One of our stops was the Khe Sanh combat base - a US base in South Vietnam. Today, the area is used mostly for coffee plantations, but during the Vietnam war it was the site of bloody battles and many lives lost. A museum preserves some of the bunkers and trenches as well as a few old planes and tanks:
Next, we visited the Vinh Moc tunnels. The tunnels are similar to the Cu Chi tunnels, but a lot bigger and more comfortable to move in - I could almost stand upright. They had to be, however: they served as the home of an entire village for several years. The village was relocated to a depth of up to 30 meters because the US somehow believed this village to be in their bombers' way to Hanoi. Consequently, all of the villages activities took place underground for years: there were wells, assembly rooms, schools, and even a maternity ward that today has life-sized puppets illustrating how cramped the space was:
17 children were born in the tunnels. Just imagine - you turn five years old, and the only association you have to daylight is "danger!"
We crossed the Ben Hai river that marked the DMZ twice. There are monuments and Vietnamese flags and a modern bridge today, but back then, our guide explained, there were loudspeakers with propaganda (of both sides), and helicopter patrolling the area.
Our last stop was a cemetery where soldiers killed in the war are buried. The most shocking thing for me was to see the inscriptions on the gravestones: the vast majority of them doesn't bear a name because the body couldn't be identified.
