South East Asia travel - Tour of duty free

At Ho Chi Minh Airport, we’re greeted by a scene from a zombie horror flick as people march toward us with arms outstretched. They’re taxi drivers promising us the cheapest ride. We pick a quiet bloke in the corner who turns out to be a road-raged, horn-honking mad bastard who can’t locate his indicators. Feeling lucky to make the hostel, we hit the sack, nerves shattered.

We wake to the 5am alarm and our free breakfast. The banana pancakes go down a treat, the raw pork noodles don’t. We haven’t even finished and a bloke claiming to be our tour guide hustles us to a bus depot for the ride to the Cu Chi tunnels.

An arse-rattling two hours later, we’re at the underground labyrinth used in the Vietnam War, complete with its own shooting range. We fire an M16 and nearly deafen ourselves. Turns out we’re shit shots.

Next, we’re invited to do the “tunnel run” – a three-minute dash through about 100m of tunnel that even Rove would struggle to fit in. After what seems like hours, I emerge gasping for air, covered in scratches looking like I’ve gone eight rounds with Vic Darchinyan.

Back in Ho Chi Minh City, we hit happy hour at a bar made entirely of bamboo. One of the boys bets he can down nine Tequila Sunrises in five minutes. Within 20 minutes he’s blotto. He goes to the dunny to have a chuck but doesn’t return. When we get back to the hostel in the early hours of the morning we find him sprawled on the bed minus his wallet. The pussy tells us he got mugged by four girls on mopeds.

Next morning, I’m dragged out of bed for a booze cruise in the South China Sea. We jump on the boat and I try not to spew. After I spew, I feel a little better. Some bloke screams, “Floating bar open!” In the water, I see a bloke with a lifesaver ring around him and an esky tied to it. I jump in and enjoy a few beverages with some pasty Poms.

We arrive back in the arvo and head to the War Remnant Museum. The place makes you realise how bad the war f–ked up the country. After a few harrowing hours we head home for beers on the balcony.

The following evening we board a night train to a coastal resort town called Nha Trang. We’d heard a few horror stories about the night trains so we organise a watchman roster. I get first shift and the boys are asleep before I have the chance to zip up my bag. I click into high-alert mode. Within 10 minutes I’m asleep.

In Nha Trang, we hire motorcycles and nearly kill ourselves in the traffic, so we downgrade to mountain bikes. We’re on the road for five minutes when the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen destroys our map and, with it, our will to live. We’re soon cycling through pedal-deep water, and the town and its nonexistent drainage system look like the set for The Perfect storm

Despite the rain occasionally coming down harder than Ron Jeremy, we grab some beach time for a couple of days before heading back to Ho Chi Minh. We get to the station 15 minutes before our train leaves only to be told it was washed off the side of the mountain. We stare blankly at the clerk and wonder if she’s serious . She is.

We book the next available train and then grab a boat to Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.