Our first few days in Vietnam have mostly been spent trying to give our new 'friend' the slip. The 40-Year-Old German latched onto us on the border crossing from Cambodia & then insisted on us doing EVERYTHING together! At first he was OK but the day after we met him, he knocked on our door at 8 in the morning & when we lay in bed ignoring him, he went & called our room from reception! This is when I realised he was trouble. Now I know we're the kind of people you wanna hang out with & I've had my fare share of stalkers, but this guy was relentless. Every time we said we were doing something he was like 'I go with you,' & every time we decided on a nice place to eat, he'd pick a horrible place across the road & demand that we go there! The final straw for me was when he went into a shop & bought 2 cans of beer; one for him & one for Vish! er, Hello? where's mine?! At this point I realised that we had to lose this guy or face being stuck with him for the next 2 weeks! We tried everything to shake him off, but he still insisted on coming with us! In the end we fabricated a huge lie & told him we were taking a 40 hour train journey to the North of Vietnam, thankfully not even Jurgen Kling-On would agree to that. So we are now free, but for how long?

Apart from the Kling-On, we are really enjoying Vietnam so far, Saigon is crazy! We have been exploring on foot, as no traveller in their right mind would dare take a Motorbike on these roads! Like most cities in Asia, the roads are insane & there is no such thing as the Highway code. Saigon is Bike City there are millions of them all with at least 3 passengers, driving up & down streets the wrong way! In the middle of the madness, there are Taxis, School Children riding bicycles down the dual carriageway, Cyclos (a wheelchair taxi with a bicycle attached to the back), & all manner of street Vendors in traditional cone hats! It has a similar vibe to Bangkok, as the locals say 'Same Same, but Different' - its the best way to describe all South East Asian Countries because they are all so similar & yet very different!

Yesterday, we went to visit the Chi Chi tunnels, which is were Viet Cong Guerillas hid whilst fighting the Americans. It is an incredibly complex system of underground tunnels where people lived & fought for years - its no surprise that America lost the war - the Vientamese were just way too clever! The tour itself was pretty bizarre & not surprisingly, very anti-American. Fortunately, there were no Americans in our tour group, they would probably have walked out when the black & white TV documentary started praising specific guerilla veterans for killing thousands of Americans! There were a number of racist Australians who boo'd when our tour guide cheered Vietnam for winning the war & one particularly horrible man, who very seriously said to us that he'd like to shoot some of the Vietnamese! I seriously wonder what some people are doing here?

Considering all this hatred & given that we'd just learnt all about the horrors of war, this didn't stop us from buying bullets & shooting AK47's at the firing range! It was very loud. Vish got all testosterone on me & fired a few rounds of an M1 as well as the AK. Mine kept jamming & I was convinced that it would backfire on me & I'd lose an eye. After this, we trudged through the jungle in the pouring rain, Platoon Style & went down into one of the tunnels. It was very dark & extremely narrow, despite the fact that they'd widened it for tourists, I have no idea how people lived down here, but then again, it was probably better than getting blown up by Americans or exposed to Agent Orange...

This has been a long one so think I'd better go now, I'm still looking over my shoulder for Jurgen, I don't think we'll be safe til we leave Saigon, but off to Hoi An tonight so only a few more hours to hide, perhaps the tunnels may come in handy afterall...