Currently residing in Vietnam but first to where I left off...

The iPhone is fixed! Woohoo!

Monday evening I met up with Vern, Kevin, Jana and Marie-Sophie (the Austian girls of "Zidane" fame...) and went for a few (well more than a few actually) beers near the river front of Phnom Penh... it was a fun evening that ended in some random pool house I'm not quite sure where!

Tuesday I met up with Vern (Kevin now departed for Thailand) and we went to look around the "Russian Market" it was, well, a market! And it was pretty darn hot in there. Toured the streets for a bit... nothing much going on! In the evening we met up with Jana and MS to go and watch "Grizzly Man" at this rooftop cinema-bar type thing... only to realise when the film started that we'd come on the wrong night for our intended film... we promptly abandoned ship! Stuck for something to do we tried to communicate to a few Tuk Tuk drivers we wanted to go bowling... after some confusion one of them assured us he knew a bowling alley and we jumped in a Tuk Tuk. Much to our surprise we actually ended up going bowling. It was a good evening and topped off with a few beers afterwards...

Wednesday I caught the bus to Saigon, Vietnam. I arrived about 18:30 when it was already dark. The safest option, if a little expensive, was a taxi... (more on this later). Once the taxi dropped me at the hostel and I'd dumped my gear I went out for a wander... the traffic is insane and I almost got run down three times in the space of an hour. I also got pretty damn lost... eventually I ended up where the bus dropped me off earlier that day... and then amazingly, within another minute of walking I ended up at my hostel. Strange how my taxi journey had cost me more than $9 and we travelled alot further...

On Thursday I braved the monsoon rain outside to visit first the Reunification Palace and then the War Remnants Museum. The palace is said to be left exactly how it was when the Viet Cong crashed their tanks through the gates and "liberated" the South. It's something of a time warp and vaguely interesting. After that I headed to the museum. This was really interesting with lots of photos from the war and various other bits and pieces. A lot of propganda in their though, if you took what was written as fact you'd think the Americans were the only ones doing bad stuff back then...

Friday I went on a day trip first to some weird temple and then onto the Cho Chi tunnels used by the Viet Cong during the war. The temple, no offence to their religion, was boring and not worth the 4 hours journey in a cramped mini-bus. The tunnels though (an hour outside Saigon?) were really interesting. We saw how small some of the tunnels used were and how they worked etc. We were also shown how the various traps laid for American ground troops worked. All interesting stuff! The last thing we did was go down a tunnel about one hundred metres long ourself. Crawling on your hands and knees for a hundred metres is hard work and it was bloody hot down there! Apparently the tunnel has been made three times biggers so that tourists can get down there...

Most of Saturday was taken up by the bus journey to Da Lat where I would stay overnight. When I arrived the hotel owner invited me out to dinner and drinks with himself and some other guests. The dinner was cool and it was nice chatting to some random people. The drinks, at a Karaoke place, was plain weird! The music was deafening and well... it was all just weird and random. After an hour or so I made my excuses (good old football) and departed...

Today I've had a quick mooch round Da Lat. Nothing much happening out there. About to catch a bus to Nha Trang on the coast where I plan to organise a motorbike trip into the highlands...