War Remnants Museum and Cu Chi Tunnels: What to Expect

For most American travellers these are the two places in Vietnam where the war stops being history and becomes a room you are standing in. They are very different experiences and they ask different things of you.

The War Remnants Museum

A museum in District 1 documenting the war from the Vietnamese perspective. The courtyard displays American military aircraft, tanks and artillery. Inside, the exhibits cover the conduct of the war, the effects of Agent Orange and international opposition to it, largely through photography.

The Requiem exhibition, drawn from the work of photographers killed covering the conflict, is the part visitors most often single out. The Agent Orange material is the most distressing in the building.

What to know going in

It presents a national account of a national trauma and does not attempt American balance. The museum was for years called the Museum of American War Crimes, and the framing remains direct. Knowing that beforehand is not a reason to discount what is on the walls — most of it is photographic — but it does let you read it as one country's account rather than being ambushed by the tone.

Allow around two hours. Going early and leaving the rest of the day loose is the usual advice. Parents should know that some of the photography is graphic.

Cu Chi Tunnels

A network of tunnels northwest of the city, used during the war for shelter, supply and movement. Two sites are open to visitors: Ben Dinh, closer and busier, and Ben Duoc, further out and generally quieter.

A visit usually includes a documentary film of a certain vintage, a walk through the forest past displays of trapdoors and booby traps, and a chance to go down a section of tunnel that has been widened for visitors. Even widened, it is tight, low and hot.

The claustrophobia question

Take it seriously. The tunnel sections are genuinely confined and there are limited exit points once you are in. There is no obligation to go down, and plenty of people walk the site without doing so.

The firing range

There is a range at the site where visitors can pay to fire period weapons, and the sound carries. Some find it an incongruous addition to a war memorial; others treat it as part of the visit. It is worth knowing in advance, because the gunfire is audible while you are walking round.

Practical notes for the tunnels

Wear clothes you do not mind getting dirty and shoes you can crouch in; the tunnel sections are earth and the forest paths are dusty in the dry season and muddy in the wet. Bring water and insect repellent. Entry fees are modest and usually separate from the tour price.

Getting there

Cu Chi is roughly an hour and a half to two hours from District 1 by road, so a group tour is a half day at minimum and often a full one. Ben Duoc is further out and generally reported as quieter, and is worth asking for if the operator offers a choice.

Some operators run a boat along the Saigon River instead, which takes longer and is a more pleasant journey than the coach.

Reunification Palace, the third piece

Ten minutes from the museum and often overlooked next to it. The palace is preserved roughly as it was in April 1975 — the cabinet room, the president's quarters, and the basement command bunker with its maps and radio sets.

It completes the picture the museum starts. The museum shows the war as it was experienced; the palace shows the government that was conducting it, and the rooms where that ended. An hour is enough, and taken together with the museum it makes a coherent morning.

Doing both in one day

Possible and not recommended. Cu Chi in the morning and the museum in the afternoon is a standard tour combination, and it compresses a great deal of difficult material into one day with a long drive in the middle. Splitting them across two days gives each one room.

If you only have time for one, the museum is the one that leaves the deeper impression for most people, and it is in the city.

How Americans are received at these places

Worth saying plainly, because it is the thing people worry about. American visitors commonly report being treated with ordinary courtesy at both sites. The material is pointed; the reception, by most accounts, is not.

Most Vietnamese people were born long after 1975, the war is called the American War there, and the national posture towards American visitors is welcoming. If the subject comes up in conversation afterwards, listening tends to serve better than explaining, and nobody is expecting an apology.

And the third site, if you go north

The DMZ day out of Hue — Vinh Moc tunnels, Khe Sanh, the Ben Hai river — is the other place the war is on the ground rather than in a museum. Vinh Moc, where a village lived underground for years, is unaltered for visitors in a way Cu Chi is not, and it is far less crowded.