Cu Chi is one of the largest tunnel systems built by the Vietcong with over 200km of underground tunnels and bunkers linking local villages in a network. These tunnels had three different levels and played host to barracks, medical facilities, storage rooms, classrooms, even a small movie theatre!

The District was heavily fought over during the Vietnam War and the Americans never knew the extent of the tunnel system until well after the war. The Americans had several fortified villages and bases in the area and heavily bombed parts but never managed to eradicate the threat from the tunnels. The tunnels themselves were supplied with fighters, arms and supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail from the North passing through
Cambodia only 50km away, the reason the US bombed the hell out of North East Cambodia.

Conditions in the tunnels were pretty bad with air, food and water being pretty scarce and the tunnels were infested with ants, poisonous centipedes, scorpions, spiders and vermin. The VC would come out at night and tend to local crops and because the system was networked to the local villages fighters could emerge in civilian disguise to mingle amongst the locals, and of course the villages helped supply the network, all this caused much frustration with the Americans who unfortunately in some cases committing atrocities that wiped out whole villages, men, women and children.