We took a quick one hour flight down from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City. As I stepped of the plane it felt like opening the oven door. The heat and humidity here are unbelievable. It soon dawned on me that I need to get used to it because in the next two months it’s only going to get hotter.

I had heard the there was quite a difference between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam’s largest city) but I didn’t expect it to be so apparent. HCMC has a lot more of western feel to it, our guide Bien explained that the people in the north prefer to save money whilst in the more affluent south they have a more “live for the moment” philosophy and prefer to spend more. There are department stores and neon signs all over the place.

In the afternoon of our first day we had a cyclo (3 wheeled bikes with a seat in the front) tour of the city including the War Remnants Museum (interesting, but incredibly bias against the Americans), the cathedral (based on Notre Dame) and the Reunification Palace. I felt very awkward being on a cyclo, it sort of feels like I’m being put on display.
The following day we headed for a boat trip along the Mekong Delta, stopping off at a workshop that makes coconut candy and a bee farm where we had lunch. We also had a little ride down one of the canals in a little rowing boat and the boat trip back to the bus turned into a bit of a Karaoke session, Good times.

Since that was the end of the first part of the tour and we would be losing a couple of people as well as changing guides, we all went out for a big meal (I had a pizza which is the first time I’d had western food since leaving the USA). The night ended up quite messy once we’d found a bar selling cheap gin & tonics and cocktails. People seem to find it hilarious when they see me drinking from a cocktail glass.

Unsurprisingly the next day started with a few bad heads. After we had said goodbye to Bien we headed out to have a bit more of an authentic Vietnamese day. We had lunch in a real Vietnamese cafe, which had only one thing on the menu, pork noodle soup. I found the pork and the noodles, but I’ve got no idea and nor do I ever want to know what the other pieces of meat in the soup where. I slightly underestimated the strength of the chilli sauce which whilst turning my mouth into the surface of the sun, it did the trick curing my hangover. We also had a last Vietnamese coffee in the local cafe down the street. It took a few goes at ordering but was well worth the hassle. You are given a glass half full of condensed milk with what looks like a metal teacup on top, this parts the filter. It takes about 5 minutes to come through and once you mix it in wit milk it becomes really thick. I’ve bought a couple of filters to bring home with me.

I’ve now left Vietnam for Phnom Phen, Cambodia. Our new guide Dave told me that the rest of the tour form here to Bangkok is pretty much Temples, Torture and Genocide, so lots to look forward to.

I don’t really have a lot to say about Hoi An, it’s basically about six or seven streets of tailors, souvenir shops, bars and cafes. The Tailors are really cheap and I think everyone in the group had at least one thing made, some of the girls had about £500 worth of clothes and shoes made up. I only got a couple of pairs of lightweight trousers with legs that zip off.

Since I wasn’t running around trying to get to multiple fittings I used the time to take a rest from sightseeing (I’m not complaining by any means, but sometimes it feels like a job). I spent a good part of the day reading, sleeping and playing on the internet.

A few of us in the group had a bit of a messy night, after drinking all the alcohol we could find in the hotel we decided to find a bar. This involved snaking past the security guard who was sleeping in reception and then jumping the gate. Somehow we managed it (despite breaking the gate) but once out on the street it quickly dawned on us that there was a distinct lack of bars (or anything) open. We wondered the streets for a short while passing only the occasional rat, before coming across two street vendors alone on the pavement. This made for some good haggling as we got them fighting each other on price for cheap beer. We ended up breaking back into the hotel and sitting by the pool until the wee hours drinking our well earned beer.

I liked Hoi An, once you get used to the calls of “you by something form me” or “you look in my shop” and lean to block them out it’s got a really nice chilled out feel to the place.

Next stop Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

We took an overnight train down to Hué, we had 4 berth cabins which felt a little like a prison cell, although quite comfortable I could have done without the 7am wakeup song that was blasted over the PA system.

The main part of Hué is within a citadel which was home to all the Emperors from 1802. We visited the inner imperial part of the citadel on the first day. It is quite an impressive complex of buildings with temples and statues all over place. Unfortunately I was quite tired and didn’t really take it all in.

Our second day in Hué was a lot more interesting, we all hired mopeds (with drivers, I don’t think anybody would be brave enough to chance the roads alone) and had a tour round the city starting off in at a local market there was a museum nearby showing how the locals live as well as a covered bridge with a sweet old lady who read the palms of some of the American girls.

We had lunch at what I think was a monastery and then headed over to the tomb of one of the kings. It reminded me a lot of tomb raider as the area hadn’t had any restoration done to it at all. By then it had started raining which I think had brought us down a bit because we went on a little cruise up the perfume river to a pagoda but nobody seemed to be very interested. One thing I did notice at the pagoda was an old American car that I actually recognised from the cover of a Rage Against the Machine album cover. It was actually the car used by a monk called Thích Quảng Đức who drove it down to a busy junction in Saigon and burned himself to death in protest of the treatment of monks by the government.

