On the road again

Forgive radio silence yesterday - a rest day in Ho Chi Minh city, and a sad farewell to Jim, but a warm welcome to Cindy from Tasmania.

Having said goodbye to the stalwart Nam it was just the new team and the GPS finding our way via a bit of history at the Cu Chi war tunnels to Trang Bang - our last stop in Vietnam before hitting the Cambodian border. Walter managed to get a route into the device by hand as we have managed to lose the cable for connecting it to the laptop and doing it the easy way. It promptly led us off in exactly the opposite direction to where we needed to go but we kept the faith and it led us round a large block for reasons best known to itself and we were soon dodging the HCM traffic again. It was Cindy's first time riding a Zoco so she was really chucked in the deep end - and breezed through it all.

The war tunnels were a sobering history lesson. Mark scooted down the original-size little tunnel to see inside a bunker with a slit for shooting Americans. Of course Wal wanted to go down too, and fitted ok, but found the amount of oxygen less than he was used to and emerged coughing away, much to the alarm of the poor guide. The visit took a while, not least because they make you park your bikes hundreds of metres from the site proper, so we rolled into town in the dark and in the rain. Again.

Mon, our Cambodian minder, arrived late after a bus breakdown at the border. She's a real live wire, speaks good English, and at dinner spotted a taxi so grabbed the driver and booked him for tomorrow's run to the border so she seems on the ball.

There's a lot of Cambodia to get across so we better get going. Always assuming Wal can get out of Vietnam with his watercolour passport.