Going under : The Cu Chi tunnels

About forty kilometres south of Hanoi lays one of Vietnam most popular tourist destination: The Cu Chi tunnels. No trip to the city would be complete without a day at Cu Chi.

The ingenious tunnels run for throughout the province for approximately 250 kilometres and some tunnels had up to 4 levels! At it’s peak, this network spread all the way to the Cambodian border. It took the Vietnamese a little over 25 years to complete all the tunnels whose construction started with the Indochine war.


It is however for their use during the Vietnam War in the sixties that the tunnels are better known. More then simple communication channels, the tunnels were developed and used as hideouts, hospital, military reserves and shelter where Vietnamese families would live.

A visit to the site allows you to walk around the site to sample the complexity of the network and ingenious conception. Some entries to the tunnels were kept to allow us to get an idea of their tyniness: most North Americans can’t even fit pass the hips!

About 2 km of tunnels were enlarged just enough to allow tourist an underground experience. Crawling in those for a few minutes is sufficient to give you an idea of the suffocating and oppressing feeling the Vietnamese had to deal with. The experience brings your visit to an all-new level of understanding but is not recommended if you suffer the smallest claustrophobia. I personally had more then enough after a few meters…

You can find interesting information and articles on the BBC website and on wikipedia.

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That being said, St-Patrick’s day is just around the corner and the celebrations already started in beautiful Montreal. With beer dressing up in green and all the pubs feature traditional Irish music, there is no reason to stay in! Am still dealing with a little headache from yesterday’s outing but will definitely be celebrating again. Cheers everyone! H.