After half an hour tunneling on our hands and knees, we escaped to the surface, gasping. Another group headed down. A well-fed British woman in her fifties was desperately wriggling into the opening. Her male companion and a Vietnamese tour guide struggled to help her into the passage. One tried to keep the woman from getting stuck, the other tried to prevent her from falling through. Standing next to us, two Vietnamese soldiers watched with amazement plain on their faces. They were both about five feet tall and a hundred pounds—roughly the size of the Vietnamese Rat People who built the Cu
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