It took a little while to get my confidence up on the moped and ease by vice like grip of the handle on the back, especially at the fist junction we past, but it was great fun in the end, even managed a few Paparazzi type shots from the back.

My first real day with the Intrepid tour started with a breakfast at a restaurant staffed by street kids (sort of like Jamie Oliver’s one but without all the media attention and backing). The service was really nice and the food was gorgeous. Saying that, all the food in Vietnam is gorgeous, you could give a newspaper to a Vietnamese chef and you’d be tempted to lick the plate.

An hour later we where on the road for a four hour ride to Ha Long Bay for our little mini cruise aboard a Junk boat. Ha Long bay is a stretch of water with over 2000 little limestone islands dotted everywhere. The postcards and travel agents make it sound so secluded and romantic, the truth is that of the four million tourists that visit Vietnam each year over two million of them visit Ha Long Bay and sometimes it felt like they all chose to visit on the same day we did. Aboard we had lunch and sat around on the top deck admiring the view for a few hours before we were dropped off at the entrance to some limestone caves. The cave’s where quite interesting, lots of stalactites and stalagmites that if you squint hard enough might bare a slight resemblance to an animal.

That evening a few of us had a swim and got into a little bit of trouble for jumping in from the top deck of the boat which was about 25ft high before dinner followed by many hours of cards.

It took most of the morning to get back to Hanoi where we had the afternoon to do what we wanted. I joined a few people for a quick look around the Hanoi Hilton (the prison where a lot of POW’s where kept including presidential loser John McCain). It was all very interesting, but there seemed to be a lot of propaganda especially about how the American pilots were treated. I also had to go to the post office to send a few xmas presents back home which turned out to be a little complicated since I didn’t have a Vietnamese address and had to fill in 5 different forms.

After another amazing dinner we met up again at the hotel to catch the overnight train down to Hue (pronounced h’way as in “h’way the lads”). The 4 bed sleeper compartments where a little prison cell like, but not too uncomfortable and didn’t stop me sleeping.

Crossing a road in Hanoi

• Wait until the road you are going to cross is mostly mopeds and fewer cars.
• Take a deep breath and step off the curb (avoiding the river of god knows what in the gutter)
• Keep a constant pace, don’t speed up or slow down no matter what happens, just let the traffic deal with you.
• Arrive at the other side and change your underwear.

I arrived in Hanoi from a very brief overnight stay in Singapore. I ‘d love to write all about Singapore, but I was feeling really rough and all I really saw was the inside of the 20 bed prison like dorm I was staying in. I was up at 5am (again for the second day running) to catch my flight to Hanoi.

Still feeling quite bad I missed out on the Singapore airlines plane food (which actually looked quite tasty) and arrived in Hanoi some time in mid afternoon. I was bundled into a tiny minibus which for US$4 will take you the hours drive from the airport to anywhere in the city. The drive from the airport was terrifying, I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of times a moped nearly ended up under our wheels, you also soon get used to the sound of horns. Once at the hostel I went back to bed for a few hours then decided I should make an effort and go for a walk, but roads at night made me think again and I only ended up walking around the block.

The next day I was determined to see more of the city so I followed other people until I got the hang of the road crossing thing. I got ripped of buying a photocopied lonely planet guide book (that smells of fish), I thought I was paying £1 for it when I actually paid £10. Got a much better grasp of the exchange rate now (around 25,000 dong to the pound).

All the streets in old town Hanoi have a different theme: silk street, toy street comb street, clam worm street etc. each selling exactly what it say on the tin. This didn’t make it any easier to find my way around, I managed to get lost for about 2 hours after I popped out to the supermarket for shower gel.

I spent the rest of the day at the Hoan Kiem Lake getting hassled by the street touts who try and sell you anything they can and once they get up close and out of earshot of anyone else they offer a whole different range of products (I’m sure you can guess).

I also watched the water puppet show which turned out to be really funny. Seven puppeteers stand waist deep in a very smelly green pool and operate puppets from behind a screen whilst a live band plays along, I don’t think there was much of a plot to the storey, but it was really enjoyable.

I’ve met up with the guys I’ll be spending the next few weeks with on the first of my tours. They all seem nice enough, there’s 2 young Australian couples, an Australian mother and daughter, an American mother and Daughter and a family of Americans. We all went out for quite a posh Vietnamese dinner which came to all of £4

Next stop is Hanlong Bay which looks amazing from the photo’s I’ve seen. Hopefully I’ll get a couple of good HDR’s.