Feb 3rd

From Hoi An we flew to Ho Chi Mimh (known as Saigon here) during the early afternoon. Getting off the plane in Saigon we instantly noticed the heat (about 33) - something we hadn't experienced in a couple of weeks! It meant i could put the 1 jumper i brought away with me, safely in my bag, after 2 weeks of constant use!! Vietnam is gearing up for the TET festival (New Year) so things are busy and prices a bit high (Chuc Mung Nam Moi means Happy New Year in Vietnamese!). During the afternoon we ate lunch at PHO 2000, a restaurant Bill Clinton ate at in 2000 when in Saigon - pictures all over the walls of it! Later we went for a cyclo tour around the city. On this tour our first port of call was the The American Remnance Museum, this was interesting as it showed the Vietnam War in pictures from beginning to end, taken by photographers at the time. From here we carried on round the city, on a sightseeing vist, seeing Notre Dame, Palace of Reunification. That evening we were taken to a local restaurant with everything you culd imagine on the menu. I opted for croc, ryan frog & pierre trying to be adventurous went for beef penis! I think everybody tried a bit of pierres meal as he was struggling - not very appetising (and yes that includes me).

Feb 4th

What a day! Our last day with our Vietnam tour group before Cambodia. First up was the Cu Chi tunnels - here we firstly saw a documentary on the tunnels and how they were used to combat american forces, before going to see them. We saw a typical entrance to a tunnel which i entered before seeing various traps set out by the viet cong. As we moved on we got to a firing range where you could fire live weapons such as AK47, M16, tommy gun. I opted for the AK47 (they are sooo loud those thing!!) i bought 5 rounds for about $6 and fired them at the targets on semi auto setting. This was sooo cool! Moving on we next came to a 100m strach of tunnel you could go through (there were exits after 30m, 60m - but i went whole hog!) they had be "enlargened" to fit tourists but were pretty small especially in places and sooo hot down there, witha dull light every 30m - so you couldn't see where you were going! Crazy! Awesome! Moving on we ravelled to the Mekong Delta where we took a boat trip to an island on the river where we ate some really good sea food - fresh fish - just caught! From there we the boat back to the riverside where we were taken by motorbike/tractor to the canals on the delta. Before reaching these canals we stopped at these local peoples house to try some frshly picked fruit - delicious- some id never heard of though, jack fruit? Then we walked to the canals where we were rowed to the rivermouth. Tghis was really awesome, like the scene of a film (Apocalypse now!). Got a few pics of us wearing conical hats! That nioght - as it was our last night with our vietnam group, we went out for a meal at a local place to say cheerio to those not going into cambodia. afterwards we went to an Aussie bar (Asia is crawling with them!) where we meet some travellers who had been through cambodia and going up north to hanoi.

Next day - there all rolling into one

We had a free day so we decided to go by ourselves to the water park in ho chi mimh, it was sweltering and it was closed due top TET - but we didn't realise this until we had paid to get in! They do anything for money here! So realising this we decided to go for a massage to calm us down / cool us down. This was really good, interesting but really good. That night we walkedinto ho chi mimh afrter meeting our new interepid group & it was buzzing it was the eve of TET (their equivalent of New Years Eve) there was a huge concert in the city centre it had been closed off to traffic. It was really good, a Vietnamese pop singer fired up the crowd.