So with the holiday weekend over and our trip turned backwards it was time to head back into Vietnam. We did this via Cambodia Angkor Air (that we called Shonky Air) from Siem Reap to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon).

This is the business capital of Vietnam and the streets are cleaner and less congested than Hanoi. The buildings are taller and the skyscrapers more shiny.

The main centre has a replica of Notre Dame right next to the central post office which a high school teacher from Perth told us was designed by Gustave Eiffel. We personally couldn’t see any resemblance to any other Eiffel inspired anything and spent a while making jokes about how much it didn’t look like the Eiffel tower. Right now when I google it I find that the Perth school teacher was full of shit, it’s not an Eiffel Post Office…. Aussies aye?!

On our first night we went out for a lovely meal at a typical Vietnamese restaurant, one that brings the westerners an iPad with photos of the food so you just point at what looks nice. We’ve found that it doesn’t really matter what you get in Vietnam. It’s all YUM! Fresh, light and really tasty. We have taken to just ordering something that we don’t know what it is and getting surprised when it arrives. It hasn’t failed us yet. Problem is that I won’t be able to ever order them again as we don’t know what they are.

We organised a day trip out to see the Cu Chi Tunnels where the Vietnamese get to tell their side of the Vietnam War. I had read the reviews on-line and it appeared that most people really liked it and found it interesting and then another group find it really disgusting and brutal and didn’t appreciate the propaganda side of it. Especially they didn’t like all the different ways the VietCong managed to hurt, maim and kill the enemy Americans.

They give you a 20, 40, 60 or 100 metre option when they send you into the tunnels. I (thankfully) took the 20 metre option as it was understandably claustrophobic. The tunnels are only about a meter high in places and about half a meter wide and dark. As you enter the guide says “look out for the spiders and snakes!” The main issue I had was that we had just been watching a snake sliding about at the bottom of one of the tunnels they showed us from the top! Yep 20 was plenty thanks.

There’s a firing range in the middle and so as you walk through the site you hear the bangs and booms and rat tak tak of the automatic weapons. It’s all fodder for numerous “my time in Nam” quips and an inability to get the Full Metal Jacket soundtrack out of your head. Perhaps that’s why some people hate it.

It’s not a sombre memorial. It’s not a place to come and mourn those lost and the horrors or war and the after effects of it. It’s more like an historic village where they show you how they cooked without smoke, how they camouflaged the snipers as termite mounds and how they dug bear traps to impale the Yanks. They have models of the guerrilla fighters for you to stand with and have your photo taken and in the middle they give you tea and tapioca. It’s also not the Western side of the story, it’s a violently patriotic Vietnamese version that shows them living happily in the fields until the enemy Americans arrived and tried to take their way of life from them and their families. The guide said the difference was that the Americans were just waiting for their time to go back to their home, but the Vietnamese were defending their only home.

Each to their own but we found it interesting and Nigel got to fire an AK47 on automatic and so that was a bonus.

Next we are heading to Da Nang and Hoi An and if we have time the BaNa Hills.