Sunday 11pm

I have had huge problems getting online tonight so hopefully I can post this on the site before I lose my connection.

I did go to the Cu Chi tunnels, it was very interesting to see how the vietcong lived during the bombings, they were quite clever in the way that they fought the war, quite vicious too, I've seen some of the ways that they ambushed the American G.I's with some deadly traps.

The big problem for me here is that there are too many tourists, I really don't like to see so many white foreigners around, I sometimes feel like I'm in Uxbridge. Saigon is a real backpackers spot, so many budget hotels like the one that I'm staying in at the moment, so much aimed at this tourist market, and although I enjoyed the tunnels today, I didn't like touristy part about it. All these coaches probably 20+ all waiting in the main street to pick up the tourists from their hotels, all leave around 8am with their guides to visit somewhere outside Saigon.

You get on the bus and as always they stop at some boring (IMO) art/craft factory for us to look around and buy something, I didn't bother as I have seen so many of them around the world, it's just a time filler and they probably get a kickback for bringing so many tourists. Then it's onto the tunnels... when we arrived there was at least another 10/15 busses of tourists already there, so it's 1 group goes this way and another that way, you stop here and look at this then onto the next thing.... just too commercial/touristy for me........... yes I probably am just a fussy so and so !!!
I went down 1 level of the tunnel and crawled half way through another, in the distance I could see a girl sliding down to a 2nd level and thought to myself.... no way... so I turned back.... yes I am a big girl's blouse !!!!

I did enjoy shooting a real machine gun and also a MK15 rifle, you have to pay for this as an extra, it's real bullets you fire at targets. You actually buy the bullets ( yes real live bullets) at the shop then you go to the shooting area and give the bullets to a guy in army uniform, he loads and you fire, no training... just do it, I think I missed everyhting with the machine gun but I did hit the target with most of the 10 bullets I shot with MK15 rifle. It cost 200,000 dong for each shoot...that is about £6.50..... the money here is a joke, everything costs 1000's but a pound is worth 30,000 dong !! So you carry all these notes around with you, 100,000, 50,000, 20,10 and 5. Why they just don't knock off 3 0's is beyond me.

I will post this now hopefully, hope you all had a great weekend