Vietnam - First night & tunnels

We headed out for our first night in Saigon fresh from a power nap. We stopped outside a bar at the end of our street and that 3 second pause was enough for an army of waiters to surround us, move two chairs behind us and Jackie Chan us into the seats. A guy from the bar next door gave us a leaflet which nearly started a bar vs bar fight, and the leaflet was quickly ripped from our hands and thrown away.

After a couple of local beers we had a game of pool. Bars of England take note, the pool tables are free to use. We both played pool about as well as Steven Hawking on a trampoline, as the games went on for hours. Some other people asked for a go and our game took so long that they'd ordered their food and were halfway through their meals before we'd finished.

Despite us having to be up at 7am in the morning we decided to start on the cocktails and swiftly worked our way from bar to bar, although saying that, the cocktails are served in the world's smallest glasses.

All the bars play 80s and 90s rock, Spenno would be right at home with his air guitar here.

As we went further down the street the bars got seedier, the bars marketing reps had offers such as "one beer, one punani, two beers, two punani". After that every bar had a bunch of local girls calling you in.

We carried on until we found a prostitute free bar and sat down for a drink only to be immediately surrounded by prostitutes!

We fled the scene after a couple of quick drinks and made our way back to the normal bars where Tim got talking to a guy about knives and Mark got leached by a visa hunting girl. Tim found out that they sell switchblades here with torches on them so that you can see who you're stabbing properly while Mark called the embassy to arrange the necessary paperwork for his new wife to travel back to Blighty.

A few more cocktails and we had to call it a night to ensure we would be alive in the morning.

Eating soup on the back of a bike

Six hours later the alarm woke us and we were very much not alive, Tim drunkenly staggered to the shop for supplies which involved him getting a few cans of fake Red Bull. It wasn't great but it did the job, so we had a quick free breakfast and got on the bus to the Cu Chi tunnels, our first excursion of the holiday.

After a two hour journey we arrived at the tunnels with our guide and he made us watch a propaganda video about how the evil Americans murdered women and children, blew up hospitals and fought a losing battle, you know, a bit like Afghanistan. The tunnels were tiny but we crawled through them on our hands and knees, got a little bit lost but emerged safely. It's a good job we'd laid off the pies!

War preparations

It was then time to shoot stuff, we both had a go at shooting evil bastard Americans with an AK47 and a fully auto M60. The other thing we learned was how to make deadly traps, we both can't wait to get home and build some protection around our homes, although we must remember to inform the postman.

It was good fun and very interesting, they should make a film about the war...