Vietnam Opens Revolutionary Tunnels to Tourism in Ho Chi Minh City
Most visitors to Ho Chi Minh City will make the hour or so drive out of town to visit the legendary Cu Chi tunnels.
What most won't realize is that right under their feet in the city itself is a subterranean network, smaller but no less remarkable than the claustrophobic tunnels that housed so many Vietnamese fighters during the war.
Down a nondescript alleyway in District 10 is a former family home that, during the mid-1950s, was known as Secret Cellar B.
The family that lived there was charged by the revolutionary Vietnamese forces with housing a printing press to produce propaganda material. To avoid raids, there was only one place to put it: underground.
In one of the sparsely furnished rooms, preserved as they were more than 60 years ago, sits an old teak wardrobe. Open the door and it offers the entrance to an alternative world, as pivotal to anti-colonial Vietnamese back then as Narnia was to the children of C.S. Lewis's novels.
Visitors can step into the wardrobe and climb down through a hole, around shoulder width, and into the cellar. The tunnel leading to it was excavated to be only as wide as necessary, so the crawl or bum-shuffle through the twisting dimly lit passage remains an uncomfortable experience.
"In 1951 the French and their allies had complete control of the south (of Vietnam), so all the real revolutionary activity would be happening in the north," says Tim Doling, who conducts heritage tours in Ho Chi Minh City.
"They would have a transistor radio (in the tunnels) and they'd be transcribing news of what would be happening in the north. It was to encourage the local people to support the revolutionary movement."
To ventilate the tiny space another tunnel was dug leading up to a well, creating a flow of air for those stationed inside.
Excavated between February and May 1952, Secret Cellar B was in operation until 1957 when it was decommissioned because of security concerns and then filled with soil in 1959 to avoid detection.
Source: CNN
