We got in to our room in Nha Trang around 1pm in the early hours of the morning, this due to the problem that the hotels and guesthouses are full from people not yet haven checked out of the rooms, as we had arrived at 7am on the overnight bus.

Nha Trang had a much easier going feel to it than some other parts of Vietnam, so for the remainder of the first day we soaked up the atmosphere and hunted out some good places to eat. Pretty tired from bus journeys that was about as exciting as our first afternoon got.

We had considered doing some scuba diving in Nha Trang but put that idea off until we return to Thailand where there is more choice of dive sites, so instead we decided it was time for some lazy beach time. We spent the entire day lazing around in and out of the sea while eating fresh pineaple, cut and skinned to order in front of us. Oh and a good book and ipod helped to pass the time when it got a tad hot and the shade called.

Strangely having done nothing other than sunbath all day, we were famished well before time for an evening meal. So we put it off slightly with a couple of beers in the dive centre, because as usual wherever there are divers there is a good atmosphere. Afterward eating at a restaurant owned by the hotel we stayed at along with three others, we discovered this to be 1st class food and probably the best we have had in months.

To make sure our skin was in top condition now near beach areas again we took a half day trip to a type of spa centre, which had seven or eight parts to one treatment. The first is a warm shower in mineral water followed by half around twenty minutes in a mud bath, all be it a bit watery which we didn’t expect it to be. You then need ten minutes sat in the sun to dry the mud on, then shower off in the warm mineral water again. Next is a soak in a hot mineral tub for forty five minutes, with an option to be jet sprayed with cooler mineral waters. Before going to the swimming pool which again is a type of mineral water, you can go through a waterfall to really get your blood flowing to the skin. You now have a choice of hot or cool swimming pools or both if you wish, so we tried both but by this time cool is best as your temperature is getting up a bit.

The night of our mud bath with skin feeling revived we found something we had been craving for some time, pie and mashed potato with real gravy. This was an absolute godsend as it was cooked by an English guy and was absolutely gorgeous, needless to say we went back a second time before leaving.

With only part of a day left before moving on yet again on the overnight bus we toured the town taking pictures we had missed before from being lazy, the last stop we made was at the shop to get snack supplies for our long journey to our final stop in Vietnam.

Depending on who you ask in Vietnam or which book you read depends on what you call the last place we stopped in nam, some know it as ‘Saigon’, while other know it by its new name of ’Ho Chi Min city’. Anyhow the place is crazy busy everywhere and especially on the roads, even more than Hanoi and mainly because the city has a staggering 3million scooters on its roads! Not to mention the cars vans and buses, now a consideration here is not just the amount of vehicle but the pollution that makes it notably harder to breath.

A substantial walk through the city got us to the Reunification Palace which was built in 1966 to serve as the presidential palace, this is the place where a communist tank crashed through the gate 30th April 1975 which is the day Saigon surrendered. Apart from a repaired front entrance the building is just as it was on that momentous day and as you will see in some of the rooms it definitely shows. The basement of the palace was turned into a command centre during war time, complete with maps communications and various other required stuff for co-ordinating an army.

Still on the war trail we thought a good place to visit would be the ‘Cu Chi Tunnels’, the tunnels were the sole thing that prevented the Americans overcoming the whole of the Saigon area. Before we do continue with the tunnel story its worth mentioning that we did discover the North Vietnam military attacked the American Navy ships in the South China sea, this was before any intervention in Vietnam by the Americans but it was the event that started the Vietnam war. This so far is the one fact that the Americans and the Vietnamese seem to agree on, but it is not often mentioned which is a shame as it puts a different angle on why the war started and whether it was right or wrong. On top of that Vietnam was two countries with a ruler for North and one for South, with the south in favour of the Americans coming to the south to help protect them for the North taking over. So when the Americans did come to the south they were fighting the troops from the North not the south as is sometimes thought.

Back to the tunnels tale and we must say these were very well done in terms of a combat tool, the tunnels are so narrow in part they have been widened in order for tourists to get through them and even then it is tight and claustrophobic.

The Viet Cong people who lived and fought in the tunnels were all tiny in height and width, no more than five feet tall they moved around the tunnels with ease. A team put together by the Americans called the tunnel rats were the smallest of the troops they had, there job was to infiltrate the tunnels and kill the Viet Cong, but the Cong got wise to this and made the tunnels smaller at points to trap the tunnel rats and kill them. The Americans then turned to flooding the tunnels but this also failed as channels to the river had been built which just filtered the water away.

Possibly the hardest task though was to find the tunnel entrances, if you find the picture of our guide stood near a tree with the floor covered in leaves you wont see anything in the floor. But look at the next picture as he pulls the hatch off of the tunnel and be surprised at how small and hidden it is.

The Cong didn’t allow anyone to live in the area of the tunnels unles they lived in the tunnels, this was because they thought if you weren’t prepared to live in thye tunnels you must be a spy. The choice was live in the tunnels and fight or move away immediately, if you didn’t take either option you were simply killed by the Cong. Don’t forget these were not soldiers but local village people who were lied to by both the Americans and the North troops and who just wanted to keep their own land, but they were turning on their own people that had live near them all their lives.

Now its one thing to see history items and things kept from the war but its another to actually hold them and even more so to use them. In this case we are talking about guns, rifles to be exact. There is a live firing range on the site of the tunnels, David found this an opportunity too good to miss and so bought ten rounds to pump off from a ‘Cabin ‘ rifle that was once used in fighting and still bares some of the scars.

Ear defenders are compulsory on the range for the shooters but the guards seem to not care about wearing them themselves, but remember these are live rounds and even with the ear defenders the shots leaves your ears ringing. Modern rifles are a bit less noisy but these things are ridiculous, how anyone could shoot them for long periods and still hear is beyond us.

The rifles have a powerful recoil and are far from accurate with there antiquated sights, the best option was probably to pump off as many rounds as possible and hope you hit something.

A particular part of the tour showed how brutal the close combat war was in the jungle, working displays of various pit traps using sharpened bamboo or steel spikes. Theses traps accounted for 17% of the fatal wounds in the war, which is quite a lot for natural non exploding weapons.

Since the war has finished and the tunnel network has been measured, in Cu Chi alone there is more than 200km of tunnels all of which were dug by hand. Which if nothing else shows determination. But with all that its time to leave Vietnam and from what we have discovered you can decide for yourself about the war.