Howdy folks....well here we are now in Ho Chi Minh City and it's loads cooler down here and today it's raining so time to email and fill you in on the goss from N'am....

We bailed Hoi An (after a laborious trip to the Post Office to send goodies!) and arrived for a few days of roasting like piggies on the beach! Nha Trang is great and one of the best beaches in Vietnam....for the price of a coke we got to laze all day long on sun loungers at the Louisiane Cafe...sun beds that were infinitely more luxurious than the beds we were sleeping in...waiter service and only a few metres from the sea! Ah bliss!

I have turned into a bit of a beach bum and the Lonely Planet "Things to see and do" chapters are becoming more and more ignored!!!! Lucy, Lianne and I got a great room there too with a rooftop patio area thing too so it was totally chilled....In fact we didn't do anything in Nha Trang other than go to the beach and get drunk...

The main event was Lianne's birthday which was kicked off on a day trip to the surrounding islands on board the Mama Hahn's notorious booze and cruise!!! Harry and David joined us there again... Being picky backpackers we smuggled vodka on board in a water bottle...it was a great day out, bimbling around the islands, did a spot of snorkeling and swimming at various points along the way and generally lazing on deck, boozing and sun bathing. At one stop there was a "swim up bar" which was basically a crazy Vietnamese bloke with a table made of polystyrene attached to him and lots of bottles of really quite rank red wine that tasted awful but hey it was free! It was all good fun and then in the evening we organised a cake for Lianne and had cake and vodka on our "patio" and being sensible went for food and got given a jug of cocktails for her Birthday!!! Good start to the evening.. then went to the Rainbow Bar on the beach and she got given a bottle of vodka by the barman and that got demolished (as we did) throughout the evening...In the wee hours we had run out of mixers and Harry suggested neat vodka drinking.. I like his style...hurrah!!!...We stumbled down the beach to another bar until about 3 a.m. and swung our pants on the dance floor and bumped into other people we had met en route down Vietnam so that was cool. Needless to say the next day was a complete write off and entailed walking to beach, crashing on sun lounger, going for one swim and not otherwise moving until around 6 p.m. ....

From Nha Trang we headed to Dalat which is a weird kinda place, a sort of hill station and frankly far too bloody cold up there!! Am no longer able to suffer the cool weather!!!! I am convinced however that absolutely no-one from The "Holy Planet" has actually visited this place or they took an enormous amount of of some mind altering substance before they wrote the chapter as it's nothing like....anyway unable to find anything that resembled breakfast and sleeping in a hotel next to a building site....(building works cunningly non existent when we got carted there by a rep from the hotel) we rapidly decided to bail there and head for the beach.

We did however manage a full on dose of kitsch as we visited the "Crazy house" and the "Flower Gardens" Sadly my vocabulary is unable to explain the large doses of cheese, giraffes and weird stuff going on at either site.. see website for photos ....We even contemplated taking a taxi to Mui Ne to avoid staying another night but that was gonna cost plenty cash. We actually found a kind of Mexican restaurant that night so Dalat redeemed itself momentarily.. Now I know you're all thinking "She's in Vietnam why isn't she sampling all the local goodies on offer" Well let me tell you that noodles and rice and steamed vegetables is all very healthy and nutritious but after a month of it...I am starting to look like a noodle!!!!

Mui Ne was a cool little hang out with bugger all to do but sunbathe and we all managed to roast ourselves on the beach...we scored some pretty cute little bungalows by the beach made of bamboo and they were good fun for $4 a night....

We met a 10 year old Vietnamese Boy called Zong and he took me, Harry and Lucy on a short trek to the Fiary Spring and Waterfalls over the dunes one evening and that was fun...we had to wade through a shallow river part of the way and then up and down the dunes and from what we understood it seemed to be safer on the dunes as there were less snakes!!! Hmmmmm! Lucy saw one crossing the road but gladly I have not met one yet.. (Well apart from the ones pickled in the bottles of snake wine here! Not quite your average bottle of Chardonnay)

On our last day Harry and I headed off on motorbikes to the sand dunes for a look and to go sand surfing...we got hold of what can only be described as a large tea tray made of plastic with two string handles and you basically hop on and go screaming down the sand dunes - a bleedin hoot I can tell you...it was a real giggle sliding down the dunes however sand literally did get "everywhere" and we also turned an interesting shade of orange temporarily...

