Apologies for the slight lack in recent blog entries, i could have sworn i wrote more recently. Hoi An is no longer so fresh in my memory, but I'll give it a whirl....

I was still travelling up with Rebecca at this point, so we arrived early morning in Hoi An and didn't manage to find somewhere to stay for a couple of hours as nowhere was accepting people until around 11am. We ended up wandering the streets until then. Once we'd managed to check into a very basic and rickety little attic room (better than our room in dalat however as we had a tv!!) we went out to explore properly.

Hoi An is a really beautiful little riverside town that is most famous for its tailors. This means that alot of tourists go there simply to get custom made clothes for crazy cheap and then sit in nice riverside cafes between the many fittings scheduled each day. So wanting to embrace the culture, this is exactly what we did!

Our days were filled with different fittings each and coming up with ideas of things we wanted made.

When people ask if travelling has changed me, my exeperience in Hoi An confirms that I definately have; I was actually able to control myself and buy only 2 items of clothing!!! It was tough.

However, what is really fun is that I could draw anything, find a fabric I liked and they would have made it within 24 hours! Madness.

We also hired bicycles again there (now ready for anyone that tried to rob us), and went to the beach. About 200m down from the packed tourist one we had our own private beach!

Whilst in Hoi An I received an e-mail from my volunteer organisation saying that they expected me there a day earlier than I had planned to arrive......this unfortunately meant that I had to cut Hue out of my travel plan for the time being and make my way straight to Hanoi. On the plus side I had an extra half day in Hoi An, but it did result in a 20 hour bus ride.

Luckily it was a sleeper bus, but I had the last ticket for this particular bus which meant I had the very back middle top bed. I know most of you won't have been on a sleeper bus, so I'll explain what that bed entails; I was barricaded in on all sides by vietnamese people! The back compromises 5 beds (pretty narrow, like one big bed for 5 people), and then my feet slot beneath the bottom of the bed infront. For this particular bus, there were no other foreigners, and the guy sleeping nest to me had a horrible habit of sticking his knees into my back. Also, when I needed to go to the toilet I couldn't get out until either of the people next to me woke up to move out of the way- it was a painful wait.

In all 20 hours of a 'real vietnamese experience', ie, boredom.