The M-60, referred to as "The Pig" during the Vietnam War, is a belt-feed machine gun firing 7.62 x 51 mm NATO cartridges. At a certain point along the tour of the tunnels, you reach a large, open field with a massive shooting range on one side and the cafeteria type restaurants and souvenir shops rest area on the other. For the tourists who are willing to pay, you can choose from an assortment of automatic weapons. AK-47, M-16, all the way up to an M-60, an absolutely massive machine gun. (Click Here to read the Wikipedia article on the M-60)
I'm writing this blog a few days after we toured the tunnels, and I've had an opportunity see a lot of other spots that are interesting to tourists. I'll write about it more, but there is obviously been a massive effort to make many of these tourist destinations attractive and somewhat familiar people traveling from richer economies. There is also an effort to make them profitable and separate those same travelers from their money. I paid 300,000 dong for 10 rounds on the M-60. That's about $15.
There is a large part of me the regrets this commercialization. I know that Vietnam needs to grow its economy, and it is working hard to attract tourism. But each time they commercialize a site, it looses part of its historical essence. Getting to shoot that gun, though, anesthetizes some of that concern, at least for the 1.5 seconds it takes to shoot 10 rounds, and maybe the 20 minutes afterward that it takes the adrenalin rush to subside.
Shooting that thing was AWESOME!
It's too bad that Cu Chi is a theme park --for gun loving tourists. Better to go to the tunnels near the DMZ where the villagers lived underground for years to escape US carpet bombing. The point is to see the sorrow and stupidity of war, not to glorify it. I'm going to suggest eliminating Cu Chi from future trips.
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