Blimey, October is here already! Time really is starting to fly by now and it will only be a few weeks now until we return back home to the lovely winter time of Grey Britain. Anyway, enough of those thoughts, you want to hear about us taking dangerous drives up mountains and shooting machine guns right? Well read on and also check out the latest photos we've updated...

Tuesday 25th September

Spent pretty much all of today travelling by coach down to the town of Kampot, which is located down on the coast of Cambodia. The drive there took us through some pretty amazing countryside filled with the green colours of rice plantations, rolling fields and the Elephant Mountains. Such a refreshing change from the chaos and dirt of Phnom Penh! Upon arrival at Kampot we got the usual chaos of Tuk Tuk drivers asking us to go with them so we went with the cheapest offer as always. Our first choice of hotel was full so we ended up being taken to a nice Guesthouse reccommended by the driver, so we spent the last part of the evening grabbing a meal and booking up a tour for the following day to the abondoned Freench Hill Station in Bokor National Park. There was a slightly cheaper tour but we went with the dearer one as the guy promised us that the quality of his tour guide was much better. How wrong we were!

Wednesday 26th September

We were picked up early in the morning at around 8 a.m. which is probably the earliest we've got up in a while. We boarded on to the back of a Toyota pick up truck with the rest of the group we would be travelling with, which included some really nice Spanish people, an old Belgian guy and a French couple. Incredibly we're the only English people on an English speaking tour. We set off from Kampot and it wasn't long till we reached the rugged uphill terrain of Bokor National Park. The park covers a massive area that spans across four of Cambodias provinces and is home to some pretty impressive creatures including Asian Elephants and Tigers. Unfortunately we didn't spot either of these on our journey but we did manage to see some wild monkeys jumping through the huge trees around us. The French set up a small resort town here during their colonial occupation of Vietnam and built a hotel/casino and even had a church. It has, however, been abondoned since the Khmer Rouge period. The journey up the mountain took two and a half hours to complete and if you had seen the 'road' you would understand why. The road is pretty much a rocky, bumpy dirt track with some pretty nasty points to slip off the road and some huge jagged boulders and rocks for the vehicle to clamber over.
Twice the front tyres burst requiring us to all jump out and perfom like a Formula 1 pit crew by changing them as fast as we could. It was good fun in a way and didn't take us long, the only worrying part was that there was no spare tyres left now so we would have to take it easier. As we approached the top we could also see spectacular views of the Cambodian coastline, although by the time we reached the top we had ascended into a misty rain cloud that left us unable to see much further than 10 metres. At the top we got to look around the abondoned ghost town including a church and a big casino/hotel. Both looked incredibly eerie with the mists rolling around them and it's easy to see why the casino has been compared to the mansion in The Shining. Afterwards we were supposed to go and see a waterfall but our tour guide said that due to the weather it would be too dangerous so instead we went for a quick look at the mountaintop pagoda before making the two hour descent back down the mountain and then we all got soaked in the back when it tipped it down with rain! For the final part of the now completely disappointing tour we headed down to the riverside for a boat cruise along the river but once we reached the destination the pickup truck didn't even come and take us back to our guesthouse so ended up lost slogging along in the rain trying to find our way back! NOT a tour that we would recommend to anyone to do during the wet season! We eventually found our way back through sheer luck and sulked our way through dinner before booking a bus back to Phnom Penh for the following morning.

