Hello from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where we are enjoying being millionaires! ($50 is 1 million Vietnamese Dong). We arrived safely yesterday after a long arse bus journey. Getting off to a bad start, we got ripped off by a taxi but only lost $10 and have had our whits about us since.

Ho Chi Minh City is crazily busy! The roads, and even the pathways, are filled with motorbikes. You can tell it is much wealthier than Cambodia; the streets are clean and there are proper shops.

We're staying a short walk away from the backpacker district so we headed there last night and grabbed some dinner, Max had a traditional Vietnamese Pho noodle soup and Steph cheated having tacos. On the way back we decided to get a Saigon beer in a hostel bar and got persuaded into doing the pub quiz. Lacking in numbers, we asked a few others if they would like to join our team, 'the Cannons', so altogether we had 5 people - us and 3 Germans. Sadly we missed out on first place and the all important bottle of vodka by half a point!

This morning we met our tour guide and fellow group for a half day tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. It was interesting learning about the Vietnam war; our tour guide's father fought for South Vietnam i.e. the US army whilst his uncle fought for North Vietnam. The tunnels themselves are tiny! In comparison to the Viet Cong, we are a lot taller and wider and struggled to crawl through the hot tunnels that have openings every 30 metres. There is a shooting range at the tunnels and Max had a go at shooting an M30 machine gun.

On the way back we had a traditional Vietnamese pancake for lunch. This was a calzone like pancake filled with vegetables, pork and shrimp. Different, but tasty!

After this we jumped in a taxi (one that we now know is safe to use) to the War Remnants Museum, formerly called the Museum of America War Crimes. The propaganda is huge; everything in the museum shows the bad things that America did during the war but it shows nothing of North Vietnam's behaviour. One thing we were shocked by was the chemical attacks made by America. The country is still suffering now with damaged countryside and babies being born with deformities due to their parents or grandparents having agent orange poisoning.

We left the museum at the peak of rush hour (as if the city isn't busy enough anyway), so just for the experience we both jumped on a motorbike taxi to get back to our hotel. Three people (plus) on a bike is the norm over here. When we stopped at traffic lights, we had people teaching us how to say happy new year in Vietnamese and wishing us good luck.

Tonight we're planning on going to the night market to find some tasty street food for dinner. We're going to do our best to avoid the dishes with dog, snake and rat in them!

Steph and Max x