After the rain of the south we headed north in search of some more sunshine. The fact that our next shop, Hoi An, was the tailoring capital of Vietnam, had absolutely no influence on Fern's insistance that we should deffinately stop here for a few days. Hoi An is an interesting mix of traditional Vietnamese culture and foriegn influence, particularly Fernch, Japanese and Chinese. The result is a beautiful little port town with cobbled streets, famed for the tastiness of its food and the temptations of its many tailors. Literally every other shop is a tailor, no exagerations.

Upon reading the news and seeing that it was snowing heavily in Japan, we decided that this might be the place to pick up a winter jacket, tailor-made of course. Overwhelmed by choice, we gormlessly wandered the streets, attempting to make any decision whatsoever on what we wanted. By lunch time Fern was being measured up and by evening Alex had finally found a coat he liked and soon followed suit.

We got rained on a lot that night. We had rain coats on so we thought we would be fine, but Fern's rucksack was less waterproof than we assumed and our lonely planet was a little worse for wear. Still usable though...just. It was a nightmare because none of our wet clothes would dry properly - the air was just so humid. Tumble driers are not a possibility either. We spent the next few days / week feeling and smelling distinctly damp.

Escaping a downpour on one occasion we found ourselves in a bar searving "fresh beer". Probably the world's cheapest beer, this stuff comes in at about 12p a glass. It's not great but when you can drink the equivalent of 5 pints for 1 pound who's complaining? Alex deffinately wasn't. It's all home brew stuff served from nasty looking bottles but we haven't gone blind so it can't have been that bad. Looking out onto the river from our bar stools, it suddenly became apparent how high the water level was. At only a couple on centemeters below the bank it really didn't
look like the river had far to go before it burst! And it was still raining! Fern became increasingly convinced that the town would flood (a fear not completely unfounded, as we were to find out the next day, the flood waters of 2009 reached 2m!) and insisted that we kept our bags on the tables just in case.

We ate at food stalls most of the time, they're much cheaper and better than most resturants. Basically there was a whole row of stools each of which had a few picnic benches in front. Each place was named after its proprieter and it didn't take us long to discover 'Mr Hung'. He was awesome. Best food in Hoi An and really friendly. We went back so many times he started giving us free rice. Legend. Photos of him to follow. Eating one time we bumped into a couple of Australian girls we had met on the train. Getting chatting about tailors, we found out that they had bought 5 coats. 5 coats?! What kind of Australians need 5 winter coats?! However, inspired by their extravagance we convinced ourselves to have suits made. After all (we claimed) we would need to buy them at some point anyway. Lets face it (we reasoned) we won't get good jobs without good suits. If anything, buying these suits will make us money. Brilliant! So within 2 hours we'd been measured up and bought our very first suits.

After spending all our money in Hoi An we moved on to Hue, Vietnam's ancient capital. It pissed it down constantly for the two days that we were there, and we trudged around the sights feeling cold and miserable. The Imperial Palace was impressive, but hard to appreciate in the cold and wet. Highlights included the Imperial Tennis Court ( c. 1980) which looks like something you'd see in a school playground. Even the elephant we found looked distinctly unimpressed and had resorted to headbutting a nearby tree in dispare. Determined to salvage Hue, the next day we set out for adventure, or whatever came our way. Fern overcame her intrinsic fear of motorbikes and agreed to head out on the highway, hitching a lift with the 'Easy Riders' who set their motors running to a pagoda, just outside the town. OK, enough of the terrible puns. Fern survived and even managed to force a smile for a photo. Alex decided he wanted a motorbike.

One more night train later and we found ourselves in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital. Arriving stupidly early and still half asleep, we were ripped off by a taxi with a dodgy meter. b******. Hanoi, like HCMC, was rammed with scooters, but Alex somehow convinced Fern to hop back onto a bike for a tour of some of the city's sights, including possibly the oldest university in the world (?) and Uncle Ho's (Chi Minh) old house. Our hotel was situated conviently next to the bia hoi (Hanoi fresh beer) region of the city, so more of this was consumed. The next morning we visited Uncle Ho himself. It was quite strange, he looks slightly plastic. You only get about 30 seconds before guards with large guns encourage you to leave, so it's hard to get a good look. Apparently his ear has fallen off before. Fern decided she wanted to be embalmed when she died. Not satisfied with one enbalmed body, we headed to a temple on a lake that contains a giant embalmed tourtoise. This one you could look at for longer and we became even more convinced it was fake. It seemed to have layres which were slowly peeling off, to reveal, what looked suspiciously like a metal plate.

The next day held instore one of the highlights of our trip - a boat trip around Halong Bay. If you haven't heard of it, google it. It's beautiful. We were on a boat with about 15 other people (12 of who were from Melborne, the other 3 from Adelaide). Amazingly some of them were quite cool. Cooler than James anyway. Halong Bay was absolutely breathtaking, and being able to kayack around it for a few hours was one of the best things either of us have ever done (blisters or no blisters). We paddled around a few islands, past a fishing village, through a cave and were lucky enough to stumble across a family of monkeys. We were even blessed with good weather, a rarity at this time of year. Sleeping on the boat in the bay, we woke up to the sight of islands all around us. All in all a fantastic way to end our trip in South Eat Asia.

Love to all,

Fern and Alex