Thursday 27th September

Spent most of today travelling back to Phnom Penh and checked back in at the Spring Guesthouse. Unfortunately Julian and Michelle had check out that morning so we didn't get a chance to hook up with them again. We booked our bus ticket to Vietnam for the next day and said our last goodbyes to Janton at Mamas

Friday 28th September

We left Phnom Penh early in the morning on a really smart coach to Vietnam. It felt sad saying goodbye to Cambodia as it passed by our window as we have had experiences here that we will never forget and the people were so endearing. On the other hand we were looking forward to new adventures in Vietnam as everyone had told us how much they loved it there too. We ended up arriving in Ho Chi Minh City in the late afternoon and once again it was absolutely tipping it down with rain. The street was so flooded as we got out of the coach we had to wade across the street into the bus depo! Finally the rain subsided enough to go looking for the hotel we wanted to stay in only to find out that it was now a bank!! This didn't end up being too much of a problem as were walking in the backpacker area of the central district so it didn't take us long to find somewhere to stay. That evening it was still drizzling with rain so we just chilled out in a local restaurant and had a look through our lonely planet at what we wanted to do over the next couple of days.

Saturday 29th September

We decided to start our time in Ho Chi Minh City with doing the suggested walking tour of the area, which ended up taking up the rest of the day. The city has a really modern feel to it after the sights in Cambodia and there are far more highrise buildings. Along the way we saw a really nice park with loads of flowers and then the next stop was the Ben Than Market, which was actually really expensive and the market sellers were really sales aggressive and were literally grabbing hold of our arms and kidnapping us to get us to buy something! We managed to resist and made our way out gasping for air and headed further down the road to the Muncipal Theatre, which was a pretty grand looking building. Situated around this was some pretty impressive pieces of contemporary art and also a sculpture of Ho Chi Minh himself. We ended up getting up towards the famous Reunification Palace but decided to leave it until the following day as it was getting a little late. We made our way back to our hotel area and had a look around there for the rest of the evening soaking up the bustling atmosphere of the city.

Sunday 30th September

Today we picked up where we had left off the previous day by returning back to Reunification Palace. The Palace is famous for being the scene shown worldwide in 1975 when communist tanks rolled down the street and crashed through the wrought iron gates and seized power of the country. The Palace was pretty incredible to wander through it's deserted hallways and conference rooms. Most interesting of all was the basement with it's network of tunnels and telecommunications equipment and also on the roof was an abondoned Huey helicopter. After spending some time here we wandered a bit further up the road to the War Remnants Museum, which used to go by the name of Museum of Chinese and American war Crimes. The museum serves as an incredible exhibit of the brutalities and shows how these conflicts harm so many civilians. There were pretty grim pictures of American soldiers torturing captured Viet Cong and harrowing photos of children left disfigured from Napalm and Agent Orange. It was interesting to learn about a war I only knew a small amount about. Afterwards we decided to relax a bit by getting a cheap massage done on the way home to ease our weary legs. In the evening we booked a tour for the following day to go and see the Cu Chi tunnels.

Monday 1st October

We were picked up early in the morning for our trip out to the Viet Cong tunnels and were introduced to our tour guide who was a Vietnamese man named 'Slim Jim'. He used to be an English teacher for 23 years but got bored so decided he wanted to be a tour guide. His English was brilliant and someone had once given him a book of Australian slang, so he was hilarious the whole way through the tour and more informative than any tour guide we have ever had. Our first stop was to see a government run Laquareware factory where Vietnamese people with learning difficulties are given jobs producing laquared artwork. Some of it was absolutely stunning and so cheap as well so we took down their web address for when we finally get a home again one day! After this we headed further up the road to the Cao Dai temple. The Cao Dai religion is a mix of three religions, Buddhism, Catholicism and Taoism. The temple was the most colourful religious place I have ever seen and every window was a huge carved 'all seeing eye'. We all then had a chance to take some photos inside of all the colourful dragon carvings before being ushered upstairs to watch the mornings prayer. It was quite an impressive thing to watch with the men entering the hall from one side and the women on the other and then there was tradtional music being played.
The last stop of the day was to the Cu Chi Tunnels, famous for being the place where the Viet Cong hid to wage Guerrilla warfare upon the American soldiers. During the height of the war there was more than 250km of these tunnels throughout this are alone! Fortunately for us large Westerners the tunels have been slightly enlarged to allow us to crouch through them but even then there was a horrible feeling of claustraphobia and it was incredibly dark. Our eccentric tour guide also showed us some of the spiked bamboo traps that the Viet Cong created to slow the Americans advance through the jungle. Next came the bit that I was looking forward to the most, getting to fire an AK-47 and an M-60 machine gun at the firing ranges. We could hear people firing them from the other side of the forest but when we got closer the noise was incredible. Kerry and I puchased some bullets and at first I fired 10 bullets on the M-60 which lasted all of 3 seconds and then we both got to fire the famous AK-47 rifle. The recoil was incredible and once again the bullets didn't last long! Afterwards we headed back to Ho Chi Minh City and booked our open bus ticket for the rest of our time in Vietnam.

