Greetings and How D'yado's all Interesting thing about history books, and who writes 'em. Over here, it's referred to as the American War, and the slant is quite clearly towards American aggression and their part in trying to control Vietnamese affairs. The Vietnamese Buddhist take on the war (as told to us by a wizened gentleman traveller from Maine, Bill, whom we met in Cambodia, who was stationed for 6 months in Vietnam in '63 and has been trying to get back there ever since) is that they had the Americans for less than a decade, and the Chinese for over a thousand years, and here they are as an independent united Vietnam - in terms of cultural significance the Americans have played a very small part. After Cambodia we'd just about had our fill of war and human cruelty so haven't exactly immersed ourselves in Vietnam's bloody past. We thought we'd give ourselves a break from having to plan every minute of the day (where's the best/cheapest/most interesting/most recommended place to see/sleep/eat, and how do we get there?) and take a nice relaxing organised 3 day tour of the Mekong Delta. We soon found out that there is a reason people prefer travelling independently as it's so hit-and-miss with tours. We would have liked to hit our tour guide, as he missed telling us anything of interest in 3 days. Luckily we met some fun groovy interesting people and we made our own unique experience with them (singing karaoke in a private room fully decked out with remote-controlled karaoke machine, 2 mics and surround sound, Old Spice scent and buckets of beers and weird fruit served with chili being only 1 of many). We're now taking a holiday from our holiday and getting some beach time in a small town called Mui Ne 4 hours outside of Saigon. It's hot (Damn Hot Real Hot...!!) but for the 1st time in a month of steamy 30+ days we have an air-con room and a mini fridge to put beers in. Many will be amazed and delighted to know that K and I are giving up on girlsdrink shandys and trying full-strength non-diluted pure-as-the-driven-snow (the yellow kind, with all it's connotations) BEE-YAH as the Aussies would say. It still tastes terrible. More as we make our way up the Vietnamese coast to Hanoi. The website is yours to check out, and thanks for all the messages! Love and happiness KnD