Had such a good nights sleep and I slept until my alarm woke me up which was nice because my usual 5-6am natural wake up call is kind of getting on my nerves! (I did have a motion sickness tablet last night which acts as a pretty good sleeping tablet!)
We skipped breakfast because we couldn't get out of bed in time to go find some before we had to meet at the travel agents we booked our trip to cu chi tunnels with for this morning. We had to meet at 8am but obviously pick up times in Asia are sort of non existent! We didn't get collected until about 8.40am, these travel agents get lots of people because there were loads of westerners outside all the travel agents waiting. For yours and buses to different places but non of them can seem to organise or handle the mass amount of people they take on. It's such a mad rush and panic for them all at 8am in the morning - can't be good, no wonder they sleep at every possible chance they get!
We eventually got on a bus that took around and hour and half to get to the place, we had a tour guide who spoke good English but sometimes his words and letters got muddled up so I had to close my eyes to try and listen to what he was saying! He called himself 'John Wayne' because his Vietnamese name was too difficult for westerners to remember haha!
The Cu Chi tunnels tourist site was a lot smaller than I imagined and I thought there would be open fields of tunnels, it was home to the original tunnels but they had been reconstructed and cemented for it to be safe for tourists to go down and try, they were small! And claustrophobic, we waited I go last down there, we couldn't believe we actually done it! And Scott at first said no to going down there because nobody was moving and it was boiling, to be fair I don't think I could have done it with a lot of people down there, so I held the queue up until the tunnel was pretty much empty with just one person in front of me, the tunnels weren't even a metre wide, you could sometimes walk crouched down but more or less you had to be on your knees, there were two or three little red lights which did nothing so it was pitch black, we had to get Scott's phone out for a torch! The go pro probably has a cracking video of us cursing and shouting with fear on there haha. I wanted a photo but the claustrophobic fear was setting in for the both of us so that didn't happen. I respect the people who had to live down in these tunnels! The tunnels started being built in the 1940s when the French invaded and they were developed in the years leading up to the US invasion. They did run right the way throughout Vietnam although after the US war they got bombed and now it only runs for just over 250 km from here and then starts again some where mid-north of Vietnam. There were three levels, with the third being 8-10metres under ground. On the third level they were more or less safe from bombs exploding and being dropped on the ground.
They did build little rooms off the tunnels so that people could live, they even built kitchens and medical rooms down there to help survive and mend the wounded snipers.
We seen the sniper holes which you would only have been able to poke your head out of so they could pop up out of easy to fire their guns, they would have a boulder propped up next to it so that when they had finished they would knock the wood from underneath it so the enemy wouldn't have a clue where they had been firing from.
The traps that the Vietnamese set were clever! They had quite a few, mostly had bamboo spikes and bamboo trees carved spiky and thy also had long nails in the traps which helped the pain and slow death of the enemies. Mostly ones they would step on and fall through the ground into collapsing traps around their legs and feet, one that they would swing from doorways and the nails would impale the enemy's body.
There was a shooting range at the tunnels whee you could pay £1 a bullet for any gun to shoot, well we just had to have a go! So we chose the M30 to shoot (the ones that are long and have the chain of bullets hanging through them - Rambo uses it in the Rambo film shooting the Japanese soldiers) it was piercing loud! Almost made me deaf so good job that they had ear muffs! The army were directing it all, and we were all able to take a turn. Me and Scott had 10 bullets each, cheaper than if we went to a shooting range the tuk tuk drivers always try to take you to and if we are going to for a gun let's have a few goes, aye?!
It was super powerful!! We had to climb aboard an abandoned army jeep that had the gun securely attached to and you all shot out into a massive mud bank which did have some target shot markings but it seemed pretty impossible to aim at them! Another thing ticket off the Bucket list! I don't know how these soldiers do their jobs without any ear muffs, because I don't expect they had ear muffs 50 years ago when they were shooting each other, the veterans must have constant ear ringing!
We were absolutely shattered once we got on the bus back, we both fell asleep. The heat is hard to walk in. So with no energy we went back to the hotel and had an afternoon nap and booked our air Asia flights out of the country for. Month's time.
We came out for food at about 8pm and after quite ages hours of nap time I still can't seem to shake the tiredness off!
I tried the local cuisine tonight, fresh spring rolls with prawn are absolutely lovely; especially with sweet chilli sauce! I tried the Vietnamese noodle soup as welli which is pretty land until you put the mint, leans grass leaves and chilli you put in it which they give you on a side dish. Scott opted for the international dish, burritos. Haha, the 'I'm only eating the local cuisine' lasted all of two weeks, which is pretty good for Scott, but he tasted my soup tonight so he may get back into the swig of things again after a few days!
Lucky me the football is on about 8 different tv screens tonight so I'm drowning my sorrows in cheap tiger beer Nd supporting the opposing team - swansea. Haha!

Favourite part of the weekend, a FaceTime session with home! Missing Gramalams face though guys! Get the organisation skills out let's have a cyber meeting up there soon! :)