HO CHI MINH CITY

OK, so after my rather dismal experiences (besides late night ones) in Nah Trang, my time in HCMC (Saigon to the old skool) has been pretty different.
Whilst I've still enjoyed the social scene until less than sociable hours, I've actually managed to cram a lot into my time here - which is less than planned - reason why to be explained below.

I was invited here to do some tours with some other people I met further North, which despite their good company was also good thing as I might have never left Nah Trang!

I also neglected to mention in the previous post that as well as my camera, I'd also managed to 'relocate' my open bus ticket, which gets me from Hanoi to HCMC. Nice.

As it turned out, it gave me an opportunity to skip the 12 hour buses for a change so I decided to fly.
As my misfortune seems to make for interesting reading I can also tell you that after arriving at the airport and checking my guide book to find my hotel I found my bookmark neatly placed in the Nah Trang section....a flippin open bus ticket!!

Probably serves me right on many levels, having killed the brain cell that knew where it was, and also getting up to nothing touristy in Nah Trang that would have justified a look in the book!

So after all that messing about, I hooked up with my friends later that evening who said that one of their friends knew some good places to try one of the Vietnameses delicacies - dog.

Although I've only gone so far as crispy frogs so far on the culinary path to my eventual spider in Cambodia I was up for giving it a try.

For those that probably don't want me to describe the meal and restuarant in great detail I can say that there were several different varietes of the meat on offer that night (photo attached is steamed meat), all of which our group tried, which to take things a stage further was washed down with a couple of shots of snake wine!
You would think that the dog meat would have been the worse of the two, but actually it had a good pork / game taste...the snake wine on the other hand was so strong it deserved a skull and cross bones on the bottle!

So, not a bad start then considering my lack of adventure culinary or otherwise in Nah Trang! The following day was a to the Cu Chi tunnels used by the Vietnamese during the war, which was also an interesting experience...the best bit however was the army shooting range on site where you can fire the big bad A-K47's!
Needless to say I shot my hand up in the air when asked to fire them like astupid kid in school who actually knows the right answer.

Although I'm still fully ware that I'm a terrible shot from my Laos efforts it was still awesome firing that gun, I didn't even try to aim at the targets - it was just too powerful and loud to conecntrate on small matters like aim or direction!
So as in Laos, my targets (small wooden animals on boards this time) survived another round of bullets unscathed by my efforts! Pictures attaches show me trying not to look scared when fiinrg as well as one of the other crazy equipment they'l let you fire.

I've also kept one of my empty shells as a souvenir which I might get added to a necklace in a 'Top Gun dogtag' style!

The discussion of the evening following this is why I'm now leaving HCMC for Cambodia ahead of schedule. Over some Bia Hoi (as you do) Myself and another English guy (Dave) got chatting to these 2 American girls who were contemplting doing some cycling in Cambodia - long story short the 4 of us are now all meeting in Phnom Penh in 2 days time to start a 400km cycle ride to Siem Reap!

Planning is still in it's infancy despite the timleine, although I am personally working on several of the key issues, such as "how can I get a sound system on my bike?" and "can I get one in chrome with old skool white wall tires?"
The trvial issues such as how many days it will take and where to stay are also being figured out I believe.

So, what was going to be sevreal days in HCMC sees me leaving tomorrow via the Mekong Delta, which is something I've been looking forward to as it's the route in the film Apocalypse Now, and much of the scenery seems the same.
I will obviously makes sure not to get captured and end up in any huts talking to an overweight Mafia Don in the dark!

So, with my departure of Vietnam iminent I went round today with a quality moto guy (ther are plenty of honest nices ones, despite my stories!) and crammed in as many sights as possible today. Picture attached is one of the many pagodas, this one being the 'Beehive Pagoda' Nice.

I will update the 'Tour de Cambodia' in more detail once I arrive there in a couple of days, although it will mean that an update of the entire trip may have to wait until it's done...not sure if many of the minority villages will have boradband!