My final eight-hour long open tour bus journey in Vietnam was to take me to the capital: Saigon. Seeing as it was the last one I think they'd stopped caring about their passengers by that point... it was late, leaky, rattley, squeaky, and smelly, and the driver kept stopping to drop in on mates along the way. I was on the bus with Nihar, the Canadian guy and avid 'Lonely Planet' follower I'd been on most bus journeys since Hanoi with, and all of four others, so t...

Yet another early morning wake-up call. I got on the bus first with four other people, then an old Vietnamese dude got on and sat right next to me. I politely moved. Bad bus luck that day, another local couple got on and fully reclined their seat so my knees were practically under my chin, and then they sat upright. Luckily they moved after a while to avoid the sun. Arrived in the mountainous Central Highlands province of Da Lat a few hours behind schedule which...

I held my breath getting on the bus and let out a sigh of relief when I realised it looked vastly superior to the previous one, bar the smelly blanket which, needless to say, I didn't use. As far as sleeping on buses goes it was a relatively ok, although will not go so far as to say a 'pleasant' journey. Arrived literally at the crack of dawn, a pain as most gueshouses don't check in until at least 10am. Luckily I wandered around and found possibly the nicest mi...

Hoi An is girl heaven. Every other shop is a tailors, no scrap that, EVERY shop is a tailors. Dresses, skirts, coats, shirts, suits, shoes... everywhere you look!! After checking into a room on the fourth blimmin' floor of a cheapy hotel I spent a few hours simply wandering around in awe, trying to take in everything, and decide what kind of clothes I wanted. It's very hard for a shopaholic like moi not to go overboard in such a shoppers' paradise. Then I saw a b...

I wasn't sure what to expect of an overnight bus, I'd heard good things from the boys on the boat, but I think they either went with a vastly superior company or were trying to make me feel better about the impending 15 hour journey. What we got on was definately not what I had in mind; imagine a normal sized bus, then picture it with bunk beds in it, one set next to each window and another in the aisle. Close. I'm convinced the dude in the upper bunk next to me ...