Our Vietnam tour officially finished today and our Cambodia tour officially begins. With 11 others from the Vietnam group we booked a tour to Cu Chi tunnels, about an hour out of Saigon. Incredible stories of ingenuity and survival by the Viet Cong in a network of 280km of tunnels, totally surrounded by French then American forces. Our tour guide ‘Tan’ was superb. He explained everything so clearly and with great humour.

We stopped in at a house where the woman of the house makes 1400 rice paper sheets a day, for payment of about $US10 a day. We also learnt that police make about $US400 per month!

After returning to Saigon the 6 of us continuing on to Cambodia went for a walk to the local tourist markets where we made a few last minute purchases to use up the last of our Dong.

We then met with our new group leader and the people joining us for the rest of the journey. Our group leader is Sotheavy – pronounced something like Tee-a-vee, a young Cambodian woman from Siem Reap. Tomorrow we cross the border into Cambodia and head for Phnom Penh.

As we disband, I realise I never introduced our group… Collin, Kerryn and Nicholas from Sydney, Belinda and Darrell from Perth, Debbie and Brigitte from Boston, Mark and Emma from Dublin, Elena and Vitali from Germany, , Peter from London, Niahm from out of Dublin and Dad and I.