South 'Nam

We last left you arriving in Hoi An which was quite flooded. Its a really nice town, kind of like Louang Prabang with French colonial style buildings but with more to do, well more shopping to do.

The town is filled with tailors that can produce any item of clothing you want. They all have catalogues of shops like Next and magazines where you can pick what you want or they will design something for you as well. With some of the clothes modelled outside, I couldn't resist. I got a winter jacket and pants and Bourkie got 3 shirts which were cheaper and better than those in Bangkok.

Hoi An is more of a sleepy town but close by is an ancient site which is called My Son.

The day we were there it was lashing rain and there wasn't much left after American bombings so we didnt stay too long. Bourkie did manage to get some amusement out of the day......

There is however this ancient Japanese bridge in Hoi An, and yes Bourkie is the model in all of the photos to show you the size in reality......his head for some reason looks superimposed in this photo!!! Notice the haircut- that of a 12 year old boy.....thats what humidity does....

We met Sile and Ailish from the slow boat and hung out with them for the rest of the evening and debated what to do next over pool and beer. There were rumours of the typhoon hitting the South of Vietnam and most people were staying North. As our visas were running out on the 1st of December we only had 2 weeks in Vietnam and had to move on from Hoi An.

The following day we headed to Nha Trang which is supposed to be a sea side resort for Vietnamese couples. Though it had gotten dryer at this stage it was still too cold to go swimming.

The only crazy thing we did in Nha Trang was buy two photocopied books, White Teeth by Zadie Smith for me and American Pyscho by Bret Ellis Easton for Bourkie.

Since there was little or nothing to do there we moved on after a night to Dalat.

Dalat is described in the guide book as a scenic mountain side honeymooners paradise where the French came to relax during their colonisation.

We were full of hope to see the real beauty of Vietnam but it was not to be had in Dalat. Especially since the drive up and down the mountain to get there was the best bit according to Bourkie, I was obviously asleep as I am for all of our journeys.

After being disappointed by so many places in Vietnam that were supposed to be scenic, we really wondered what Mui Ne would bring us. It was absolutely beautiful. The sun came out as we reached this 7 mile beach resort. There was one long street that ran parallel to the beach but all the bars and restaurants were on the beach side. There was loads of wind surfing and kite surfing there.

After a relaxing 2 1/2 days we forced ourselves to move on, sorry to leave.

Next onto Saigon(Ho Chi Minh) city. We hadn't heard great things before we got there, we heard it was really congested compared to Hanoi (which we found really bad) and kind of dangerous. But we were pleasantly surprised. Thankfully we were dropped into the bagpackers district and found a really nice room with satellite TV, our new addiction, especially True Sports and Star Movies!

We treated ourselves to an expensive coffee and muffin place across the way which had a small cinema upstairs. We got to see 'Balls of Fury' which was unexpectedly good with Christopher Walken. That night we booked to go see the Cu Chi tunnels outside Saigon.

The Cu Chi tunnels are named after the village Cu Chi where the Viet Cong built over 200 km of tunnels between the French and American wars. They brought us into a room showing a promotional movie for the Vietnamese war. They focused in on the story of a 16 year old girl who fought in the war and received medals for killing 10 Americans. As you can imagine the American tourists were disgusted at this. Next they brought us to some of the tunnels built during the French wars. They are tiny. Only people with a waist smaller than 34 inches can fit in.You can see how small they are, here is Bourkie's foot over it. I didn't even risk getting into them!

There was an American war vet there with his wife who took off his hat and just sat down when the guide showed us a blown up tank in which 4 American troops were killed.To be honest the guide wasn't too subtle in describing the incident where a landmine blew up the tank. It looked as if the tank was in the middle of a forest but the whole area had been cleared by 'Agent Orange'- basically a chemical that kills all vegetation.

But more about that later.

Next we moved onto the traps that the Vietnamese made for the Americans- they were some resourceful people in war. They sharpened bamboos and placed them in different ways in the ground. I think the photo describe it best.

Some of these had really nasty names such as the See-Saw trap, the chair trap, the leg trap, the fish trap and the folding chair trap. We will let you find out which one is which!

Along with these traps, they used to wear their sandels back to front so that the Americans thought they were moving in another direction. They also built kitchens underground with the smoke coming out of a vent 100 metres away. They created air holes for the tunnels that looked like ant hills. With the dirt that was dug out from the tunnels they built these ant hills and filled in bomb craters so the Americans weren't suspicious of tunnels in the area.

Outside the Cu Chi tunnels they were selling Vietnamese snake whiskey. We had seen it in other places but I had to take photos of these ones which were very clear. Do people actually drink from this?

As a follow on from this we went to the War Remnants Museum.

The first room was divided into several areas showing photos from the war, mostly from Time Magazine photographers who did not survive the war. Alot of those who went to Cambodia in search of the war there, which was not reported on, went missing.This museum had alot more photos of the American side of the war than Hanoi but most did not show the Americans in a positive light. To be honest, I got a really bad impression of the Americans after seeing this museum.

Outside they showed the machinery used in the war - I will just show one photo but it is of a gun mounted on a tank which can shoot bombs 30 kms away.

Inside the main part of the museum was devoted to the affects of Agent Orange and Napalm which was spread all across Vietnam and parts of Cambodia during the American war in Vietnam.

They had photographs of people whose skin was burnt off by Napalm(a liquid fire dropped from American planes) and photographs of children affected by Agent Orange(a chemical defoliant used to clear forests).They had deformed hands, arms and legs. The worst part was of the museum was two jars of preserved foetuses which were conjoined by the head and deformed twins and another deformed baby. American soldiers who came into contact with Agent Orange also had deformed babies years later after returning home or their wives suffered several miscarriages before having deformed babies.

They also had an area devoted to a village wiped out by a US soldier and his platoon who went on to become a US senator. It was only through sheer public force that he admitted what he had done. Only one person survived from the village by pretending to be dead.

There were some sick pictures showing how crazy some American soldiers became during the war. They dragged half dead bodies at the back of a tank and took pictures of themselves holding up half blown apart torsoes and standing over dead bodies.(Kind of like Abu Gharib prison in Iraq two years ago)!!.

After that traumatic day we went to the Notre Dame cathedral and had a relaxing dinner while watching American Gangster with Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe in our coffee house cinema. Its a really good film and helped lift our spirits if thats possible.

So that was our second week in Vietnam and it was time to move on.

On Saturday, 1st December we made our way over the border to Cambodia. We were sent inside to get our passports stamped and then had to convince a guy that we had proof of having gotten vaccinations which was funny since we had vaccinated ourselves against them!! When we got outside we realised that the bus left without us and had gone 2-3 kms down the road. The guy from the bus came out laughing at us thinking it was hilarious telling us to get a motorbike taxi to where the bus had stopped. This is where Bourkie got mad. He said 'you dont expect us to pay for that, do you?'. The guy started to look afraid and said no. Of course when we got there the guy on the motorbike started asking for money and I insisted that we got off and walked away. Well we ran into the bus and hid for a couple of minutes until we saw him drive away! But enough about that.

Okay we will leave it there and start from Phnom Penh hopefully tomorrow if we can drag ourselves away from the beach here on Ko Lanta island. By the way, how's the weather at home!!!!!!