“Nothing. Part of a convoy escort, as I recall. Bien Hoa to Cu Chi to Tay Ninh, then back before dark.”
“Amazing.”
I wasn’t quite sure what was amazing, and I didn’t ask. My butt was sore, my legs ached, and I had dust in all my body orifices.
We took a walk along the main street, and I was surprised to see groups of Westerners. I asked Susan, “Are these people lost?”
“You mean the Americans? They’re here to see the famous Cu Chi tunnels. They’re a big tourist attraction.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. Do you want to see the tunnels?”
“I want to see a cold beer.”
We turned into an open café and sat at a small table.
A young boy hurried over, and Susan ordered two beers, which materialized in a few seconds, sans glasses. So we sat there, covered with dust, chugging beer from bottles without labels, Susan smoking, still wearing her sunglasses.
The sinking sun was angled below the café’s canopy, and it was hot. I commented, “I forgot how warm it is here in February.”
“It’s cooler up north. As soon as you go over Cloudy Pass, the weather changes. It’s rainy season up there.”
“I remember that from ’68.”
Susan seemed to be staring off in space, then said, as if to herself, “Even all these years after the last shot was fired, the war hangs over this place… like that guy across the street.”
I looked across the street and saw an old man swinging on crutches, one leg missing, and part of one arm also gone.
She said, “And those tanks on the sides of the road, the Cu Chi tunnels, military cemeteries all over the place, battlefield monuments, and war museums in every town, young men and women with no living parents… I kind of ignored all this when I first got here, but you can’t ignore it. It’s everywhere, and I don’t even see half of it.”
I didn’t respond.
Susan continued, “It’s also part of the economy, the reason for a lot of the tourism here. The young expats sort of make fun of all this war nostalgia — you know, the vets coming back to see this and that. They… we call it visiting Cong World. That’s pretty awful. Very insensitive. That must piss you off.”
I didn’t reply.
She said, “That was nice of you — the joss stick.”
Again, I didn’t reply, so we sat in silence. Finally, I said, “It’s very strange being back here… I’m seeing something you’re not seeing… recalling things you never experienced… and I don’t want to get weird on you… but now and then…”
“It’s okay. Really. I just wish you’d talk about it.”
“I don’t think I have the words for how I feel.”
“Do you want to go back to Saigon?”
“No. I’m actually enjoying this more than not enjoying it. Must be the company.”
“Must be. It’s sure not the heat and the dust.”
“Or your driving.”
She called the boy over, gave him a dollar, said something to him, and he ran off into the street. A few minutes later, he was back with a pair of sunglasses and a wad of dong in his hand, which Susan told him to keep. She opened the sunglasses and put them on me. She said, “There, you look like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider.”
I smiled.
Susan picked up her camera and said, “Look tough.”
“I am tough.”
She snapped a picture of me.
Susan gave the camera to the boy, then pulled her chair next to mine, and threw her arm around me. The kid took a shot of us with our heads together and bottles touching. I said, “Get a few extras for Bill.”
Susan took the camera from the boy and said, “Can I send these to your house, or will that cause a problem?”
I recognized the question for what it was and replied, “I live alone.”
“Me, too.”
We used the single WC in the rear and washed off the road dust. Susan gave the proprietor a dollar for both beers and exchanged New Year’s greetings with him. We went out to the street and walked back to the motorcycle. Susan asked me, “Would you like to drive?”
“Sure.”
She slung the camera over her shoulder, gave me the keys, and we mounted up. I started the engine, and Susan gave me a quick course on driving a Russian Ural. She said, “The gears are a little sticky, the front brakes are soft, and the back brakes grab. The acceleration may be a little faster than you’re used to, and the front tends to climb. Otherwise, it’s a dream to drive.”
“Right. Hold on.” I found myself going too fast down the main street. I passed two cops sitting on their bicycles, and they yelled something at me. “Do they want me to stop?”
“No. They said have a nice day. Keep going.”
Within ten minutes, we left the town of Cu Chi behind, and I was getting the hang of the machine, but the congestion on the narrow road was giving me some problems.
“Use your horn. You have to warn people. That’s the way they do it here.”
I found the button and blasted the horn as I swerved through bicycles, pedestrians, motor scooters, Lambrettas, pigs, and ox carts.
Susan leaned forward and put her right arm around my waist and her left hand on my shoulder. She said, “You’re doing fine.”
“They don’t think so.”
She gave me directions, and within a few minutes, we were off on a narrow road that was barely paved.
I asked, “Where are we going?”
“Cu Chi tunnels straight ahead.”
After a few more kilometers, I could see ahead to a flat open area where a half dozen buses were parked in a field. Susan said, “Pull into that parking field.”
I pulled into the dirt field partially shaded by scraggly trees.
Susan said, “This is one of the entrances to the tunnels.”
“Is this part of Cong World?”
“This is the ultimate Cong World. Over two hundred kilometers of underground tunnels, one of them going all the way to Saigon.”
“Have you been here?”
She replied, “I’ve been this way, but never actually in the tunnels. No one wants to go in with me, and I figured you’d have no problem with it.”
That sounded like a challenge to my manhood. I said, “I love tunnels.”
We dismounted, chained the motorcycle to a tree, and walked to the entrance of the tunnels.
It was a buck-fifty to enter, which Susan paid for in American dollars without an argument.
We joined some people under a thatched roof whose sign said English. The crowd was mostly Americans, but I heard some Aussie accents as well. There were also thatched pavilions for other languages. Apparently, someone in the People’s Ministry of Tourism had been to Disney World.
A female guide handed out brochures to the crowd of about thirty English speakers.
The guide said, “Please to be quiet.”
Everyone shut up, and she began her spiel. I wasn’t too familiar with the Cu Chi tunnels, and I had the feeling I wasn’t going to learn much more from our guide, whose English was somewhat unusual.
I read the brochure, whose English was also a little off.
Anyway, between the guide and the brochure, I learned that the tunnels were begun in 1948 during the Communist fight against the French. They started at the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia, and zigzagged all over the place, including underneath former American base camps. The original tunnels were only wide enough for a small VC to crawl through, and we should be careful of insects, bats, rats, and snakes.
The lady guide informed us that the tunnels could hold up to sixteen thousand freedom fighters, and that people actually got married in the tunnels, and women had babies down there. There were kitchens and full surgical hospitals in the tunnel complex, sleeping rooms, storage rooms once filled with weapons and explosives, drinking wells, ventilation shafts, false tunnels, and booby-trapped passages. The guide smiled and joked, “But no more booby traps for you.”