Our last land border crossing of the trip into Vietnam was marvellously smooth. We had organised our one month visas beforehand in Sihounikville and had taken the journey with a fantastic tour company that aided the process. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon in the late afternoon and were greeted by the hundreds...no...THOUSANDS of motorbikes clogging up the streets at peak our traffic. It really is something to behold - a city of 10million people has 5 million motorbikes in use - crossing the road at first was a daunting task but we soon realised that it comes down to just walking and letting the bikes go around you. We checked ourselves into a guest house hidden down a narrow alley off one of the bustling touristy streets of the city and set off straight away to explore the area around our hotel - a bustling neighbourhood dotted with restaurants, bars, clothes shops and art galleries packed with tourists. This is all set among 'Pho' stalls and low key drinking spots heaving with locals eating and drinking around low plastic tables and chairs along the pavement.. We landed up walking along a path in a nearby park where we were entertained by locals taking their afternoon jogs/walks or getting in their daily exercise in the form of all kinds of sports - badminton, volleyball and rattan ball and even saw a group of elderly locals standing in a row each massaging the backs of the person in front of them.

We had both decided that HCMC was up there as our favourite cities so far and that was even before venturing further out than a few blocks from our hotel. So the next day we put the city to the test on a full day of walking. We made a loop passing the Independence palace, the Notre Dam Cathedral, the Opera house, the harbour and 2 huge modern shopping centres but what we loved most was just seeing the city itself - its people, its amazing smells, its crazy traffic, its markets and its buzz. The city clearly passed...with flying colours.

The next three days we spent on a tour of the amazing Mekong Delta in the south west of the country. The whole tour felt like stepping into real Vietnam. We were taken by boat into colourful floating markets where the locals congregate in their boats, each heaving with a huge assortment of fresh produce - pineapples, potatoes and watermelons to name a few. We were shown local trades - how locals make their livings by the production of rice wine, coconut candy, rice paper and popped rice. We visited an enormous crocodile farm where the crocs are kept for their valuable leather, and a fruit farm where we were treated to some of the produce - mangoes, dragon fruit, bananas, melons, jack fruits and pineapple We were rowed by local women into a floating village - a section of the river where families have built floating homes which are anchored in place, their residents going about their everyday lives washing their clothes, dishes and hair in the river, people cleaning their boats and cooking their breakfasts. Also incredible were the hundreds of metres of electrical wiring hanging 2metres above the water that provide electricity to the floating quarters. Most of the homes are decorated with pot plants, and we even noticed many who had pet dogs on board. Our guide took aboard one of the larger homes that double as a business of fish farming - the house is fitted with a large net below the wooden floor which keeps the thousands of wish from escaping. And I mean thousands, around 30 000 at a time swimming around under the family's bedroom and living room. The vast number of fish was visible when our guide through some fish feed into one of the openings in the floor. This triggered a feeding frenzy with each fish struggling to the surface to get its share. We spent 2 nights in two different cities of the Mekong, both of which we dined like locals on the delicious Vietnamese noodle soup called Pho, once at a low metal table on plastic chairs in the middle of a town square, and once at a hole in the wall restaurant we were forced to go to due to the waterlogged streets caused by the torrents of rain that greeted us on our arrival at the second city. This 3 day peak into the everyday lives of a huge percentage of the population was fascinating. They live such different lives to us and sometimes we found ourselves saying it must be hard to do it their way. But we discovered that they are all happy and satisfied with their lives and ways of doing things.

Back in HCMC, we took a tour to the nearby Cu Chi Tunnels. If our tour to the Mekong was a step into real Vietnam, this was a step into the war Vietnam. The Cu Chi Tunnels is a system of tunnels spanning over 200km of Southern Vietnam that were dug and used by the Vietnamese soldiers and village people during the war in the seventies. The spider web of tunnels were not only used in combat but were also lived in! Rooms were dug 3 metres underground to be used as kitchens, hospitals and barracks, wells were dug up and ventilation pipes were put in. We were shown a very 'un-PC' video at the start of the tour, talking about the 'American killing heroes' of the war and were then walked through the Cu Chi Forests that is dotted with camouflaged access holes into the tunnel system, disguised ventilation pipes and booby traps set for the Americans. I got to crawl through the insanely narrow tunnels for a few metres - its hard to imagine how these people lived in there if I felt claustrophobic after only 5 minutes in the tunnels which have been enlarged for tourists. A tourist trap I did fall for was the shooting range... I have never even touched a gun so I took the opportunity to do it for the first time...with an M16!!! 10 bullets and 5 minutes of adrenalin.

That night we sat down at one of the small tables along the road for a beer with a few locals. We got to chatting about our experience at the Cu Chi Tunnels that day and one of the guys told us about his personal account of the war as a 5 year old kid whose brother and father were killed, his school riddled with bullets and having to flee underground most nights when the alarms went off in his village. Most of the information you get about the infamous Vietnam war are from Hollywood movies so the info is obviously biased so it was so interesting to hear about it from someone who experienced it from the other side.

From the crazy city, we headed off to the coast for some sun and relaxation in Mui Ne. As usual, we walked around for a while looking for a decent guest house to stay in but this time, instead of boathouses we were looking at resorts. Mui Ne is pretty much one long road of about 10km running along the coast lined with one magnificent resort after the other. We were worried that we weren't going to find anything in our backpacking price range but after some walking we stumbled onto a serious find. A huge, thatch roofed, wood lined, patioed room kitted with aircon, cable TV and marble top bathroom was all ours for the next 3 nights! And then there was the pool - a sparkling blue refuge we did not realise we would need. Why would we need a pool if we were at the beach??? Because even though we were at the sea, there was no beach! All of the resorts were built on higher level to the shore and the sea just bashes against the walls of the pool areas.

We spent our days taking advantage of our room and the pool, soaking up the sun, biking around and enjoying the many restaurants close to our hotel.

On one of the nights we were pulled into Pogo bar opposite our hotel by the sign that read ' Texas Holdem tonight' We were both were excited to practice our long unused poker faces and were not disappointed with a fun tournament of about 10 cool people, some good poker, conversation and drinks. Unfortunately neither of us placed but we were invited by one of the guys we played with, Tiger was his name, to a cash game at another bar close by. I declined but Jeff was well in the mood and nothing could keep him away. He got back in the wee hours of the morning with his poker addiction reignited and a wallet full of winnings!