From Nha Trang we took yet another overnight train to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Saigon is once again a large busy bustling city. It was a good city to be in and I enjoyed all the sites and smells. We had some great nights out whether it was playing pool, going clubbing or just out drinking. This was also the city where I tasted my first fried scorpion. It was ok, but its shell is a little hard for my liking. We made a trip out to the Cu Chi District to see the Viet Kong tunnels. For those of you that remember some of the Vietnam war movies, the Vietnamese use to dig tunnels in order to get around. The tunnels were a seemingly endless, ingeniously disguised web of guerrilla fortifications reaching from the outskirts of Saigon to the Cambodian border, linking hamlets, villages and various VC support bases. They consisted of living quarters, do-it-yourself ordnance factories, kitchens with concealed chimneys, cleverly designed conical bomb shelters and even cavernous theater and movie halls. Built over two decades beginning in the late 1940s, the tunnels provided shelter to barefooted peasant soldiers against a vastly superior military arsenal. It was good to see the Vietnamese war from a different perspective. The war museum was an eye opener into what the effects of agent Orange had and still has on the Vietnamese population. The last part of our trip was to visit a family in the Mekong Delta and see what life is like on the Mekong. It was amazing to see how everybody here gets around on a boat. There is so much water around that neighbours are a boat ride away. There are a of small waterways to navigate around. Larger boats also need to watch the tide as they can get caught between low bridges when the tide comes in. We had some great meals with our local hosts and ate some interesting looking fish caught in the Mekong. The 2 main industries we got to see was the making of clay bricks, and clay products and a sweet factory. The sweet factory makes rice cakes and various toffee like sweets. Both were really tasty. That night we stayed at our local guides home and played cards till the wee hours. Needless to say we worked our way through a litre of home made rice wine. I also got an opportunity to sample some snake wine. It’s rice wine with snake blood in it. I must confess I preferred this wine to the normal one. The next day we took a boat & passed by a real floating market, where locals anchor their boats and sell their food or goods. The type of flag that they raise on the boat signals to others what they are selling. We then headed back to Saigon where we got ready for a night out on the town as a few of the group members were at the end of their tour and others were heading on to Cambodia.