Experiencing the Vietnam War

Handicraft factory: a social enterprise

We had a tiring day ahead of us, an eleven hour tour around Vietnam. Our first stop on our tour was a handicraft factory where the people working there were affected by Agent Orange. The workers were disabled and they walked us through the steps of how to make them:

1. Crack egg shell or mother of pearl on top of the drawn art
2. Then put the eggshell back together like a puzzle if they chose eggshell
3. Next they painted the picture to add colour
4. Then added a liquid that solidifies and makes the painting smooth
5. Next they use sand paper and make sure everything is smooth
6. Finally they polish the art and sell it

We thought it was really beautiful and we liked that the money went to the people impacted by Agent Orange. We bought a vase which is made out of coconut and has a painted scene of a lake with Vietnamese boats on it and with mother of pearl.

The War Site & Traps

There were four other people on our tour so we got a nice “limousine” van with plenty of room. Our next stop was the Cu Chi Tunnels which were tunnels used for the Vietnamese war against the USA. We learned about some traps they used:

Leave No Smoke, Leave No Trace

Once we were done learning about the traps the guide told us about the main rules, leave no smoke, leave no trace. They lived underground and the smoke of the fire had to go somewhere. They figured out that in the morning it was misty so they used termite nests to slowly release the smoke in the mornings so the enemy couldn’t see. We learned that to leave no trace they wore one shoe backwards and one forwards so that the prints would look like they were walking both forward and backward. The backwards shoe was made to fit their foot but the bottom hitting the ground was backwards.

Home for the Vietnamese

The Vietnamese people could not live safely in their houses so they had to live underground because of bombs. They had hidden entrances to the tunnels that led to the caves. We got to try out a hidden entrance that was hidden by leaves and it was really cool! The tunnels had booby traps so that if intruders came they would get stuck.

We got an opportunity to go into the tunnels, Brooklyn didn’t like to think about what was down there (specifically scorpions because earlier our guide told us to watch out for scorpions by the termite mounds). But our dad and I tried it. There were lights so we could see in the tunnels but one of the light bulbs burnt out and I could not see! We had to crouch down and do a slow duck walk through the tunnels. There were a lot of stairs and at one point a drop we had to jump down. Our Dad and I only walked 20 meters in the tunnels because we just wanted to try it out. In total, the tunnels are 250km long but tourists can only go 150 meters through the tunnels. The people who worked at the site made the tunnels 20% bigger for tourists but they were still very tiny. Over 2,450,000 people died in the war and we even saw a few bomb craters.

There was a shooting range at the site so it felt even more real hearing the gun shots in the background.