We caught the bus from Nha Trang to Ho Chi Minh City, though still called Saigon by the locals. The trip was supposed to take 8 hours but took just over 12, luckily it stopped on the road we wanted which was the backpacker area, but still close to the sites of the city. The first thing that struck me was how it seemed a lot more modern, large department stores and electrical stores. Cars are also rare, with a population of around 11 million (apparently) there are over 3.5 million mopeds. Quite impressive. Not however, when you are crossing the road. Requiring you to be fearless you have to just step out into the road and keep walking, sometimes a little hard to do when all you can see is a sea of mopeds. Sometimes the best thing to do was walk closely behind a local.

We found a nice hotel to stay in, $10 for a twin room with air con and cable TV and had a walk around the city on the first day. We went to the War Remnants Museum which was interesting, there was a large collection of military vehicles and a large collection of photographs from war photographers and a rather gruesome collection of photographs of the effects of Agent Orange. It is a hectic city, and you have to be constantly on the look out for stray mopeds, some who drive on the wrong side of the road or even on the pavement.

The next day we went on a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels on an organised tour. The Cu Chi tunnels were the fighting tunnels for the Viet Cong, used for hiding and movement. Unlike Vinh Moc tunnels near the DMZ, nobody could live here as there wouldn't be enough oxygen. It was an interesting trip, we saw how small the original entrances were to the tunnels and me and Will both managed to fit, but not everyone could. The firing range was next. They had a collection of about 7 different guns for the war era which you could fire. It wasn't cheap, but me and Will both bought 10 rounds for an AK-47 and fired them off into the range. They are a lot louder than we expected with our ears ringing for a while afterwards. That was with only a few guns being fired at each time, imagine a real firefight! We also saw different areas where booby traps were made, uniforms were made etc. before heading to the actual tunnel. 100 metres is open to the public with exits every 20 metres or so in case you got claustrophobic. They were tiny, I was the first in out of the group and just kept going, out of a group of 42, only about 7 of us made it to the end. We also got a taster of tapioca root and tea, a regular diet for the Viet Cong.

Having seen what we wanted to see in Saigon we booked a 3 day tour of the Mekong Delta which would take us over the border into Cambodia and on to Phnom Penh.