Category: Vietnam

The kind of tunnel that you climb in for 12 years.
The kind of tunnel where you get married.
The kind of tunnel where you have 2 children.
The kind of tunnel that is less than one meter tall, where you have to crawl on your stomach to move around.
The kind of tunnel that smells of urine and sweat.
The kind of tunnel that has no toilet.
The kind of tunnel that has no clean water.
The kind of tunnel where you have one meal a day: rice.
The kind of tunnel where air is scarce.
The kind of tunnel that you never leave.

The Củ Chi tunnels are outside Ho Chi Minh City in Southern Vietnam.

44  years ago there was a civil war in Vietnam between the north and the south Vietnamese. It was a political argument about what kind of government they should have. The north wanted communism and the south wanted a democracy and free market capitalism. The US participated in the war for the last 10 years of it and many US soldiers died fighting in Vietnam.

Communists in southern Vietnam dug tunnels underground to stay alive. We talked to Giang who entered these tunnels when he was a teenager and lived there for twelve years. He had to be careful because there were traps planted in the tunnels for the American soldiers. The passages were so tiny that American soldiers would not fit into them. Thousands of Vietnamese squeezed into this underground maze, and they were never comfortable. But they were safe and stayed alive. Giang got married in these tunnels and had two children there before the war was over, when everyone was able to come out and breathe fresh air again.

“Giang” showing us a map of the tunnels where he lived

The tunnel’s secret entryway

*Enlarged for tourists

The Mekong River starts in China and goes through 4 other countries before it ends in southern Vietnam. Every year the river gets bigger, overflows its banks and floods the southern end of Vietnam, in an area called the Mekong River Delta. The people who live in the delta depend on these floods, using the water to grow rice and fish. The floods bring water and mud that fertilizes the crops, and it’s easy to move around flooded rice paddies on boats. People here can grow two or three rice crops a year, and Vietnam is the second largest producer of rice in the world. The people who live here have a simple life and they are happy.

Vietnamese farmers in the delta are worried that the river may stop flowing someday soon. China is building six dams on the Mekong River thousands of kilometers upstream. China is doing this to provide electricity to their people, but the Chinese could also take the water from the river to grow food and drink in years when it doesn’t rain enough. If they do this, people downstream might not have enough water to survive.

The Vietnamese people we spoke to don’t believe their government would help them if this happened. Fifty years ago China helped Vietnam win a war against the United States. Some Vietnamese people we spoke to think Vietnam still owes China favors. Right now, China is taking over Vietnamese islands and the Vietnamese government is not complaining. What else might the Chinese government try to take from Vietnam as a return for these favors? Farmers in the Mekong River delta worry that if the Chinese government takes the water from the Mekong River, their government will not try to stop it. Without the yearly floods, Vietnamese people may starve, or else have to move away from their homes and find a different life in the city.

Fishing in the mud: a farmer traps fish in the waterways, and then we bail out the water to make fishing as easy as reaching out to grab something super slippery – not so easy!

Anika tries her hands at a traditional rice husking machine. Spin it, Anika!