Saigon - aka Ho Chi Minh City

As with all Vietnamese cities, the name of the game in Saigon is scooters. One of our favourite pastimes has been watching the bikes go by and spotting the biggest family piled onto a scooter or the craziest item being carried on the back. It's not unusual for someone to scoot past with an entire wardrobe strapped loosely on the seat - and I don't just mean the clothes. Or from time to time you'll see someone ride by with three live pigs tied on. Crazy times!

We've spent almost a week in Saigon and as well as taking walks around the city, shopping at the markets and watching Australia make it through to the next round of soccer (yay!), we've also done a few touristy trips. We spent a day at the Cu Chi tunnels, which is a 250km network of underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong during the war. They used to live and fight in the tunnels and we got to crawl through a short stretch of them. A very claustrophobic experience to say the least. It's crazy to think people inhabited such a tiny space just 30 years ago. It's the kind of thing you expect could have taken place hundreds of years ago - but not in the 70s!

Bol makes friends with the Viet Cong replicas at the Cu Chi Tunnels

Bol, Wayne, Sarah and I get ready for battle

Bol in the tunnels

We also visited the War Remnants Museum in Saigon which was extremely sobering. Very graphic photos of war victims - people with limbs blown off, children starving, burn victims. Perhaps just a warmup to what we'll see when we head to Cambodia tomorrow.

One of the more disappointing aspects to Saigon was that I was hoping to find the orphanage my brother and sister lived in before coming to Australia. The only organisation that could help me out with that never replied to my emails, so I missed out there.

To end on a light note though, our mate Wayne from SA arrived on Tuesday. We picked him up from the airport and spent an hour crammed between hundreds of Vietnamese at the arrivals gate. Eventually we spotted him though - standing at least a foot taller than everyone else. It's great to see a face from home and catch up with stories of Adelaide misadventures. Stay tuned for our next installment, which will come from Cambodia.