Ho Chi Minh City, which is the official name under a communist government, was a big city full of energy. Twice as big as the northern capital (Hanoi), there is twice as many motorbikes, which means twice the chance of being run over whilst crossing the road!

You know when you've entered a city frequently visited by Australians when even your Vietnamese waiter has an Aussie accent, and on realisation of your nationality, excaims 'oh, you Aussies! Perth? Sydney? Melbourne?'

Despite the familiarity we didn't really want to hang around and put up with the smog, constant honking horns and persistent hawkers trying to offload expensive fruit, so we didn't. Besides, we have just been accepted to volunteer and help to build a village community on the South Coast of Cambodia, and we are itching to get off the tourist trail and try to give something back.

One place we didn't want to miss were the Cu Chi tunnels just outside of the city, so we jumped on one of the many tour buses destined to the famous site. Southern Vietnam still seems to be a very divided region. There are the laid-back working class who's parents fought with the US army and still like to refer to the city as Saigon. Because of their past, these people aren't allowed any of the cushy government jobs. Then there are the very anti-american supporters of the communist party. Our tour guide for the tunnels was definitely one of the latter and did his best to make all the Americans feel a little ashamed, as well as making clear his ambitions to get into politics as the minister for tourism. Despite being a bit biased and propagandist, he ran a pretty thorough, light-hearted and informative tour. We got to experience first hand the clever guerrilla warfare tactics used by the Viet Cong to defeat the pro-democratic southerners, which were led by the US army. We checked out a scary display of very painful looking traps that were used and even crawled 100m through a dark and narrow underground tunnel. Our guide explained, however, that the tunnels had been widened by 75% to allow for westerners to enter, as, he assured us, we are 75% bigger than the Viet Cong.

Wanting to enjoy the best of Nam before crossing the border, we are now traveling further south to the lush and thriving canals of the Mekong Delta.