Early morning wakeup in Phnom Penh ready to catch bus at 630am. Proposed travel itinery was as follows - Bus for 1 hour then boat for 4 hours then bus for 5 hours arriving in to Ho Chi Minh City by this version at 4:30pm . . . . . actual arrival time was 1030pm!!!

Here is how it went, van ride around Phonm penh for an hour picking up people and doing something wierd wth our visa's then on the road, funny thing is whereever you travel you have no idea where you are what is happening and what you are meant to be doing. So we finally arrive in an abandoned warehouse type setting and get oked down an alley way, no idea where we are then we see some boats and a plank, we felt like we were on Hook as we carefully negotiated our way on, Abbey at the back laughing at Grace thinking she is a big scaredy cat but wasn't so funny when it was her turn - found it scarier than skydiving!!!

Boat to the "boarder" and were checked through quarentine - Britt hadn't been feeling well and was a bit nervous but got through. We ate some not so delcious noodles and chicken which looked like it had freezer burn and Britt struggled not to spew from the sight of it and so she wouldnt get busted!! Boring but fun way to travel down the Mekong River, something a bit different, but makes your day to Ho Chi Minh longer!!

Arrived in to Chau Doc and climed up and squished into a cyclo (like a tuk tuk only smaller and attached to a push bike not a motorbike), Abbey and britt and 3 backpacks whilst Gravy enjoyed a lax out on the back of a motor.

"As i just wrote that someone in our group has claimed that they think they have sharted, could be false alarm....."

1.5hour wait for our bus and then we climbed onto a van - the thing is when they say a bus they mean a van, when they say a van they mean a car and when they say a car your probably gonna get on a motorbike and if they say motor your probably pushing yourself on a bicycle, run if they say bicycle because prob means youll be walking.

After a long long journey very little to eat beause all the food nwas so random, we were not too sure about how we would cope in Vietnam first impression was av.

"Confirmed, false alarm, but it was the 5th today when she made the safe trip"

We found an amazing hotel, $24/night total, air con, bathroom, free internet and breaky and blankets like a quilt with little dogs on it, shame we forgot to take a photo. The management was amazing, even greeted us down the alley way one day and gave Abbey a huge hug!!!

After a great s;eep we took ourselves on a tour of the city - Markets where we made numerous purchases such as gucci wallets, prada bags, Mac makeup, perfume, tshirts and jewellery and no one spent more than $50.00. Then we got into a cyclo as they quoted an extremely good price about $1 NZ for 3 of us so we said sure. As the museum wasnt open until 130 we went for lunch the cyclos said they would wait and then take us to the museum, and they did. After pulling up 50m before the museum the 3 'lovely' men who on the trip had enjoyed our singing (this should have been a dead giveaway that they were not as they seemed, who would love our singing, huh) and pointed out the sights of the city proceeded to demand that we each pay them $18nz EACH, apparently they had said 150000 dong not 15,000 like we thought, as we were only getting uised to dong and they started yelling at us we paid up 700000 dong approx $35 USa so like $50 NZ, what a scam after we thought about it we couldn't believe we had given in so easily, after 8 hours playing on our mind we made it seem better by telling ourselves that they could all take the week off work as they are poor as hell so this is like our good deed.

We walked around the war museum, a great place to visit, unbelievable again that this sort of stuff happens, bloody America!!

Strolled passed the palace still destraught from being ripped off we decided to save our pennies and get a picture outside. We then relaxed and had our firts coffee of the trip and home to shower up.

Tea at Kims was a great laugh, Grace was a highlight with her white skin, so much so that our waiter saked her name, "Grace" she replied, "I love you " he said hahahaha. We had some Kim's punches, grace had an arm wrestle but she was defeated by her new love interest. Our stalkers showed up (people at our accom who seem to be everywhere we are". Got some tips for our travels and had some laughs. Ventured around the corner for some more bevvies and drinking games.

The next day we had booked oursleves in to go to Co Chi Tunnnels - an area where people dug underground fields during the war to hide from the enemy, planes and bombs and to fight from. Tunnels were tiny (Britt even broke the side of an entrance getting in!) we got to walk under ground for 100m, it was a bit scary quite claustraphobic, but we did it!!! Sweating like animals beasue we are fat foreigners!!

On return to the city we headed to a water park to cool down about 7km from our accom taxi there costed 70,000 dong. The park enrty fee was 90,000 dong each. No lines and about 8 massive slides of varying sorts, flyinh foxes, pools and spa's. We started out on the first slide and got a hooer of a fright, we shuld have guessed when it was called the Kamikaze. Basically a straight slide with 2 bumps, seemed pretty harmless, boy were we wrong, we travelled abvout 50km/hour and had to check we still had our private parts after landing, thats how hammered and cained we got!!! It was a lot of fun, refreshing. I dopnt think theyw opuld be allowed a theme park like this in NZ with our laws not too dangerous but we did get a bit nervous from time to time.

We got a taxi back to our hotel, however we did not take the same route and began to notice the km's adn fee to be sky rocketing, we began to complained and the taxi driver tossed his phone at Grace. It was his english seaking bro, making sure we were ok and what the prob was. We managed to negotaite to forget the meter and only pay 90,000 dong. However wehen we got close to our destination and he stopped, he demanded 100,000, we said rack off stood our ground and he gave us our 10,000dong change, lil s***e!!!! Lucky we learned from our cyclo experience!!!

We hit up the night ,markets that night and had a strage dinner of sorts. It was a fresh food place, so all meat was alive beofre it was cooked such as frogs hanging by string, and crabs tied up but alive!!! We spent a bit more money on some purchases more bags, one for $4NZ a bit like one of Ruds' ones so of course it was purchased!!

Home, packed and slept ready to be picked up as 7.20am for a bus to Mui Ne