Do you know, living out of a suitcase is a lot easier with packing cubes? We are on the move again, on our way to Saigon/Ho Chi Min City. Our flight was 10ish, so quite an early breakfast and a dash to the airport, with a full day of travelling before us.

Da Nang is quite a nice airport, lots of shops and cafes etc to keep you occupied.We took off more or less on time, expecting it to be a bit of a bumpy flight as Nam has told us there is a typhoon coming. Personally, I think it's just a deepish depression sweeping across Vietnam, typhoon is a bit dramatic!

Anyway the flight wasn't too bad but the Vietnamese are not very good at doing as they are told. You know as you approach your airport, start to lose height and they tell you to sit down and belt up? Well, apparently this is a green light for the Vietnamese to stand up and wander off to the toilet! The crew don't stop them and the nearer we got to landing the worse it got. Maybe they all have weak bladders, another symptom perhaps of Agent Orange poisoning?

Well it was bumpy coming in to land, the wings were flexing like a Mexican wave and we were sort of crabbing towards the runway, kind of sideways. Now I know why the Vietnamese went to the toilet. They must have known that it was going to be a bit scary and took precautions.

So, in we come sideways and make the most perfect landing, hardly a jolt, no Captain Kangaloo. The only trouble was that he had performed this unbelievable feat a little too far down the runway and had to jam the anchors on so hard that my nose was squashed against my tray table on the back of the seat in front of me.

It wasn't raining as much in Saigon, so either it hadn't got there yet or it was coming. This was a good thing as we were off to see the Cu Chi tunnels where the Vietcong hid out during the Vietnamese War.

First of all though, lunch. The consensus was that we should opt for another load of baguettes as they were really cheap and tasty. We stopped at our bus driver's favourite baguette provider and then ate them on the bus as we joined the madness that was the off peak traffic in Saigon.

The sheer amount of people on mopeds is astounding but even more so, is what they manage to pack on to these bikes. Families of 5 are common place, more amusing are the clever conversions of old "Steve McQueen Great Escape" bikes. They take off the back wheel and weld on a two wheeled trailer, making a pretty unstable form of transport which is used for things like moving house, carrying huge loads of bricks, roof trusses, you name it, you can find it on a trailer, including, pigs, goats and chickens.

Even more exciting are the ones who load up their mopeds with some pieces of wood that extend widthways by about a couple of feet either side and then have things like garden gates strapped on. I saw one who must have been delivering a fridge and another with a huge porcelain rabbit. I know not why.

They have huge boxes held on by bungees to the back, bags on both handles, boxes in front of them, all whilst managing to text people and drive with one hand. They are a bit like a huge human oilslick. Oh yes and then you get the ones who are going the opposite way to everyone else, they are not long for this world, I'm afraid.....

On the way through this surge of humanity we learned that we have a change of hotel. The one planned was been refurbished, so we have been upgraded to a 4 star. This trip is supposed to consist of premium hotels, which I would have though, should mean 4 star anyway.

But first the Cu Chi tunnels. Being a keen claustrophobic I was dreading this as I thought we would be forced down rabbit burrows, a bit like Alice in Wonderland. As it turned out we had a guided tour of an area that was bombed to b*****y in the Vietnam War by US B52 bombers. The bomb craters were still evident.

The first thing we saw was a secret entrance to the tunnels which consisted of a very small hole, covered with a wooden trapdoor. This teentsy little hole had been widened to accommodate some of the less obese tourists and actually led to what can only be described as a rabbit burrow. A couple of people tried it out, including Mirella who is very well endowed and nearly got her boobs stuck and the fearless' I've been headbutted by a cow into the dyke' Lynette. She'll have a go at anything.

Then we were shown the Vietcong booby traps, which were truly horrible, most of them consisting of lots of spikes or sharpened bamboo, designed to impregnate all different parts of the body once triggered by the hapless US conscripts. They were designed to make it almost impossible for the wounded soldiers to be extracted without inflicting even more injuries.

Inhuman you may think? But surely no less inhuman than a foreign power carpet bombing a population who were more or less lacking in weaponry and who were fighting for  their right to live in their own country?

I had never seen this war from 'the other side of the fence' and this insight made me realise that there is no right or wrong to war, there are just losers; people who lose their homes, their lives, limbs, families and freedom to live how they want to live.

Somewhat incongruously, the majority of the weapons used by the Vietcong, if you discount the Russian rifles and ordnance, were actually fashioned from the scrap metal and shrapnel recovered from the bombing. These were made into the evil spikes for their mantraps, even made into land mines. The gunpowder required to make the mines explode was recovered by sawing unexploded bombs in half and retrieving the explosives. A somewhat hazardous pursuit when you consider that the friction from sawing the bomb in half produces an immense increase in the temperature of the casing, which could result in it exploding. The bomb casing was continuously cooled with water to increase the odds of survival.

There is a US tank in the newly planted forest around the tunnels which was taken out by one of these improvised land mines. It lies where it and its four crew members died that day.

On to the tunnels. There were around 250kms of tunnels dug during both the war with the French and the war with the US. Whole families lived their lives down there, their staple diet being tapioca root and not very much else. The tunnels were mostly too small for Westerners to enter the network so the opposition tried to fill the tunnels with water which didn't work as they were all built at a sufficient gradient that the water would travel through and empty back into the river. Lives were lost of course, mainly due to poisonous gas, defoliation and superior fire power. Also, disease was rife as these tunnels were extremely hot and humid, perfect conditions for illness to travel through the populace.

The tunnels were built on three levels, the first level being 3m below the surface, the other two considerably deeper. Fresh air was obtained through large bamboo pipes sticking out above ground.

Nearly all of our group opted to go down into the tunnels to experience a mere 25m of tunnel, showing how the Vietcong lived. Not me, too chicken, also Celia, Paula at over 6ft was just too tall.

 Back on the bus once more, we joined the oil slick towards our city centre hotel. Night falls early here, by 5pm it was nearly dark as we disembarked and trooped into the Millennium Boutique Hotel.

My room was Compact and Bijou as they say. Nowhere to unpack, a wardrobe the size of a budgie cage and a bed in a wooden frame that was just waiting to destroy my shins. However, with my trusty cubes, there is no need to unpack but there is nowhere to put my case either so I put it on the floor at the bottom of the bed so I have to walk round it and miss the wooden shin scraper that is the bed.

The others were all off to the Opera House to see this $50 show,a bit like Cirque de Soleil. I didn't fancy it and actually $50 is a lot for something that doesn't float your boat. So I trotted upstairs to the bar for a beer and a blog catch up. The bar was actually outdoors next to the pool and the cats and dogs were coming down persistently, the waiter in the empty dining room rescued me and so I sat inside, in the dry and caught up with this here drivel.

We met up again at 7.30 for a dinner in the Lemon Grass restaurant which was very tasty, Satay chicken and rice.

Saigon is a bit of a dangerous city for the complacent tourist so we are to wear our rucksacks to the front, our cameras are to be "wired to our body". Not sure what that means, lost in translation I suppose. Makes me think of suicide bombers!. We are going out on organised trips so I think, or hope, there will be safety in numbers.

Nighty night all. X