Ho Chi Minh City (or maybe you know it better as Saigon) was the first stop in Vietnam...and what a relief it was to get there. We had the longest travel day on a variety of buses. The border crossing from Cambodia was so incredibly hot I don't think anyone had a dry piece of clothing left. To make things even better, our bus from the border to Ho Chi Minh had no air con and we were all squashed in with our luggage for several hours!

But when we arrived we were rewarded with a great hotel, and even a bath in the room - pure luxury for the intrepid traveller, especially when it's accompanied by hot water!!!

So what is there to see in Ho Chi Minh City. Well day one was spent visiting the Cu Chi tunnels. Basically it's just a small part of the series of tunnels the vietnamese built during the war to hide from the american troops. We got to see some of the torture traps that they set to protect themselves (don't think I'd fancy being caught in any of them) and we even went down some of the tunnels. They are seriously tiny, you have to crawl on your hands and knees, so needless to say that was more dust and mud for my clean clothes! They were so tiny and once everyone had finished complaining about how tight the space was, we were then told that the tunnel had actually been made bigger for us westerners to fit into. These guys really are tiny compared to us.

Vietnam also has a massive number of rubber trees. I had no idea how you actually collected the rubber from the tree, but a brief stop enlightened me as we watched local children collecting the rubber sap from small bowls attached to the trees. They cut some sort of track into the bark of the tree so the sap runs down and can easily be collected as some kind of putty. Given the number of motorbikes there are on the roads, I can definitely see why they need so many trees for all the tyres!

Also visited the Reunification Palace, rather large imposing building in the middle of the city and the war crimes museum which really put the whole thing into perspective. Some fairly graphic images of how they were treated and the extent of the damage that was done to the country. The Notre Dame cathedral is probably the other most famous peice of architecture in the city. Apparently Vietnam has the second largest number of catholics in Asia after the Phillipines.

Vietnam has been influenced a lot by french culture so it's a great place to get baguettes and a good cup of coffee. There's plenty of bars and cafes to wind the day away, watching the world go by, so of course I spent a bit of time doing that too.

Final excursion from Ho Chi Minh City was a tripto the Mekong Delta. A few hours bus ride (and a flat tyre later) took us to a beuatiful village town where we picked up our bost to cruise the river. We saw the floatinf fish market (hold your nose as it's not pleasant, although to be fair you do start to get used to the constant smell of fish out here, fresh and dried! I saw some laid out on a car windscreen the other day in the middle of the city, gives a whole new meaning to the delicacy 'sun dried' with added pollution!) We stopped at a number of different islands to see the local people at work, making coconut candy, watching children perform local music and dancing and taking a rowing boat down a small canal, whilst of course wearing the mandatory vietnamese hat... Lunch was the most amazing food I have ever eaten. We had no idea what it was, but the food just kept coming. I can only remeber some of it (and the photos show the random fish we had), but there were fresh spring rolls, spicy veg soup, king prawns, sticky rice and tofu, some kind of eggy omlette thing, sweet biscuits and some meat which when we asked what it was the lovely girl struggled to find the right word and all we managed to get was "tail"?! After frantically scanning the local area all the dogs seemed to have a tail merrily wagging away, so I'm still hoping that one was just slightly lost in translation!

My departure from Ho Chi Minh City allowed me to experience my first overnight train. To say it was cramped would be polite, but I was passed one vital peice of advice from a fellow traveller before I boarded and that was to always get the bottom bunk...and so it proved to be true. Bottom bunk for me and slept like a baby. You couldn't even sit up straight on the top one your nose is almost on the ceiling. We were informed that our class of accommodation was 'first class' and after a brief tour of the train it was certainly better than everything else, but good old Mr Branson could teach them a few lessons me thinks!