Hello everyone,

On Wednesday 17th August we left Nha Trang on the sleeper train to Ho Chi Minh City. Unfortunately the train was a bit skankier than the other ones we had been on, especially since Ryan found a sick covered sheet on the shelf by his bunk, slightly gross. It was also bit annoying that the train got in at at 5am. Anyway, we got to our guesthouse eventually which was down a nice quiet alleyway in the backpacker area.

After a little bit of rest we got on another cyclo-taxi through the city to the War Remnants museum. It is similar to the one we went to in Hanoi as it has old tanks, planes and other things left over from the war outside. Inside it had some interesting exhibitions containing lots of photos from the war. Some of them were quite gory though. When we finished we got on the cyclo-taxi again back to the guesthouse which was great fun though a bit unnerving in the traffic at times!

On the Friday we went on the trip to the Cu Chi tunnels which are about an hour away from the centre of the city. These tunnels were used by some of the Vietnamese to escape American bombing and soldiers. During the tour we saw some old video footage of the tunnels being used which was interesting. We got shown some of the tiny holes used to enter the tunnels from the surface as well as the clever booby traps used by the guerrillas to kill American soldiers. At one point we were given the opportunity to fire old guns on the shooting range but it was pretty expensive so we decided to give it a miss. Finally we were able to actually go into some of the tunnels ourselves. Not being a fan of tight spaces I was pretty terrified and got out at the first exit, though I was proud of myself for even doing that! Ryan however was braver than me and went through to the end. He said it got really tight in there to the point that he was on all fours but his his back was touching the roof. It was really interesting to hear about all of the techniques used by the people living in the tunnels which led to them beating the Americans.

The next day we left Vietnam for Cambodia!

Lots of love,

Jo and Ryan xxx