We board a boat in Saigon and head upstream along the Mekong River towards Vinh Long. We ride through a floating marketing which seems a little deserted. We apparently missed the busiest time which is first thing in the morning. We continue and stop at a souvenir shop where they also show how rice paper, coconut sweets and poprice are made. The coconut sweets are ok for a while and the poprice is pretty good. We continue up the Mekong and arrive at Chau Doc where...

After the journey from hell we arrive 10hours late at our hotel hoping they still have our room, any room will do. Fortunately they do and even more fortunately it's a better room than we booked and we get it for the same price. We catch a quick bite to eat and hit the hay. After a late-ish start we set off for a wander around Saigon. We visit a park, catch a movie (Eclipse)... i know what your thinking - what are they doing going to the cinema but it was a nice...

We arrive in Danang after a good sleep on the train and catch a taxi to Hoi An. Once checked in we go for a walk around the old town and down to the canal. The streets of the old town are narrow and the buildings are painted yellow. Most of the former dwellings are now shops and tailoring seems to be a bit of a specialty for the town. After some food we return to the hotel and devise a plan for tomorrow. Scooter hire and the Hai-Van pass!The Yamaha Nouvo scoote...

We arrived on Cat Ba island late aftenoon and had a short bus journey to Cat Ba town through Jurassic Park-esque landscape. Cat Ba town sits on the edge of a huge natural harbour filled with blue and red fishing boats. Behind the town the hill sides rise up to a rugged green profile.Cat Ba Island is very popular with Hanoians at the weekend in the high season and high season has just started. A couple of hotels we try have no rooms available and those that ...

The journey from Sapa went without incident really. The Vietnamese chap next to me spent most of his time sat in the aisle throwing up into the little blue rubbish bags. We arrived into Hanoi at 5am, a little earlier than we expected and after getting some taxi help from a local we reached our hotel. Only problem was we didn't have enough money to pay. So after quite a lot of gesturing to my bank card and pretending to put it into an ATM and saying "Bank&quo...