The underground war tunnels now a haven for dark tourism | World | News

Hundreds of thousands of British tourists flock to Vietnam every year, from luxurious seaside resorts to backpacking hotels.

However, many are also coming to experience a morbid destination. The most popular trip outside of the Vietnamese mega-city of Ho Chi Minh City is to the Cu Chi tunnel complex, which has found a new life as a dark tourism destination.

Around 1.5 million people visit the morbid Cu Chi tunnels every year. Visitors get the chance to see what life was like for Vietnamese villagers who had to literally dig themselves out of the range of US military shelling.

Originally built in the late 1940s during the anti-French resistance campaign, the tunnels were expanded during the US war in the Southeast Asian country.

The tunnels quickly became an immense network that helped several Viet Cong military campaigns during the Vietnam War.

While the tunnels were used to hide from enemy soldiers, they also served as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches, and living quarters.

Villagers who lived below the surface were known as “human moles”. Some inhabitants lived for weeks on end in the darkness during heavy US bombing and suffered temporary blindness when they eventually emerged into the light.

Life was notoriously awful in the tunnels. The routes became foul-smelling and often so hot that people had to lie on the floor to breathe. The tunnels were often infested with ants, poisonous centipedes, snakes, scorpions, spiders, and rats.

It is no surprise that disease was rampant below ground, with one Viet Cong soldier reporting that half of the soldiers had malaria.

Following the war, the 75-mile-long complex was turned into a war memorial park, with two main tourist sites Ben Dinh and Ben Duoc.

Tourists eager to get a glimpse of this life can enter the tunnels for just under £20.

People who visit the tunnels are often expected to pay respects to the lives lost during the war.

However, the dark tourism spot is not for the faint-hearted.

While some sections have been widened to accommodate tourists, the experience remains dark and claustrophobic.

Once in the tunnels, tourists have to drop to their hands and knees and squeeze through parts of the tunnels just like the Vietnamese resistance fighters in decades past.

Guides at the tunnels will often point out lethal bamboo booby traps, concealed trap doors, and abandoned tanks.

Guided tours often include a stop at on-site shooting ranges as well.