Settled into our hotel in Saigon in the backpacker quarter amongst all the tour shops and bars....back to a city where you play real life Frogger every time you cross the road. Had a great plan to pay for everyones Xmas "goodies" with a night at the Casino, so put on our best beach shorts and headed out, had momentary glory 80 dollars up after some beginners luck, but it didn't last...consoled ourselves at the Saigon Saigon bar on the roof. Two hectic days shopping and posting followed. Next we went to the Cu Chi tunnels, about an hour ouside of town. A network of underground tunnels, where upto 3000 people hid and lived during the Vietnam War. They've now been widened slightly to accomodate chunky westerners wanting a flovour of what is was like....which was pretty horrific - hot, sweaty, smelly and pitch black. We crawled through 50 meters of tunnel and surfaced at the first opening.

Spent our last three days, right before our Visa ran out on a Mekong Delta Tour, which took us to Phnom Pehn in Cambodia by boat. Started as a bit of a shambles by managing to get on the wrong bus and then wrong boat before realising we where in the totally wrong place, but amazingly they sent the bus back for us and got the rest of our first day as a private tour with just the four of us. Ate elephant ear fish bur lunch, which came served upright with teeth, eyes and all, and got wrapped into rice pancakes with mint leaves and noodles, well tasty. Purchased some real Royal Jelly from real queen bees....very good for wrinkles apparently.

Day two we boarded some more boats and visited the floating market where the 'shop signs' are long poles with bits of manky fruit and veg hanging off. (see pics) Also visited a rice paper factory and wandered round a real market until the sight of pig ears, cow skulls and sheep eyes sent us running back to the safety of our tour guide. Day three and a few more hours downstream and with 3 immigration and passport stops along the bank all within 200m of each other we were in the land of the Cambods. x