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Very early in the morning on the 1st March we arrived in Saigon after our overnight bus trip from Nha Trang. I (Will) was in an extremely bad mood due to the severe sunburn on my shoulders, which made the impending prospect of carrying a large backpack on my shoulder very unappealing, and as a result we found a room at a fairly standard hotel down a rather dark and dingy alley near to where the bus had dropped us. That morning we headed off to the Russian market in the hope of cheap bargains although returned empty handed with the small exception of Ben's large stash of DVD's. After a rather expensive and luxurious lunch (relatively) we sorted out the rest of our time in the city and our escape route (we had already decided we didn't like the place in comparison to the other cities we had been to) with a friendly travel agent, booking day trips for the next 2 days as well as our bus to RAch Gia. That evening we went out 2 a local bar 4 drinks and ended up playing ALOT of pool as well. The next day we rose early and headed off to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which were, used the Vietcong ****s) in the attempts to fight the Americans during the war. They were very impressive measuring only 60cm by 100cm and covering thousand of Km's and we had a good guide who had been involved in building the tunnels. There was a ridiculous video at one stage, which described the Americans as, 'a crazy batch of devils that even shoot pots and pans'. After a while however, they did get pretty samey and we were delighted when we stumbled upon a shooting range. This was no ordinary shooting range however, with no ordinary set of guns. Being bullish I went straight for the biggest gun available (partly because I no absolutely nothing about army guns) which was apparently an M-60 automatic machine gun. I paid 16 USA dollars for 10 bullets and fired them all off instantly. Then returned for more. It was awesome fun and far more powerful than I had imagined putting other guns I had fired to shame. Ben went initially for the AK47 and then having seen the fun I had had brought a round of bullets for the M -60. That pretty much ended the tour and we got back to Saigon at around 5 in the evening. That night we went out again to the same place to make use of their extravagant happy hour. The next day we headed off on our second 1-day tour to the Mekong delta, which if i was going to be honest was a pretty average trip. The place is spectacularly beautiful and interesting but easily got over within the hour. In fact we had the whole day there to do some pretty tedious things such as attend our 100,000th fruit party (something that they seem to lay on the whole time in SE Asia) and go to a coconut sweet farm. In the end we were glad to be back in Saigon and even more so to be off to phuc quoc island that night. The bus trip to Rach Gia was the usual monstrosity of an adventure, however we eventually arrived at around 4am in the morning and after putting a few people back in their small little boxes rather forcefully we managed to get tickets for the 8 am ferry to Phuc Quoc island, a journey of around 2.5 hours on the express Super Dong II ferry. Phuc Quoc is about as close to a desert island as you can get these days with only 1 tarmac road and absolutely nothing going on except for a few small hotels/beach resorts. When we arrived on the island we paid 50,000 dong (arond 1.10 pounds) for a taxi to a resort we had been recommended right on the beach and were pleased to find that we were offered there smartest bungalow right on the beach. Despite being the smartest bungalow to say it was anywhere near smart would be a compete joke. Shutters without windows, a shower that consisted of a tap high up the wall and a room bare of anything except a bed, however with the added benefits of being rat infested and an insect haven made it fairly clear that we would be on the move then next morning. That day we went for a random walk along long beach for a short while, and then sunbathed before going out for supper at a place further along the beach called Eden. The restaurant was much nicer than the place we were staying and so we asked if they had rooms and were pleased to find out they did at a very cheap rate. The next morning we moved in 1st thing. The second day was spent lying on the beach sunbathing a snorkeling... essentially doing nothing. On the third we did the same again except for in the evening heading out for a night squid fishing trip. As all Nelson's will know I hate fishing but Ben persuaded me and being at night I though it was worth a go. We were picked up by 'moto' at around 7pm and were taken to the port. We got on the boat with a nice French couple and for a while thought we had the boat to ourselves, although as is the normal in SE Asia at the very last moment the boat became ram packed with others. These other came in the form of extremely enthusiastic Japanese tourists who had a least 3 cameras each and were the noisiest bunch of people ever. The highlight of the trip was after 15 mins at sea watching the final 1 of these chinks throwing up over the side and going rather quiet. Ah… finally the peace Ben had been hoping for for his fishing. Throughout the 3 hours of fishing, 1 squid was caught. That was all. The captain caught the squid whilst we were eating and due to the fact he was keen not to disturb us he silently put the fish in the bucket and carried on aimlessly dangling his line over the side. During our second stint of fishing whilst Ben was concentrating hard and I was depressingly bored and looking for things to amuse me, I stuck my hook into the bucket the captain had previously dumped the squid into and hooked the fish with my hook. With it then dangling on the end of my line, I then shouted out, 'Yes, got one' and turned around to