The bus arrived right on time this morning but it took a couple of minutes to cross the road. The guy leaving the hotel with us was wearing a University of Bath T-shirt, but he left there several years after us. There was a bit of shuttling people around and then we headed out of town. Our guide, Minh, wasted no time in telling us about his role in the war (he was an interpreter for the Americans even though he originally came from the North - his father lived in the South so he moved here) and gave a little speech about enjoying every moment of life and making the most of what you have. The three American lads on the bus started muttering and mumbling and by the end of the day they seemed a bit uncomfortable. Which is weird considering the war had finished before they'd even been born.

We were going to the Cu Chi tunnels, a maze of underground passages built by guerillas of the National Liberation Front and used to attack the South Vietnamese and American troops. As we left the city, the traffic thinned slightly (but not by much) and the roads widened a bit. There were even fewer crash-helmets being worn, most people seemed happy with a conical straw hat or a scarf over their faces (or both). At several points along the way there were three lanes of cars and buses (on a two lane road) in both directions. The horn was used quite a bit on those occasions! There were roadworks where pavements had been dug up - the road will eventually be about 50 feet wide - and market-stall holders had found flattish parts among the rubble to set up their wares despite the open sewers and the huge muddy puddles everywhere. Bundles of tired chickens and ducks were laid along the road, along with big domed cages of more lively-looking birds. Further out of the city, the grey concrete housing gave way to paddy fields, interspersed with small, grey concrete towns.

The rice plants were brilliant green spikes in small patchwork fields, bordered by slightly raised, grassy paths. Almost all the fields had graves in them, large grey tombs, small white marble ones and some tiled in glossy red squares. The Vietnamese believe that the spirits of the dead will look after the family and ward off evil spirits, and that keeping them close to home will bring good fortune. Even more ubiquitous, though, were the water buffalo, now my favourite type of cow, wallowing in the mud or just grazing. Huge grey barrels on heavy legs, and their long horns sweeping backwards from their faces, they are beautiful creatures. The fields and swampy gardens all have big mud holes in them where the family's buffalo have made a cooling bathtub.

The little towns were mostly inter-connected concrete boxes with tarpaulin porches where goods were displayed. There were piles of coconut husks and larger piles of rubbish everywhere. Almost all the houses sat on, or very near, ponds and swamps, some choked with water hyacinths or lotus plants, others just plain brown mud. We passed the street where the famous picture of the little girl running through the town, napalm burns on her arms. It won a Pullitzer prize - we saw the original yesterday.

Now we really were out in the countryside. Houses here were made increasingly of wood, and I saw a house made of straw, one of sticks and one of bricks all next to each other, just like the nursery rhyme (and several houses made of plastic or corrugated iron, but that doesn't fit quite so well). Ten minutes later I saw a tiny cage of big pigs, being pulled on a trolley by a moped! Almost every house seemed to have something to sell, and buckets and bags and piles of coconuts adorned every porch. Behind many of them were rows of plastic chairs and snooker tables. There were several hawkers on mopeds completely surrounded by inflatable snakes and aliens.

One of the attractions along the way was the Caodai Great Temple, the Holy See of Cao Daism, a religion peculiar to Vietnam. It fuses Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam and Catholicism and has very ritualised services every day. We arrived just in time to see the midday one. The bright yellow temple itself is adorned on the outside with stone carvings of triffid-like plants and a few dragons, and everywhere was the slightly-spooky triangle with an eye in it. The one that's on the US one dollar note. People were just arriving at the temple, almost all dressed in white robes. Some, the ones with some status in the church, wore red or blue or yellow robes, depending on their role, with a big shiny eye on the front. All were happy to pose for pictures, which was nice as I like the idea of a religion welcoming people who are curious, even though I feel bad treating someone's religion as a tourist attraction. We were waved into the temple and it was very, very pink inside which is not a colour I've ever associated with religion. It was huge and mostly empty, with two rows of masive pink pillars with green triffid-plants curling up them, a balcony all the way around the wall, and the tiled floor decorated with several patterned sections. We did the 'hushed and polite' church walk, and halfway down the central isle was a platform with a set of gold chairs, a little further was a dish of joss-sticks and right at the end was an ornate gold altar with bells and candles and an enormous turquoise ball painted with stars and an eye. The ceiling was painted like a sky with clouds, and a few wispy, white dragons and silver mirror stars. Every now and then a woman in white with a white cloth wrapped round her head, or a man in white robes would come in, kneel facing the altar, perform a series of hand movements and bows and move back to wait in the entrace hall. We were gracefully and carefully herded to the balconies for the start of the ceremony, but urged to take photos of absolutely everything. The most interesting part of the service itself was the music (drums, whistles and many one-stringed instruments, some plucked and some played with a bow) and the procession of followers entering the temple. There was a precise order and definite but subtle differences in dress that probably denoted a heirachy within the church - size of sleeves, the wearing of head-dresses, the type of collar, that sort of thing. The men entered on one side, the women on the other, they formed rows facing one another and shuffled round as bit, and then all turned to face the altar. We didn't stay for the whole thing as we had to return to the bus, so we didn't hear anything other than the music, but every now and then a drum would sound and bowing and hand movements would occur in unison.

Outside, in the deserted temple compound, a baboon ran across the road, grabbed some fallen fruit from beneath a tree, and scampered back to a walled woodland.

We stopped at a cafe for lunch and I learned three more Vietnamese words (all food, which is useful) and then had to wander all the way through the cafe-owners' house, through their kitchen and living room and past about seventeen family members all having lunch, to get to the loos. It was strange. This town was mostly made of red brick and there were several massive egg-shaped brink kilns in the area, pumping out black smoke from their three cimneys.

After lunch we went to Cu Chi to see the tunnels. There were several military guys sitting round playing a game that looked a bit like chess. We saw a short video beforehand which described what went on there during the war and showed American tanks being blown up and women receiving medals for killing Americans. There were about ten tourists in our group and one of them asked our guide if he agreed with the Communist way of running the country. He replied, looking at the Army escort with us, that he was a good Communist. What he thought was unimportant, it was only the way he served his country that mattered. Then he said pointedly that other questions should wait until we were back on the bus.

We were led through the forest by the military guard and while our guide talked to us, the policeman demonstrated. He showed us some of the original tunnel entrances, and of course I had to have a go too. It was only just wide enough for me, but I had no leverage to get out, and had to be dragged (much like the beached whale in Tahiti, but without the water or the boat) unceremoniously out of the hole. We were shown the very nasty traps that were built for the enemy out of the metal from fragment bombs dropped by the Americans. Little animatronic NLF soldiers demonstrated their production methods. Minh finally said, "If you want shooting with a rifle or a machine gun, that can be arranged now," but fortunately he was only offering the chance to use a gun. We all declined, for which I'm grateful as I really, really dislike guns. We walked through more forest, all of which was once just muddy battlefield, to the reconstructed tunnels. These were rebuilt after the orignials were destroyed, but about seven inches larger. They are reached by hidden entrances in the ground, just trap doors that open onto a hole, and are only about two to three feet tall and about two feet wide. Even I had to crawl on my hands and knees through them. It was incredibly hot and humid in there, and the crawling was really hard work, and when we finally emerged from 300ft of tiny clay passages we were all drenched with sweat and full of dust. It was horrible to imagine that these were larger than the originals.

We then saw a replica of a kitchen, with the smoke passed cleverly through a series of traps to emerge undetected several feet away, and tried tapioca, a kind of potato, which was a staple food for the guerilllas. Then we went through a souveneir shop and it was suggested that the military escort receive a tip, and we went back to the bus.

The American lads on the bus were very disgruntled by the slant the museum placed on the killing of Americans, and made several comments about 'Commies' which I thought was just an American stereotype and not a real belief at all, so it made me smile. They seemed quite upset to see the 'Commie flag' all over the place. Heading back to Ho Chi Minh we hit rush hour, and four and a half million mopeds (I counted). We were surrounded on all sides by the bikes and it was only a little less scary being in a minibus. But we did have time to see a bit more of the city from this angle, and I noticed that above almost all the grotty grey boxes of shops were beautiful painted and plastered appartment blocks that wouldn't have looked out of place somewhere like LA. Each shop is a single room wide, so the appartments are built accordingly. And every one is different, even the ones adjoining. There are towers and turrets and balustrades, beautiful ceiling-height windows with arched lintels, leading out onto balconies and terraces. Stainless steel and chrome or terracotta tiles, spiral staircases onto the universal roof-terrace. Some were only one or two storeys high, others four or five, and very occasionally they had the width of two shops. Every one had a balcony of some sort, and some of the baconies had terraces of their own. There were some with traditional Chinese-inspried decoration and friezes, some with flower gardens or potted bonsai trees. Many of the apartments were very Art Deco in style, others modern with squares and triangles cut out of their sides, some in pastel shades, some in dark greens and bright reds, but they were all unique. It was quite a sight, and as we went further into the city centre I realised that a lot of the shops even here, as tatty as they looked from street level, had the same beautiful faces towering over the streets.

We were dropped off in town and we bought supper from a street vendor, and then had very welcome showers and another picnic.