Sua s'dei from Cambodia! I know I say this a lot, but we've had a particularly busy last few days out here. In Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam's main city in the south, we visited the Cu Chi tunnels and the War Remnants museum. We then travelled into the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh (pronounced Penom Pen) where we visited the killing fields and the genocide musuem, and today we've been in Siem Reap to see the magnificent Angkor Wat. This entry may be a bit morbid this time, but we've seen some pretty disturbing stuff over the last few days. I'll begin with Ho Chi Minh city, our last stop in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh city is actually the largest city in Vietnam, and was the capital of the South when they were divided; it was formerly Saigon. The main tourist attraction here is the Cu Chi tunnels, used during the war by the northern Vietnamese army (or Viet Cong) in their struggle against the Americans and the South. The tunnels were fascinating, and tiny, as you'll see in the photos. Much tinier even than the tunnels in Vinh Moc- you had to crawl through these, and thats after they've been widened slightly for western tourists. The difference between this set of tunnels and the previous ones we've visited is that the others were used by civilians to house a village under attack; these were used by Vietnamese soldiers to fight their enemy. They are an intricate and ingenious network of over 200km (thats right, 200) of tunnels that was in enemy territory and a constant thorn in the American spine. There were several partilculary clever aspects of the tunnels which we learnt. My favourite was how the Vietnamese used rubber from the tyres of burnt out American tanks to make their shoes. This was because when the American troops tried to follow the Vietnamese footprints to find the entrance to the tunnels, they would only see friendly tyre tracks. Another was how they would leave shavings of American soap at the entrances and ventilation holes to the tunnels; this stopped the sniffer dogs from locating where the tunnels were. I must say though, crawling through the cramped, dimly lit and boiling hot tunnels, hearing the distant sound of AK-47s being shot (you can pay to shoot at the firing range) gave you a tiny tiny glimpse of that it might have been like during the war, and it was slightly unsettling at times. After the tunnels we were dropped off at the war remnants museum which was fascinating and horrific. It housed some war relics- US jet planes, tanks, helicopters and artillery. Each of these massive killing machines still exudes an awesome aura of power despite being redundant and lifeless. Inside the museum, however, was where we saw the human touch to the inhumanity. There were galleries of pictures of the war and its effects. We saw the civilans and the soldiers tied up in the horrors of war. You saw their faces, how human they looked and how inhumanely they acted. We saw fleeing vietnamese families, faces contorted with terror. There were haunting photos; one of a US troop with the debris of a Vietnamese man in his hands, one of a smiling US troop with 2 decapitated heads in his hands. The war seriously messed with people's minds. The most horrific pictures were that of the people exposed to Agent Orange, a deadly chemical dropped by the Americans over the Vietnamese. It not only killed them, but it created a generation of deformed children. It perverted the most natural process of child birth and the creation of life. We saw preserved foetuses that had been deformed; one of 2 babies growing inside each other, one of a baby with an enormous head and distorted features. I left feeling angry, sick and somehwhat embarassed to be human. What awaited in Phnom Penh would only add to these feelings... I am afraid I am running out of time to explain what our trip to Cambodia entailed, but ill continue this next time im on, and ill put photos up too. Take Care all, stay in touch.