Beaches, Bullets and Buildings

We are now qualified PADI Open Water Divers! This means now have the training to go down to depths of 18 meters and skilfully hover above colourful coral whilst little luminescent fish largely ignore us, regard us with mild curiosity or dart away. As you can probably guess we loved diving regardless of what the fish did and now can’t wait to try some other diving spots on the rest of our travels.

The actual PADI course was quite tiring due to early starts and the sheer amount of reading and videos you have to fit into 3 days. We found we’d be shattered by 10pm each day trying to finish off the last few pages of our required reading. Having said that slowly gaining more control over our diving was so rewarding it was more than worth it!

Day 1 of the PADI course involved a number of confined water dives in a local pool that was around 6 meters deep. We practised the core skills of diving including clearing your mask of water, recovering the regulator (breathing apparatus), preparation of Scuba gear, buoyancy control, removal of Scuba gear underwater, emergency ascents and breathing from another diver’s spare regulator. Kat’s hair generally broke the waterproof seal of her mask after removal and it needed clearing, I looked very undignified when trying to take off and put back on all the Scuba equipment underwater and on the surface closely resembling a turtle on its back struggling to right itself but apart from that we didn’t really have any problems!

Days 2 and 3 then consisted of four dives in open water where we practised the skills we’d learned in the pool then went on to generally have fun exploring the bottom of the ocean, 16 meters deep was the maximum we got to! On these dives we saw a multitude of fish that you can see a selection of on Flickr having hired an underwater camera on our last day. As you’ll see this also meant that we had an underwater photo shoot with our instructor directing us to pose in certain ways – actually quite difficult to know what he wanted without hearing him!

On our final day of the PADI course after our dive and in the break before our final exam (which we both scored 96%) we trekked out to the nearby Cham towers which were very similar to the ones we’d seen in My Son and the Nha Trang Cathedral which was huge and very picturesque. These activities all combined and mixed in with a good Indian meal and a beer meant that we slept soundly throughout the night bus’ journey for once all the way through to Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as everyone still calls it).

In Saigon we stayed in a hotel situated in the back room of a tailor shop. It was a real hotel you just had to walk through the tailor shop to get to the street. We really enjoyed doing a short walking tour of some of Saigon’s historic French Colonial buildings, the famous Rex Hotel which was where all the reporters stayed during the Vietnam War and the Reunification Palace which was where the American backed President commanded the South’s war efforts from - untouched 60’s / 70’s decor means that it looks a lot like a villains lair from a James Bond movie! Crossing the street is as much of an experience as everyone says it is – doing it slowly is the key! Scooters just jam the road at rush hour and a few times when we weren’t sure quite when to step out into this death trap a local came to our aid or one of the tourist police helped us across.

We visited a Cao Dai temple that looks a lot like a Disneyland for religion and the worshippers hedge their bets by taking the best bits of every religion and worshiping all the gods. We attended mid-day mass which was really interesting as there was a choir, band and lots of people in multi-coloured robes (to identify which religion they believe in most). Cu Chi tunnels came next where the Viet Cong dug a network of tunnels into the ground to evade and kill the Americans during the war. We were shown numerous traps that involved falling into horrible looking sharp spikes. The tunnels themselves for us were a hot, tiny mad 200 meter dash which included a section we had to go flat to the ground and slide ourselves down because it was that small, and they’ve been widened for Westerners! I certainly couldn’t imagine staying down there for months at a time and not coming up for fresh air. Whilst we were at the tunnels we also fired an AK-47 (which has quite a kick!) loaded with 10 real bullets into an area nowhere near the targets we were aiming for! Certainly a new experience and something we felt we had to try as the opportunity was there!

We’ve just arrived in Cambodia and for the past 3 days we have been thoroughly enjoying boating around the Mekong Delta and waving at all the local kids (more about that in another post).

Love Chris & Kat. xxx