VIETNAM - Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Saigon is a crazy place. We stayed in the thick of things where most tourists go. We new that it would be a good place to spend New Year and it did not let us down.

We got there a day early in order to soak up some of the other interesting things that Saigon has to offer.

We took a bus tour excussion to the famous Cu Chi tunnels. The tunnels were used during combat and day to day living and the whole site has been turned into an open air museum in which you can walk down a section, well not walk, crouch, crawl and traverse. the tunnels themelves are so small even crouched completely down your head still touches the ceiling and your shoulders drag against the edges. It is also worth noting that these tunnels have been made 40% larger to accomodate western tourists. The open air tour also demonstrated how smoke from underground kitchens dispersed to look like fog and how ventialtion holes were disguised to fit in with the natural environment. Another area showed all manner of horrible booby traps which were design to cause maximum disruption to the US army, they were not designed to kill people, just to cause enough damage to mean the person would need looking after by another soldier.

Next day Karl and i paid a visit to the War Museum which was worth the visit to see and read about the war from an unwestern biased view. The museum was highly critical of the American's in the war and after seeing what the museum displayed i was not surprised. The after effects of the Orange Agent were appalling. It was used to kill off all crops and vegetation that got in its way, so making it more difficult for normal people, moonlighting as guerilla fighters, to survive. Much of the landscape around Dalat showed how difficult the vegetation was finding it to grow back in these areas, but this was nothing in comparison the the effects it had on people. Many people born after Agent Orange was used were severely deformed and evidence of this was clear in the city and in the museum particularly. The whole experience throughout Vietnam made me realise how lucky i am not to have experienced anything as awful as war or the after effects.

We were lucky enough on New Years eve to have our door open while getting ready as a group of people walking past heard our music and came in to say hello. We spent the rest of the night with them and some others and had and excellent night, mostly in one bar which very cheekily increased drink prices by double in the last hour of 2008. On the stroke of midnight we went into the street which was full of people wishing each other the best for the new year. All in all an excellent night.

A lot of the next day was spent recovering, either from the effect of one to many beers or from the lack of sleep.

Next day we would catch a bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital.