Vietnam, Saigon

Well this was a nice surprise...after the bad reports i had heard....people actually dont hassle you here....its nice...and the city is amazing especially at night. Although it does have too many western resaurants for my liking and too many Brits eating pizzas and drinking beer. But I got away from that by wondering around the back streets....was very interesting.

While here I visited the the Cu Chi tunnels, built by the Vietnamese during the French and American invasions. They were incredible...miles and miles built by hand and in 3 storys, the deepest being 10m. I went through 30m of the tunnel to see what they were like, I had to squeeze through the opening and was on my hands and knees for most of it, getting rather claustrophobic! And the Vietnamese lived in these tunnels everyday for over 20 years, coming out only at night! It was incredible.

Then on to the war crimes museum where we could see photos of what the Americans had done to the country and the people....it was really shocking....I was in tears! I can't understand why the international community still allowed America to possess any weapons or go to war again after this....it's really shocking! I'm just speechless.

Anyway to recover I went on a lovely day of boating the next day on the Mekong Delta, where the water is red and the vegetation sooo lush...like I've never seen before. We canoed through small canals amongst the thousands of islands in the Delta. Amonst the pineapple trees, the banana trees, trees with guavas, lychees, grapefruits, dragon fruits, mangos etc etc. And visited the little villages that lived in such gorgeous surroundings on the islands. I even got to hold a beautiful enormous python, soo heavy! And went to visit some monkeys....poor things were locked up in small cages looking very sad...but they would reach out to hold your hand and look at you with big watery eyes, they were very sad....and it was so cruel keeping them locked up like that. Can't stand it, need to get out now......off to Cambodia tommorrow.