Cu Chi Tunnels Tour

A Cu Chi tunnels tour is a half day from Ho Chi Minh City to the wartime tunnel network at Cu Chi, which is shown to visitors at two sites: Ben Dinh, 43.7 km by road from Ben Thanh Market, and Ben Duoc, 57.5 km. The tours collect you from your hotel, include the entry ticket, and give you two to three hours on site: a short film, a guided walk past trapdoors and underground rooms, and short crawls for those who want them. The one this page follows is Vietnam Adventure Tours’ Cu Chi Tunnels Guided Tour with AM/PM Departure, from $16 in current promotion (usually $18) a person (checked November 2026), with 24,804 reviews.

The short answer

Book a half day by road unless you have a reason not to: it is the cheapest way to go, the entry ticket and a guide are in the price, and you are back in the city by mid-afternoon. Vietnam Adventure Tours’ half day leaves central Ho Chi Minh City at 8 am or 12 noon and is back at Ben Thanh Market about 3:30 pm or 7 pm. Pay more for the speedboat if you would rather spend the journey on the river than in traffic, or take the full day if you also want the Mekong Delta.

Check dates for the Cu Chi half day

Three ways to do it: pick yours

Prices, ratings and review counts from the listings (GetYourGuide checked November 2026; Viator checked November 2026). Operators price by date and season, so treat the figures as the shape of the market, not a quote.

Where everything is

The tunnels are in the countryside north-west of the city, close to the Saigon River. Ben Dinh is in Ben Dinh hamlet, Nhuan Duc commune, on Provincial Road 15. Ben Duoc, 12.3 km further up the river by road, is in An Nhon Tay commune, where the historic site has its head office. Both were in Cu Chi district until Ho Chi Minh City’s reorganisation of 1 July 2025, which merged communes and did away with districts, so older maps and tickets still say Cu Chi district. One managing body runs both sites, with one set of fees, and both are open every day from 7 am to 5 pm. The tours allow about two hours each way, because the drive out of the city is slow.

The half day, step by step

Vietnam Adventure Tours collects you from a central hotel at 8 am or 12 noon; if you are staying outside its pickup area, you meet at its office at 123 Ly Tu Trong Street, District 1, by 8:15 am or 12 noon. A confirmation email gives the exact time. The drive out takes about two hours in an air-conditioned vehicle with a guide speaking English or French.

At the tunnels there is a short documentary first, then a guided walk through the forest past camouflaged trapdoors, the traps, and the underground kitchens, living quarters and meeting rooms. Those who want to can crawl through short tunnel sections; the shooting range is an option, with the bullets at your own cost. You are back at Ben Thanh Market or the operator’s office about 3:30 pm on the morning tour or 7 pm on the afternoon tour. After the morning tour the group stops at a restaurant for a restroom break, where you can buy a light lunch.

Ben Dinh or Ben Duoc

Ben Dinh, the nearer site, was the base of the Cu Chi district party committee during the war. It has the documentary hall, tunnel sections including one under Provincial Road 15, a room where weapons were made, trenches, and a US M41 tank wrecked by a mine in 1970. Ben Duoc, 12.3 km further on, was the underground base of the Saigon-Cho Lon-Gia Dinh military region’s command; it adds the Ben Duoc Martyrs’ Memorial Temple, whose 39 m tower carries 45,666 names, and a reconstruction of a liberated-zone village with its own ticket. The GetYourGuide listing of the tour this page follows does not name its site. On Viator the same operator’s tour sends its standard group of up to 25 to Ben Dinh and its small-group, VIP and private options to Ben Duoc. Ben Dinh or Ben Duoc compares the two and the tours that name each.

What the price includes, and the entrance fee

The half day is from $16 in current promotion (usually $18) a person on GetYourGuide (checked November 2026). That covers the transport, the guide, the entry ticket and a bottle of water; lunch, tips and shooting-range bullets are extra. Cancellation is free up to 24 hours before.

Bought at the gate, a foreign visitor pays two tickets: the 35,000 VND heritage fee and a 100,000 VND service-and-guide ticket, raised from 90,000 VND on 1 February 2026: 135,000 VND in all (November 2026). The liberated-zone reconstruction at Ben Duoc is 85,000 VND more. Under the city’s fee resolution, children under 7 pay no heritage fee and children from 7 to under 16 pay half. The entrance fee has the details, and how to go without a tour.

See dates and the live price

By speedboat, or with the Mekong Delta

The speedboat tours go up the Saigon River instead of by road, 45 to 80 minutes each way, and include a meal: Kim Travel’s speedboat half day is from $71 in current promotion (usually $74) (checked November 2026), with hotel pickup, the entrance fee and a set lunch. Cu Chi tunnels by speedboat compares them. The full day with the Mekong Delta, about 10 hours, adds lunch and the boats at My Tho: the tunnels and the Mekong Delta in one day.

The shooting range

Both sites have a defence sport shooting range among their services. It is optional, and no tour carded here includes the bullets: you buy them on the spot. The managing body publishes no price for it; on Hana Tourist’s Ben Duoc tour it is 60,000 to 75,000 VND a bullet, with a minimum of 10, and the tours that set an age limit set it at 18. The shooting range has the figures each tour gives.

What the tunnels were

The managing body dates the first tunnels to about 1946 to 1948, during the war against the French, in Tan Phu Trung and Phuoc Vinh An communes. From 1961 to 1965 they were joined into one system. It puts the network at over 250 km, on three levels about 3 m, 6 m and more than 12 m below ground, with about 120 km preserved. Underground were meeting rooms, kitchens, stores and rooms where the wounded were treated. US forces mounted large operations against the area: Operation Crimp in January 1966 and Operation Cedar Falls from 8 January 1967.

Many people on all sides died here. For Cu Chi district as a whole, the managing body’s preliminary count is 10,101 civilians killed and more than 10,000 Vietnamese cadres and fighters who died. Ben Duoc was recognised as a national historic relic in 1979 and Ben Dinh in 2004, and in 2015 the tunnels were ranked a Special National Relic. Visit as you would any war memorial.

What was going on when this page was checked

When this page was checked on 3 November 2026, the managing body had announced no closure or works at either site; its last change was the guide-ticket increase of 1 February 2026. It also runs an evening programme, Trang Chien Khu, on selected Saturdays, at 399,000 VND: the next is on 21 November 2026, from 6 pm to 8:40 pm. No tour carded on this site includes it.