It was another early start. We had to be at the tourist information centre at 7am, luckily it was 2 shops down from our hotel, so it wasn't like it was far. It was just really early. Again.

We left for the Cu Chi tunnels at 7.45am (after purchasing baguettes and water from a vendor across the road). It was a 2 hour journey to the tunnels: not because it was far, but because the traffic in Ho Chi Minh City was a bit mad.

We arrived there after 10am and walked around the different traps used by the Vietnamese, originally to catch animals, then used to kill the enemy (mainly Americans). We learned that younger bamboo was much stronger and did not have a hole in the middle of it like the older bamboo did. Young bamboo was therefore used to make spikes in the traps to kill/seriously harm individuals. Old bamboo was used to make chop sticks.

We walked past bomb craters that were now overgrown with foliage and we learned that the tress that were there had been planted after the war. Agent Orange had killed all the jungle, farmland and villages, older people would say that you could see Saigon from the Cu Chi tunnels, because all the forests had died.

At the end, we had a chance to go down into the tunnels and walk through the channel, with 5 different exit points. They'd widened the tunnel so it was easier for foreigners to crawl through, but it was still quite a small space and I was concerned that I wouldn't cope. In the end it turned out that Edd couldn't cope with the confined area, coupled with humidity and lack of a torch, so we crawled out at exit 1. Being a small person already, I could walk through the tunnels bent down, so the small space I was expecting was much larger.

We were then taken to an area where you could pay to fire an automatic weapon. The sound was deafening and gave me a headache, luckily I'd come prepared. We were on our way to a movie area and passed a man making sandals out of old tyres. Apparently in the rainy season during the war, they'd make the shoes so that the smaller side was at the back, this then created the illusion of people walking in the opposite direction to where they were actually going. It was an ingenious idea; necessity truly is the mother of invention. We then watched a very uninformative movie with bad sound for 15 minutes before they switched the DVD off and asked everyone to leave. We got back on the bus and set off again for the 1.5hour journey back to HCMC.

We met up with the Swiss girl when we got back - she'd had a bad night and decided to skip the tunnels. We had lunch in a restaurant that assisted the disabled, giving them jobs and training them in different skills. We had a good lunch and then set off in the direction of the War Museum after 3pm.

We caught a taxi there as it was a 25 minute walk, neither of our phones were really working (the 3G in this country was horrendous) and they closed at 5pm, so didn't have much time. The Swiss girl had been educated in which taxi's to take and we hailed one that wasn't going to rip us off.

10 minutes later we arrived and walked in. Offered sunglasses, shoe shining and a variety of other random things as we entered. It was advisable to start at the top and work your way down, so we took the lift to the 4th floor.

I'd been in the Nelson Mandela museum in Johannesburg and it was basically like reading a book on a wall. This museum was the same. We looked at the pictures and read the captions for what seemed an eternity, none of us understanding why they went to war, why America got involved and what the French had to do with anything.

On the next floor down we discovered the issues with communism and the North vs South split as well as why other countries got involved. There were sections dedicated to the innocent victims of the war, where American soldiers disembowelled a 6 year old girl after finding her hiding in a sewer. We decided there was no hope for humanity. We knew that the Vietnamese had done atrocious things as well, but the museum was very focused on how bad the Americans were and how the Vietnamese suffered at the hands of these monsters. The actual reason for the war in the first place seemed to be lost in the naming and shaming and the exhibitions were very one-sided.

We moved down to the next level, which focussed a lot on the chemical weapons that were used in the war, namely Agent Orange. One of the captions explained that 85g of the chemical could wipe out a city of 8 million people. Millions of tonnes of the stuff had been dropped and no man, animal, plant or sea creature was safe from it. Children were still being born in the 21st Century with deformities and other abnormalities as a result of their parents being exposed during the war when they themselves were children. There were even specimens of whole babies in jars that had defects. A multitude of Siamese twins had been born, or still born or lost in late miscarriages / premature births.

We were then informed that the museum would be closing in 5 minutes and we needed to vacate the premises. We left feeling severely depressed. The things people do to each other is enough to make you lose all hope of humanity.

We hailed a taxi back and dropped the Swiss girl off at a French bookshop so she could buy a book to read. We then got dropped off at our hotel and went to buy a few bits from the mini mart. We then went upstairs to our room, climbed into bed and Edd researched Cambodia while I blogged.

We met a friend of mine from South Africa at 7.30pm on the corner of madness and mayhem; she and her boyfriend lead us to a restaurant they'd eaten at before and we enjoyed dinner with the locals while we had a catch up. They then lead us to a rooftop bar where we had G&T's and chatted about things to do in Cambodia - they'd been there before and had useful tips on which of the islands to visit and what to look out for.

We still had to pack our bags and it was 10.30pm. We said goodbye and made our way back to our hotel, looking for little shops that might still be open where we could spend the last of our Dong. We were unsuccessful in our quest and gave up, we'd just have to exchange it somewhere for Riel or Dollars.

We packed our bags and climbed into bed, it was already 12.00am and we were in for an early morning (again!), much to our dismay.