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  Saigon, Mui Ne, Nha Trang, Vietnam
Monday, June 13, 2005

I floated across the border into Vietnam and the rice basket of SE Asia - the Mekong Delta. After a few days touring about floating cities and networks of hundreds of canals, I started to realise the scale of Vietnam. What a difference from the muddy remoteness of Cambodia. There's millions and millions of people here everywhere, the roads are busy and jammed and the whole place just screams of money - and all the people are screaming at you to give them money! The Vietnamese are doing bloody well considering their country was litterally wiped off the face of the planet only a few years ago. A few days getting pissed in Saigon for Chris' birthday was enough, especially when some theiving bastard made off with my camera - NOOOOO!!!!

When I was able to stop crying about that terrible incident I spent a day checking out the Viet Cong Cu Chi Tunnels . Very interesting and an amazing achievment by the VCs but not really too nice when it's jammed with 13 busloads of fat American and Chinese tourists!! There was a load of old American GI's there too, seems to be quite a common thing for them to return here. We lined up at the shooting range near the tunnels and let off a few rounds with a weapon of choice. Mine was an M30 mounted machine gun, a beast of a weapon. 10 bullets - a dollar a bullet - lasts about 0.5 seconds!!! The target was pulverised before I'd even realised I'd pulled the trigger! We also went to the American War Crimes Museum which was the most impressive museum I've been to anywhere in the world. Old tanks, planes and choppers outside with incredible and horrific pictures, articles, all the photos from every journalist that died during the Indochina Wars and terrible stories of napalm and agent orange victims.

To most, Vietnam simply means war, it is infact a huge and very interesting country. If you can get round the often times rude as hell Vietnamese - only some of them give you evil stares like you just raped their daughter or drag you by the arms into their shops almost forcing you to buy crap stuff - but most are friendly enough. It's pretty cool considering the entire length of the country is basically one big beach! Always being ones to take advantage, thats's where we've been lazing for the past two weeks. Doing a few KITEBOARDING
lessons which basically involves getting pummelled along thru the sea out of control with massive powerful kites, akin to being dragged along by an extremely pissed man in a helicopter! This was in Mui Ne, one of the top 5 kitesurfing beaches in the world. We've now been trying to get up each morning to go diving but keep missing the checkout for the bus every day mainly of course because we've been going out and enjoying the unbeleivable nightlife in the gorgeous beach town of Nha Trang. There's some real quality bars here, the best ones on the beach kick off big stylee every single night. What with the quality Scandinavian and Irish drinking crews kicking about for some serious banter, it could be getting dangerous. What the hell are we doing? There's no end to this trip it seems... It's a pretty bizzare and amazing feeling being on this endless holiday... The brain is in limbo, I really miss neeburs and bro's back home, but why would you ever want to end this? We are supposed to be making our way home, but we've spent four and half months messing around in the tiny subcontinent of SE Asia. We still have about 14,000 miles to go and the bank accounts are just about empty!! I think we're going to have to send Chris to work: the booming sex industry in Vietnam is always looking for pretty white boys!!!

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