I only spent another day or two in Mui Ne after the girls left, I enjoyed the sun, the beach and my new friends.I ate my last coconut tart, had the cheapest and most delicious garlic shrimp for the final time and soaked up as much as I could of this wonderful place before I left.

But the fun of Mui Ne couldn't last forever and before I knew it, me, Erica and Dom were on the bus zooming down the coast back towards the big city of Saigon.So Saigon is now known as Ho Chi Min city but due to the fact my Lonely planet was old I didn't quite realize this, until some now it all travel corrected me and I had to hang my head in shame, 8 months of travelling and I had made a rookie mistake! Saigon is the capital of Vietnam and you can tell, it's the biggest city, it's the loudest, the busiest and the dirtiest place I went on my exploration of this little country.

I like Saigon, me and my two new friends found a lovely little room to rent down a side street where we stayed for 2 days.During those 2 days I made the most of what Vietnam had to offer and decided to endulge myself in the old and the new - history and shopping!
So to cover the history element of my visit me and Erika decided to book onto a tour of the Cuchi Tunnels, a set of underground passage ways used by the Vietnamese during the war to get from place to place safely.After a short journey which seemed long due to the fact me and Erika were the youngest people on the bus and managed to get the worst chairs, neither of the them sat up right and both were located behind the back wheel which meant every time we went down a whole or over a bump we were both catapulted by our broken chairs into the air and after a brief moment in space we slammed back down and prepared ourselves for our next journey into the unknown a mere 30 seconds later.I was pleased when we drove into the woods and arrived at the tunnels ready to begin our tour.The tour its self was rubbish, our guide had a microphone which didn't make him any louder but instead muffled his already strong Vietnamese voice and therefore made him impossible to understand which was why I was dum struck when some one asked him a question and then seemed to understand his echoey answer? I quite literally couldn't believe it? I hadn't a clue what he was saying and I was stood next to him! Something about a rotating tree or breaking free or something? Oh I don't know, but I could work most stuff out by simply looking, I mean if you see some spikes at the bottom of a whole in the woods you can guess quite easily it's a trap right?!Although my tour wasn't great, learning about the ways the Vietnamese back in the war used to defend themselves I found quite interesting, seeing all the traps and hide outs - some of them were quite clever.However as I happily watched rather large American people try and fit into rather small hide outs I didn't for a second realize the horrors that were about to come.

So the high light of the trip to the Cuchi Tunnels is when you actually get to go down into the tunnels and see for yourself what its like for the soldiers who used to spend weeks or even months down them.I was excited to go down and explore, the tunnels go on for hundreds of kilometers and took ages to dig out and it all seemed quite exciting to me, exciting until I actually got into them.What I didn't realize is the Veitnamese are naturally a lot smaller than us westerners and so their tunnels are quite small and narrow, if they had to crouch to get into them you can imagine I would have to double up to get into them.Well Im not a contortionist and so when our guide shoved all of us down there it was quite cramped, in single file I was wedged in, when I crained my neck to look ahead all I could see was solid stone walls and the guys infronts arse a mere inch from my nose, behind I could hear Erika asking me if I found this a little bit small and scary? I lied and said no and we shuffled forward to let more people squish in behind as we waited for the people infont to navigate the steps down to the lower level.I crouched there for a couple of minutes my heart beating a little bit faster each time I got a little bit further into the tunnel and then Erika said "Laura I don't think I like this", well that was it, all the anxiety I was feeling burst out and a panic attack ensued.As my heart rate sky rocketed I couldn't stop thinking about how small the space was, How I was wedged in by people and how if I tried to turn around to see Erika or stand up I couldn't, I was trapped in a box of solid white rock - scary solid white rock which seemed to be sucking all of the air out of the space.Ok ok so it was a little irrational but it was my natural reaction, I have never freaked out about being collostrophobic before but it was all too much and so I started to back my way out of the tunnel, I pushed my bum into Erikas face and using the almighty cheeks of my arse I forced her and the 5 people behind her out of the tunnel.What I hadn't realized was that my little panic attack had caused a bit of a stur in the tunnel and others who were fine before began to freak out, the domino effect occurred and before I knew it more and more people began backing out arse first away from the tunnel and into the great world again. Oops?!

It was such a weird sensation panicing like that - just the thought of those tunnels now freaks the hell out of me,an image of the tunnel brings back all these strong emotions of pure panic and helplessness.I was so glad to be out of there and luckily it was the end of the tour.

That night over Pho me and Erika tried to rationalize our weird freak out but we couldn't?

On our way back to the city we realized we would be passing the National War Museum, a great way to learn about the war without having to bury our selves alive in a tunnel of stone - so we hopped off of the bus and waltzed into the museum for a look around.Now the museum was good but it was extremely biased, I only learnt about how evil the Americans are rather than why the war had begun and etc and as you can imagine it was all quite upsetting especially when we got to the Agent Orange room.Agent Orange is a chemical used by America on Vietnam, Im not sure whether they knew at the time the effects it would later have but regardless it caused a lot of devastation and the reason it got to me was because when your in Vietnam you see on a daily basis people who are still living with after affects, I just hadn't realized at the time. The are people all over the place who are blind, disformed or disfigured in some way by a chemical which had been sprayed on their country by counter forces, even American soldiers who had been in contact with the agent had later had disfigured children as a result.Its disgusting seeing a poor baby looking like the elephant man, born blind, or with addition or missing limbs because of a war which happened before they were born.

I learnt a lot in Saigon which I enjoyed but there are something which no matter how matter of factly you put it will still upset me.

My second day in Saigon was spent just as meaningfully and wisey, I spent it shopping! Yey! Saigon is the capital of all things fake and so I went DVD shopping getting a couple of box sets and fake copies of films not yet released - I later tried to post these home but were told that it was extremely illegal! So I only sent the ones they thought were real (glee box set I had bought for 50p!).

Saigon was interesting, I got to eat my last bowl of Pho (I MISS YOU PHO!) and learn a lot about the countries history. But soon I had a flight to catch, it was time for Thai new years and so Bangkok was calling my name!!

BYE BYE VIETNAM - You ROCK!