We have been in Ho Chi Minh now for 3 days and are having a really nice time in the city. Its another crazy city with thousands of motorcylces, driving on pavements and down the wrong side of the street, you never know where they are coming from - though still not as bad as hanoi. We arrived at the airport, where our hote pick up failed to meet us, we hung around for 45 minutes and ended up getting our own taxi to the centre. Both the taxi driver and ourselves had no idea where our hotel was so we jumped out in the backpackers district and went on a hunt for new accommodation - we found a nice little place above a very nice and cheap restaurant for only 10dollars, cheaper than our original booking, which luckily we hadnt already paid for. The area was full of tourists, bars, restaurants etc. Lots of male bars too with many female staff!!, i left martin for 2 minutes and he was already recieving several offers!!! While exploring the streets that night, we came across our original hotel and mentioned what had happened, and obviosuly they didnt care, so we decided to stay put in our cheaper room.

The first full day we had, we took a walk to see the sites of the city - Lam Square, Cathedral, Opera House and the old fashioned post office which was huge. I was stopped by Ho Chi Minh Television crew to do some reading to help the children who are learning English which I did - anything to boost the statement!! We then spent the whole afternoon in the war museum, which was full of photographs from the war which were so powerful and so real - you dont realise how recent it was and how it is still having affect on people today. Half way through the last room I walked out as I couldnt bare to look at anymore photos. Was awful - but very worth a visit. That night we ate in our hotel as it was pouring with rain, we have been lucky - it always seems to rain after we have done what we had planned to do.

The follow day we had booked a trip to Cu Chi tunnels. It was a 2 hour drive, including a 30 minute stop in a handicapped handicraft factory, where all people that were affected during the war make photos, vases, etc - was beautiful work. Cu Chi tunnels was really interesting, we got to see the different sizes of the tunnels that they lived in for so long and had the opportunity to go in one ourselves, we were only in there for max of 5 minutes and luckily came across an exit as we couldnt last much longer, was a horrible feeling being in a dark small tunnel crawling on your knees. But was an experience.

We experienced a huge market in the afternoon, one of the biggest we had seen sellling everything you can imagine and today we are going to take a walk down the main shopping streets, window shopping of course!!!