Ho Chi, Củ Chi, KFC, Minh

The last stop on our Vietnam trail was the city of Ho Chi Minh.

Saigon, as it was formerly (and still is unofficially) known, is just as crazy, chaotic and thrill-riding as you'd expect it to be, and a fitting way to end our journey through this often intense, and at times insane, country.

Saigon is a city full of dizzying contrasts: hawkers in conical hats walking under huge, flashing billboards; ropey motorbikes roaring through the streets next to perfectly polished Hummers; timeless alleys, lined with ramshackle stalls selling spices and pans, leading to designer malls and gourmet restaurants. Yet, everyone is as much a part of this living organism as the next, adding their own energy and eclecticism to the city's urban mosaic.

Reminders of what the city and its people went through, just one generation ago, are in the tourist trappings (the museums and the Củ Chi tunnels) but today, propaganda about the Vietnam war (or, to the Vietnamese, the American war) is now only contained in the faux-vintage poster shops and group tours led by grinning guides. The American outlets of KFC and Adidas hammered home that point.

While there, we took part in the touristy propaganda - silently looking at horrific images from the war and making our way through a stifling section of the Củ Chi tunnels, an immense network of underground tunnels used by the Vietnamese (in Western history books, known as the Viet Cong guerillas) to bewilder and defeat the Americans.

At Củ Chi, we took a tour through the jungle where a lot of the Vietnam war was fought, and where a great deal of soldiers, on both sides, lost their lives. We circumnavigated bomb craters and booby traps of all kinds that were made by the communist soldiers to capture, kill or maim American fighters when on the ground. I squeezed myself into one hiding hole - not advisable if you are even a little bit claustrophobic, or "big-boned" for that matter.

The tunnels, which have been widened and reinforced for tourists in parts (not that you would know as they are so small and cramped), go deeper into the earth and the Viet Cong and civilians alike lived under there to avoid being shot or captured. We shuffled along inside, our backs bent right over

as we made our way along in the dark and dirt. We bailed out early (you can walk 100 metres) and it was a relief to see sunlight again, I can tell you!

It must have been a terrifying life, living underground, only emerging to shoot at the enemy. So many lives were lost here and the deafening sound of the theme park style

shooting range was quite unsettling.

Another sobering day arrived when I rounded a street corner, looking for postcards, and stopped in my tracks because I was aware that there was something strange with the formation of people ahead of me. A kind traveller approached me and said "if you don't want to be depressed, don't come down here." I looked ahead and could see why everyone had stopped in their tracks. A Vietnamese man, surrounded by a huge pool of blood that was spreading onto the grey tarmac, was writhing around in the road. He had slit his throat and was slowly dying in the centre of a busy street. Stunned, and feeling wobbly, I decided to turn on my heal and leg it back the way I came.

But the image stuck with me all day and I was left wondering what would drive a person to do that so spontaneously and so publicly. That evening, we asked a local guy while sat drinking bia hơi if he knew what had happened. He said, looking very solemn, "love, I can't think of

another reason but love."

Despite their often hard exterior, the Vietnamese are a bunch of hopeless romantics after all. And we left on this note, happy we had experienced this beautiful, unruly country with its formidable, resilient and occasionally charming people, yet glad to be moving on to Cambodia for our next adventure.