew the Cu Chi Tunnels were small but I had never imagined they were this cramped. I was forced to get on my hands and knees and crawl in order to go any further. My back brushed against the top of the tunnel and my arms could hardly fit beside me, so instead, for my own comfort and sense of security, I reached them in front of me to hold onto my friend Mia. What I knew about the tunnels was that they covered more than 250km and were home to Viet Cong for weeks on end. What I didn't know, until I crawled through them myself, was that the tunnels were barley big enough to move, let alone live in.

I have never had much interest in the Vietnam war but after being in Vietnam, crawling through the Cu Chi Tunnels, and visiting the war museum, this has completely changed. I cannot imagine what the war was like but I can try and understand from what I saw. I met a boy my age with no eyes because of the war. He was not alive during it, but like many Vietnamese his age and younger, he is still affected by it. He was born with his eyes completely missing because his grandparents had been alive during the war and the effects of agent orange were still present. I saw the Vietnamese side of the war and I saw what the Americans did from Vietnamese perspective. I experienced the claustrophobia of Cu Chi Tunnels which housed whole villages during the war. I learned of the awful conditions the Vietnamese experienced while living in the tunnels. I can only guess how much harder it was for the Americans who were not used to the heat and who were terrified to go in the tunnels. I am looking forward seeing the American side of the war and gaining an understanding what it was like for our own soldiers. Just standing outside in Vietnam was hot enough to make me sweat profusely and loose my appetite. It amazes me how the Americans fought in these conditions that they were not used to and survived the type of warfare that Vietnam offered.

The word I think best describes my first impression of the Vietnamese culture is "harsh". In many families in Hanoi, if the child is not home by ten at night, the parents will lock them out. Not everybody but in general, I found the Vietnamese people to be less than friendly and most of my smiles were never returned. They were pushy and rude. It was not until our home stay that we met a family which was willing to open up and welcome us to Vietnam. It was this intimate interaction that warmed me up to the Vietnamese people. Although the food we ate at their home was questionably safe and the beds we stayed in were simply wooden platforms with bug nets draped around them, my home stay was by far my favorite part of my trip. It was the only time in Vietnam that I was able to interact with Vietnamese people in an informal manner. We sat in a circle and ate Pho (the traditional Vietnamese dish) for dinner with the whole family. The children ran around naked and poked us to try and get us to play with them. After dinner, men from the village joined our circle and we all sat around and shared songs. Nobody in our group could communicate with any of the villagers but it didn't matter, we had music as common ground. We shared songs from our different cultures and drank warm coconut water straight from the green coconuts that the family had picked for us that day.

The Cu Chi Tunnels and our home stay were by far the most memorable parts of my time in Vietnam. Until I went there, the Vietnam war had not meant much to me because it was distant and didn't happen during my lifetime. Since I have been home, I have talked with two Vietnam veterans about their experiences. I am really looking forward to doing more of this in my Vietnam literature class. My home stay has not effected me in the same way.
It did not spark a new interest but instead simply left a lasting impression of what the Vietnamese are like. The village home stay made my first impression of the culture's "harshness" disappear and be replaced by one of admiration for their hard work. I came back from Vietnam with an understanding of a very different lifestyle than my own. I look forward to having this kind of opportunity again to travel in my future because it exposed me things such as the war which I would have never otherwise had an interest in or understanding of.