Good morning Vietnam!

We actually arrived in Ho Chi Minh in the afternoon after an easy boarder crossing and comfortable bus and headed to the backpacker area. This gave us the first experience of the traffic in vietnam, its mental! Once we got out of the taxi we were approached by an old man offering rooms for $10 and then a crazy women undercutting him for $8. We followed her through the dodgy looking maze of narrow alleyways to have a look. After walking through their kitchen/lounge/bedroom (yes it's three rooms in one and was tiny) we went upstairs and to our surprise the room was nice, clean and had a TV and hot water; we had read that rooms here were going to be expensive and basic so we snatched this one up right away, it was our first homestay. Vietnams currency is Dong, around 33,000 dong to a British pound. We had heard you may be able to use dollars here too, we had some left over from Cambodia. It's strange though, as everyone quotes the prices in dollars but then won't accept them.

We then headed out to try a Vietnamese beer, Saigon, which is the former name of Ho Chi Minh City and managed to pay for these in dollars. Whilst here we searched the Internet to look for good restaurants and went on a hunt for Quan Nuong, a BBQ restaurant. We eventually found it and went up to the roof top, it was very lively and in your face. We were shown to our table which had a BBQ grill in the middle, we chose some goat and beef off the menu and tried to watch how other people were cooking theirs. They brought over two big plates of raw meat and some unrecognisable vegetables, we later worked out one was called lady finger. We BBQ'd our meat and veg, it was so tasty and succulent, they did have to come and change the griddle a couple of time though as we kept on burning it. This restaurant was great fun and so lively, probably our most enjoyable meal yet.

The next day we found a walking route in our guidebook and after breakfast set out through the city. The roads were crazy, there are thousands of motorbikes, buses, cars and cyclo's (basically bicycles with a seat on the front that take you round the city). We had read about crossing the road in our book, there are rarely gaps in the traffic so you just have to walk, the bikes will zig zag round you so it's best not to stop or run but just walk at a steady pace, it's actually quite exciting. We followed our route and Kate made as a great tour guide reading about each site we went past. At the end of the walk we found a little cafe selling shakes and yoghurt drinks and sat in the shade to cool off, it was so hot!

Once we had cooled off we walked up to the War Remnants museum and were welcomed by a USA chinook helicopter, tanks and fighter jets amongst other guns and vehicles. We went inside and learnt about the American War. We both new very little about it and it was quite disturbing to see what the USA did over here, especially with their chemical weapons. So many people were effected by Agent Orange, a dioxin sprayed throughout the country, many people are still being born with awful disfigurements because their parents came into contact with it, there were even foetus' displayed which had been effected by it. We were both shocked by the way America tried to take over this country and the cruel methods they used. There were lots of interesting photos displayed throughout the museum from the war and it again hit home as it wasn't that long ago.

The following day we visited the Cu Chi tunnels which the Vietnamese communists lived in to hide from the USA. It was very interesting to walk around the forest and you could see craters from bombs dropped by the B52's. The forest was destroyed by chemicals during the war so it has all grown back since and was rather peaceful apart from the sound of machine guns and AK-47's in the distance. When we got to the firing range we had to have a go. It was expensive but worth it, we had 5 shots each on the AK-47 and it was great fun. We then continued through the forest and went down in to one of the tunnels, it was so small you had to crouch down and shuffle along and it had been widened so visitors could get in so no idea how small they originally were.

After the tunnels we headed back to Ho Chi Minh. We arrived back to a barrage of police, we weren't sure what was happening, so carried on and made our way to a place called Fanny's, an ice cream parlour recommended to us by a friend. After a long debate on what to get we made our decision and wasn't disappointed (thanks Laura!). After stuffing our faces and now feeling slightly sick we headed to an Internet cafe. We tried two and both were rubbish and couldn't carry out the simple things we wanted to do. We gave up and headed to a tour company to inquire about how we could get to our next destination. Ho Chi Minh's bus station is way out of town and was going to cost a lot to get there, the tour office said we could use the bus they were using for there one day tours of the Mekong. This was a lot cheaper for us.