show Ben the fish I had 'caught'. Up until the moment when he reads this, he will still believe I caught the only fish on that trip. The fact that I had caught the only fish made Ben fish even harder; yet still to now avail… much to my amusement. The next day in Phuc Quoc we decided to rent out motorbikes to explore the island and Oh what an adventure we had. We set out at around 11.30am with the intention of heading to Bai Sao (Sao Beach), which was about a 45-minute drive along solely mud roads. However, before we headed off to this dreamy beach we went to get cash from town on our sparkling new 175cc motorbikes. As we cruised through town I looked in my mirror to check that Ben was still following but couldn't see him… initially I slowed right down to let him catch up thinking he may have got stuck behind, however figured after a while that he must have overtaken me earlier on without me noticing. I speed off hoping to catch him although after several minutes of traveling at very high speed I realized there was no way he was ahead. I turned around and shortly found him driving sheepishly along the road in the opposite direction towards me, having just been apparently knocked off his bike some pedestrian who had stepped out into the street without warning.His bike was littered with cosmetic damage and he had a nasty graze on his leg. This was the first event of the day. We then headed off towards Bai Sao on our 45min drive and got there in time to experience the baking hot mid day heat. On the way however, we stopped off in the town of An Toi, a place that clearly has seem little of the phenomenon of the white man. We stopped of on the side of the road and were almost instantly surrounded by little staring kids. Knowing exactly what all that was about we were highly protective of our possessions and bikes and headed off sharpish, however, during a very confusing sequence of events, Ben had his genuine pair of Ray Ban's nicked. All very odd. The lairy man even offered to buy then back of these little kids but they clearly thought it all too much of a game of a game to accept the Money. After that second incident of the day we carried out the last leg of the trip to Bai Sai. Lunch on the beach was a truly farcical affair, however the beach was truly stunning and just like some clichéd postcard photo. We spent a few hour chilling our there and then hit the road again. We did a bit more 'tooling' around on our bikes exploring local beaches and shanty towns/fishing villages and then headed back to Dong Dang town near to where we were staying. The drive back was along the 1 tarmac road on the island (we took a more adventurous route on the way) and was a pretty sweet ride home. When we got back to Dong Dang town Ben and I got separated and so being so close to home I left him to it and decided to go for a drive around the town; essentially as I was just enjoying driving a motorbike at excessive speed. As I got dark I switched on my headlights and headed back to drop the bike back at the rental place next door to where we were staying. I handed the bike back, handed over my 5 USD for the day's rental and waited for Ben, slightly concerned as to what they were going to make of his bike. (Our tactic of waiting till it was dark to hand his bike back in the dark so that they wouldn't see the damage had worked so far). What happened next was 1 of the more sticky situations we have been put in so far. As Ben parked up his bike, the owners instantly spotted with their torches that damage that had been inflicted, plus other minor things that we had failed to notice. To cut and extremely long story short, they failed to buy our story/see the point of view we hoped they would and to avoid getting arrested/beaten with sticks, Ben was forced to pay up 120 USD for the damages. The second option they offered was to return tomorrow afternoon and take the bike to be repaired ourselves… an option that did cross our minds as extremely tempting seeing as were on a 7am flight the next morning back to Saigon. As they did seem very serious and were very aggressive we decided we better pay up, especially as they knew where we were staying. It was a highly eventful day for the both of us, mine being a great day… Ben- not so much. That night we had a great evening with the other people staying at our place, including 2 Swedish guys our age who were up for a good laugh. The night took an amusing turn for the worst when at around 5 in the morning we (a group of about 5 of us) were found tucking into ice cream from the freezer whilst the security guard had popped to the loo. We certainly weren't caught red handed but in our rather drunken state we left the ice cream tubs out… and so of course got caught- resulting in us getting thrown our of our room promptly at round 5.15am by the gay manager who had been woken especially. The gay manager had instantly taking a liking to Ben and I from the night we had 1st gone for supper he plied us with free drinks and regularly asked, 'Are you drunk enough yet?' We made dead certain we weren't until we had met the others staying there, who convinced us about safety in numbers. Anyway to get back to the point, his throwing us out turned more into an emotional outburst, made all the worst by us laughing directly to his face, as well us shouting 'woofter' and 'batty boy' (things that seemed overly funny in our drunken state) whilst he professed that we had 'let him down'. That was basically it for those few days, however as you can probably imagine to include everything is impossible and to know what to include and to remain patient enough to keep typing is pretty in pretty testing!! All that remains to be said is that after that amazing night we successfully made it onto our flight, however, if was an extremely painful and uncomfortable morning.
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