Anyway it then decided to rain so we left Mui Ne and headed for Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) where we are now and having a lovely time we are too!!! We are staying in District 1 which is still known as Saigon and it's full of the usual bars, restaurants, travelers cafes, art shops, thieves and pickpockets and the cheapest CD's ever, about 80 cents each!!!

David left us and headed for Thailand last week, Lianne is leaving us tonight as she heads off to Thailand and Malaysia, Harry and Lucy are heading to Cambodia and I'm heading on a boat down the Mekong Delta for three days before coming back to Saigon to fly to Bangkok... It's going to be sad to say goodbye to them all but it has been a great month....

Yesterday we went to a place just outside of Saigon called Cu Chi and visited the tunnels there. Similar to the ones in Vinh Moc but these have actually be made larger and wider to accommodate westerners and even then you are crouching down and brushing the sides of the tunnels. It was absolutely fascinating to visit them and at the height of the war the tunnel system stretched from Saigon to the Cambodian border and was about 250km long and on three levels and went into American bases and South Vietnamese strong holds.

The tunnels were constantly being searched for by the American forces but most of the soldiers were too large to get down them. They tried defoliating the are, bulldozing it and eventually dropped napalm to destroy the land and thus prevent crops growing. This did not force the VC out. Most of the tunnels had false entrances that were booby trapped with all sorts of sharp bamboo spikes and traps. Our guide took us to an area of ground and told us the entrance to the tunnels was "here" and asked us to find it. I tell you it was absolutely impossible to see and when they opened it, it is the tiniest hole!! Very clever these Vietnamese at their tunnel building...Cu Chi was described as the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and generally devastated area in the history of warfare...as the American forces knew the tunnels were here and constantly tried to destroy them they declared it a free strike zone, so basically they could shoot anything they liked and pilots were told to drop unused bombs and napalm before returning to their bases. The B-52's eventually carpet bombed the whole lot and still the VC stayed.

It was incredible to see as the previous day we had visited the Museum of American and Chinese War Atrocities now more diplomatically renamed the War Remnants Museum. It is full of graphic and harrowing photos of the war and the destruction caused by it all. Photos of soldiers holding heads of people they had cut off, one photo that will stick in my mind is one of a soldier holding up a head, part of the top of the body, a shoulder and an arm of a guy who had been blown up there's nothing else of him left..just mind blowing images. Of course there is the famous photo of the little girl with napalm burns running naked along a road...it is a no holds barred photo gallery of the war and just incredibly graphic. Many of the photographers who shot these images were killed in the war and their photos are on display. There are also tanks and airplanes and other military arms on display including agent orange, napalm all sorts of bombs and grenades. There are also photos of the deformed babies (including two deformed babies "pickled" in a jar) and people as a result of the after effects of exposure to the chemicals used. This museum leaves nothing to the imagination...

So after the sights of the museum and the tunnels I have decided on a peaceful three day trip to the Mekong Delta to unwind after the shock and take in some countryside and visit floating markets...I leave tomorrow and then head back to Saigon on Sunday evening (by which time no doubt my in box will be flooded with messages from you let telling me what you're all up to !!!) and fly out of here on Tuesday afternoon to kick off in Bangkok and spend a few days with fellow Lincolnshire lass and buddie Kate who is living in Bangkok...which I am totally looking forward to as it's my first encounter with a mate from home in 5 months!!! Yippppeeeee!

Anyway you's lot time for me to trot off and send more photos to the website. For those of you who haven't visited for a while my oh so smart bro has now put my Bungee jumping video on the site so you can log in and watch me throwing myself off a bridge!!! Photos of Vietnam will be on there shortly too....and for those of you who have forgotten the address it's http://www.spaldingnet.net/lillie ..

Anyway adios for now, I'll look forward to my bulging InBox on Sunday? Don't be shy you can email me tooooo!!!!

Loads of love

Lisa/Lillie

xxxxx