Arrived in Ho Chi Minh yesterday evening at about four, got an airport transfer from the hotel to the hotel, obviously! On the way the first thing that struck us about the place is the millions of mopeds swarming the streets like locusts. All they are missing is some extra wing mirrors and some jackets and they could be the biggest gang of mods in the world... its properly scary. They are everywhere, at every junction there is about a hundred of them waiting to cross the line of traffic or to run a light. We made it without killing anyone thankfully. Very colourful place is Saigon, although the name Saigon only refers to the city centre nowadays, its easier to spell though so will do for now. It seemed cleaner than Bangkok at first glance, and second and third glance too, which I guess means it is considerably cleaner. It strangely seems and looks much different to Thailand here even though they were once all the same country and as far as I am concerned are more or less the same peoples (harsh I know, like calling us English...). Our hostel wasn't too far from the airport but it took us about an hour to get there due to the traffic. Nice colourful little neon side street with lots of sports bars and restaurants on it. Our hostel is the Saigon Sports Hotel in fact, not sure why, there isnt even a gym!!!!!! We checked in, booked up some tours for the next two days, ie today and tomorrow, got some dinner and checked into bed to wind down for the evening

Got up early the next morning, completely forgot to say good morning to Vietnam. Popped down stairs for our buffet breakfast, interesting stuff.... not what we are used to or expected. They at least had some eggs and coffee so we werent to starve. Todays tour is to a temple and then the Cu Chi tunnels. We go to the temple first as it is further away and the daily mass is on at 12 so we get to see some of that. Along the way the tour guide, in a strange Vietnamese come Scouser accent tells us bits and pieces about the temple we are going to and the religion it serves, aswell as the general religious state of the country. Sixty five percent of people in the country are Buddhist and twenty five are Catholic. The rest are made up of combinations of religions. In the south, and only in the south there is a religion called Cao Dai Buddhism which is a mixture of Buddhism Taoism and Catholism. The religion was invented by the french to counter act the existing religion in the area, called Hoa Hao, when they took over the area in the 30's. It is a Cao Dai temple we are going to see, the biggest of them in fact. In its day it was like the Vatican. It was a world within itself with a wall around it seperating it from the rest of the world. The temple is more like an asian catherdal not unlike Notre Dame but with dragons all over it. Also there are lots of single all seeing eyes drawn places. Weirdly, the temples here seem to be very child like in their decoration. The colour schemes all look like they would be better suited to a nursery and unlike Thai temples they have nothing shiney on them and are just painted and sculpted features that decorate them. We head in anyway, left side for the women and right for the men. We are quickly ushered here and there by men and women in white robes with armbands on. They seem to be everywhere scawlding people for walking where they shouldnt. Nobody has told us where we can and cant walk and they seem to be directing us in contradictory directions but eventually we get around the outside and see the whole place. It is a little strange being in here as it is being used. At the entrances lots of people in plain white gowns sit on the floor, women on the left and men on the right again (because we may not always be correct but we are always right). It feels like we are in a church at home taking pictures before mass. One monk steward woman thing even tells us it is ok to take pictures of the people praying in the temple. I decide to take sneaky pictures rather than aiming directly for them. Before the service begins we decided to head out side for alook around. A security guard tells us there are monkeys down the road that live in the jungle but pop over the wall for a gawk every now and again. Down we go and low and behold there are a group of them hanging around some cement mixers and cement. They are even eating the cement. After a while of just watching them I decided I better tell them not to eat the cement. They didnt like that so three of them charged me (dont worry they are only small). They were hissing a bit so I hissed back and stamped my foot. That got their attention pretty quickly and they halted their charge, they tried to rush me again but I stood firm with my chest out and stamped the ground again, eyeballing the little feckers. If I had turned around I might have seen Regina do another back flip 20 metres behind herself, but instead I just calmly walked away and picked her out of the nearby tree she had landed in (in fairness she just moved away and told me to follow, then gave out to me for teasing them!!!!). We popped back into the cathedral for the service. They basically walked up the centre, nealed down and ommmmmmed for a while. Someone bonged a bell and people at the back were singing and playing music, all very surreal stuff I tell ya.

After this we got back on the bus, stopped off for lunch in a road side local restaurant type dive and on again to the tunnels. I have already typed more than I liked and my fingers and brain are sore but I shall continue. We go into the grounds and the first thing we do is watch a quick video. I have never heard or watched so anti anything propoganda in my life. It was very very anti america and talked a lot about the heroes that killed many americans, from old men to little girls. The video showed clips of them making weapons and tools and also running into the tunnels and shooting at the hated americans. It was a tad excessive and I was glad not to be on the receiving end of it as I am sure many Americans have been in the past. Next we got a talk from a man about the map beside the tv, all very interesting, and he then explained the structure of the tunnels. Three different layers, each lower than the other and with decreasing sized passageways between them. They had kitchens and storerooms and bedrooms and everything that a guerilla army needed to live and fight under ground. All very interesting stuff and I would liked to have learned much more about it. On we went anyway to tour the grounds. The first stop was probably the best stop. It was at an entrance to the tunnels that was its original size. A man in uniform was down in the hole, it wrapped him pretty tightly, and he held the roof cover in his hands. Down he dropped and the lid sat on top covering up the hole, it was like it wasnt there. We were offered a go and after two others had tried it I said I would give it a go. Good news is I fit the hole and was able to get back out too. Bad news, slightly, it was way to scary for me to stay in it long enough to get any decent photos and I jumped back out before I even touched the lid. I went down out of sight and straight back up again. The tour continued on around and we saw some B52 bomb blast holes in the ground, lots of very painful looking trap doors and more tunnels. We then had the oppurtunity to shoot some weapons. Nobody else was interested, but I said I would have a go. The M1 rifle was the cheapest so I went with that, plus its a sniper rifle and I like that (computer games only of course). It was sooooo loud. I just fired it down a range, no animals in sight of course. The kick in the shoulder was expected and maybe a little harder than I imagined but the noise, even with ear muffs on, wow! I cannot imagine how the army used them without going deaf. Pretty sure I hit the target too and I completely forgot to ask for a spent cartridge as a souveneir too but I do have a few photos. Next stop was some widened tunnels for us fat Westeners (and fast food loving Asians) to walk through. The first path was a level 1 height tunnel, 3 metres down and fairly wide. We both stopped after this as it was a bit scary for me anyway being slightly clostrophobic. In an attempt to defeat this fear I got back in to the tunnels at the end of the first set of level 3 tunnels and continued on without problems, although on my hands and knees at one stage. Scary, yes, very much so. Hard to imagine how they did it. There were 250 km of tunnels in the area linking up many towns around the area. No offence America but its no wonder ye lost this war looking at these tunnels.

Anyway, that was pretty much that I think. Forgot to mention we nearly killed two people in the bus. One smacked into the side of us and the other was inches away from smacking head first into us on the main road. Both were ok, I think, we kept going anyway so I assume so!!! Back to the hotel, had some dinner and now retiring for the night. City tour of Saigon tomorrow, should be interesting... us versus 9 million mopeds