Tuesday 2nd October

Today was mosty spent travelling from Ho Chi Minh to Mui Ne Beach, our next destination. Once again it tipped it down when we arrived but fortunately this time we were dropped off right at a nice hotel! Spent the evening reading as it was far too wet to go out!

Wednesday 3rd October

In the morning we found a really nice cheap restuarant who also let us rent out a really nice cheap motorbike to go and explore the area. We started off by going for a really lovely drive along a road that followed the coast before turning back around and checking out the famous red and white sandunes. We also checked out a place called the Red Canyon, which was an area where the red sand had produced huge cliifs so we got some great photos there. The rest of the day was pretty much spent driving around on the bike and exploring. In the evening we booked out tickets for the following morning to the highland town of Dalat.

Thursday 4th October

Most of the morning was taken up with the journey to Dalat, which we arrived in just after lunchtime. We checked into a really nice hotel called Binh Yen which was situated right in the centre of town. The room was really nice with two huge beds, a TV and hot water for the first time in 3 months!! We had a walk around the town and actually had to put some trousers and a jumper on as due to the high altitude of the town, the climate is considerably cooler than where we'd been. We got harrassed a fair bit by a company called Easy Riders to do a tour with them, who are basically some guys who ride around on vintage motorbikes but in the end we opted to go with a custom tour our hotel put together for us where we could follow a guide but drive our own bike around.

Friday 5th October

Today has been a wicked day!! We started off the morning by picking up our bike and helmets and then filling the tank up for the day's journey on the road. We had a really good guide called Trung who made sure he never got too far ahead of us and we ended up seeing some incredible sights of the beautiful Dalat countryside. Along the way we drove up a windy mountains pass and passed fields of coffee plantations which Trung gave us information about. We never realised that Vietnam is the 2nd largest exporter of coffee in the world! First main stop was a visit to a silk factory where we learnthow silk was made using the cocoon of the silk worm. I never realised what an incredible process it was to make silk! Another hightlight was seeing the Elephant Falls, a huge waterfall that we got to climb down to, and even stand underneath as it passed over the top of us! Next was a stop to see the Happy Buddah, a huge carved Buddah basically that you can't help but smile at when you see it as he has the biggest chuckling face. We said a prayer each while touching his big toe, which is tradional and good luck. We also visited a flower orchard and a place where they made rice wine, which tastes really strong like Vodka. Last two stops of the day were to Datanla Falls and to the Crazy House. Datanla Falls were a beautiful set off waterfalls that were reached by a novel rollercoaster track down into the valley, a bit like the luging we did in New Zealand except you're attached to the rails. The Crazy House was a mad, huge sculpture of a house with themed rooms like the Kangeroo Room or the Tiger Room. It was created by a hippy styled Vietnamese woman who gained an archtitecture degree in Moscow. The final bit of the day took us back through the city where we gave our bike back and thanked Trung for an incredible tour that we won't forget and will highly reccommend!
Well I hope we have bored you too much to death with this rather long update, I meant to do it a few days ago but the connections were SOOO slow! Anyway, we are off to Nha Trang beach tomorrow to warm ourselves up a bit so we'll update you all in a few more days!