Good Morning Vietnam

 I was feeling a little worse for wear this morning, but I couldn’t stay home and relax as we had a Vietnam War tour that we had to catch a coach for! We arrived on a bus with about 15 other British tourists and these 3 very loud Americans who proceeded to natter very loudly for the entirety of the day. We stopped off at a place on the way that sold ornaments made by people who were disabled from America’s use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. We eventually arrived at the site, and our tour guide showed us around. We first saw this tiny little hole that the Viet Cong used to enter the tunnels  without being seen. It was about as wide as my shoulders, but I managed to fit inside anyway! We kept going, and he showed us the various gruesome booby traps that the Viet Cong set for the American soldiers. We started to realise that maybe the war wasn’t as fun as the movies made it out to be. Although I’m not sure how anyone fell into this considering there was a fence around it! We stopped...

 Had a very slow start to the day today as most of the boys were still pretty exhausted from the previous night’s shenanigans. Since Fin and Leilah had technically overstayed their visa, no hostels would take them in so we let them relax at our place for a bit before their 4am flight the next day. After we had all suitably recovered, we headed out to get a late lunch. We had some lunch at a cafe on the 6th floor of the building above. The views were fantastic, but there was a huge queue for the lift so we had to walk the whole way up ourselves! Not wanting to risk becoming ill from the cold cuts in a banh mi, I decided to get fish balls and chips, which were actually surprisingly nice, although I was starving anyway so they could’ve been awful and I still would’ve finished the whole thing! Fin and Leilah went to meet a friend, so Dan, Jagan and I went back to the flat for some pre-drinks. Dan felt a bit tired so he stayed at home tonight, and Jagan felt a bit peckish so we went out...

Saigon. Shit. I’m only in Saigon. Every time, I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle. Apologies, but it’s not every morning you get to accurately quote Apocalypse Now! Anyway, thankfully the Vietnam bad luck spinner didn’t land on anyone today (I have a bit of a cold but it seems a bit timid compared to some of the other’s misfortunes so I won’t count it).  Now that the boys were all in action, we headed off for a day of sightseeing. Unfortunately it took us a while to get a taxi, since the first one we ordered texted to let us know that he had been arrested and couldn’t pick us up. After finding a non-arrested taxi driver, we headed to have breakfast. It was at a cafe called ‘Oasis Cafe’, which was basically a bunch of tables inside a fish tank with little stepping stones to walk around! It was really cool, and the serene music playing in the background made it feel like a tropical tiki paradise. We were a bit offended that certain menu items said that they wouldn’t be serve...

 Woke up nice and early today in preparation for our flight to Ho Chi Minh City (which I shall be calling Saigon from now on since I can’t be arsed to type all that out every time). After hastily stuffing all my things into my suitcase we were on our way to a Toyota dealership to be picked up by a bus to Da Nang airport. It was so hot today that you could physically feel the heat radiating from the tarmac underneath us. It felt like we were getting sunburnt on a cloudy day. We got on the bus and proceeded to finish all the beers we had leftover in our flat. Feeling slightly tipsy, we arrived in Da Nang airport, only to be greeted with the biggest airport queue I had ever seen. Being the good friend that I am, I decided to pay 100,000 dong to leave my friends behind and get in the priority queue. The airport was so busy that even the priority queue took a long time to get to. This Indian man in front of me was very upset by this and shouted at several poor airport staff. Luckily the...

 Had a brilliant night’s sleep after waking up in my own bedroom. Thankfully Jagan’s toothache and Dan’s food poisoning had cleared up this morning so the 3 amigos were back in action! There was a cafe in our building, so we each got a banh mi sandwich for 15,000 dong (42p!). Seeing as it was so cheap, the sandwich was basically just bread with some pork and cucumber sporadically spread across the baguette. We got in a cab to go and see this abandoned water park, one of the two tourist attractions in Hue. It was quite eerie; we were one of the only people there so it felt very abandoned. It was covered with graffiti, and Jagan and Dan were very pleased to see that someone had written BLADES on the wall.  We next got a cab to the 2nd tourist attraction in Hue, the Imperial City. After paying 200,000 dong (ripoff) we were inside. The place was beautiful but after growing up around the British monarchy, the Vietnamese monarchy didn’t seem like much! Regardless, the buildings were...