Imagine this: you’re crawling through a tunnel barely wider than your shoulders, the air stale and damp, a flashlight in one hand, a revolver in the other. You don’t know what’s waiting for you around the bend—a tripwire, a pit lined with sharpened bamboo spikes, or maybe a nest of snakes dropping onto your back. That was the reality, day after day, for soldiers in the Vietnam War. A living hell carved underground: the Cu Chi tunnels.
Today, they’re a tourist attraction. You can pay a few bucks, duck your head, and squeeze yourself into one of these passageways to get a taste—just a taste—of what it might have felt like. But let’s be honest: you’ll never really know. You’re not carrying sixty pounds of gear. Nobody’s trying to kill you. There’s an exit fifty meters ahead, and a cold drink waiting for you when you come out. It’s safe discomfort, curated danger. Still, the moment you’re down there, on your knees, scraping along in the dark, your imagination fills in the blanks. And that’s enough to send a chill down your spine.
For me, crossing the tunnels off my bucket list wasn’t just about crawling underground. It was about standing on a piece of history, confronting the reality of what war was like here. The Vietnamese lived, fought, and died in these tunnels. Americans feared them. And now tourists shuffle through them with GoPros strapped to their heads. The irony isn’t lost on me.
And then, because Vietnam is a place where contrasts collide unapologetically, you can walk out of the tunnels, dust yourself off, and step right into a shooting range. AK-47s, M16s, machine guns—lined up for you to rent by the magazine. It’s loud, it’s jarring, and it’s surreal. I fired off a few rounds from an AK, felt the kick in my shoulder, the ringing in my ears. It was fun, sure, but fun in a way that made me uncomfortable. Like eating candy in a cemetery.
Would I ever want to be in a war, doing this for real? Hell no. I’m not built for it, and I’m grateful I’ll never have to find out. But to visit the Cu Chi tunnels, to crawl through that dirt, to feel even a fraction of what it must have been like—it’s worth it. You walk away sweaty, shaken, maybe a little thrilled, but mostly humbled.
Because in the end, it’s not about shooting the AK or bragging you crawled through a tunnel. It’s about standing on ground where history happened—bloody, violent, and unforgiving—and realizing how goddamn lucky you are to only be visiting.
