Tiny tunnels and BIG GUNS!

Well Vietnam has been pretty cool for us so far. Our first stop was Ho Chi Minh City (fomally Saigon, but I don't think that you want a history lesson about that!). Anyway, as we were in Vietnam we thought that we ought to go and see some of the remnants of the war. About 50km outside the city is a place called Co Chi, this was a strong hold for the communists within the south of the country, and was therefore an area of high military activity. The whole area was deemed a no go area by the Americans and anyone living in the area was considered to be part of the Viet Cong. As a result the Americans bombed the hell out of anything that moved on the surface. The Viet Cong were a little upset by this (to say the least!) and so they bulit whole communties underground. These underground tunnels are really quite brilliant and worked a treat for them (probably a bit of an understaement as they stopped them from getting blown to bits!). The tunnels are still there and we got to crawl through them, apparently the Viet Cong were a lot smaller than me so it was easier for them to fit into the entrance!! It was also amazing to see just how many bomb craters were there and the size of them - about 20m by 10m deep - they were HUGE!

As well as getting a very one sided history lesson about the 'American Invasion' and how the communist brothers prevailed, we managed to find a place that allowed you to fire GUNS!! Not just little pistols either, I was let loose with an AK-47 and an M-16! It was absolutely awesome! It was also really scary just how accrurate you could be with these guns with absolutely no training. Apparently if you have the money and are a little sick you can machine gun a cow or hand grenade a sheep, but I didn't have the cash! (it's a dollar a bullet for heavens sake!!)