So, I have been allowed another go at this.

Picking up where we left off, we managed to finish the 4-day Easy Rider tour ok. Was good fun but I think we were both glad to reach Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon for those of us non-Commies). The last couple of days of the Easy Rider tour were spent doing much of the same "behind the scenes" Vietnam stuff. Without boring you in too much detail, I now know how to illicitly produce rice wine, make tofu, produce fresh and dried noodles, blow up bridges etc etc. Finished the tour off by popping in to see Cu Chi Tunnels, which were the VC (Commie North) Headquarters in the south. Was fun for a fully fledged tunnel rat like me - I think Gemma came along just to humour me! Didn't bother firing the AK/M16/60's as i) i'd been lucky enough to play with these things before and ii) they're now bolted down since somebody went and committed suicide last year using them......

Checked in to swanky hotel in HCMC. Had been booked by Jan, a friend of my parents who now lives in HCMC and owns 3 Brazilian restaurants in Vietnam. Was ideally located and had an 11th floor restaurant/bar with a great view of the city.Stayed there for 3 nights, seeing the sights and generally enjoying being back with the creature comforts! Had great dinners each night too - Brazilian (at Jan's) where we had the best beef and lamb I have ever had (sorry Mum/s!); Vietnamese, where we had a really cool seafish hotpot and then a Western Restaurant where it was more London prices but had cocktails and great food! Was a nice change after 4 days of rice and noodles on the Easy Rider trip.

In Saigon we managed to see the Reunification Palace (former South HQ palace) and the scene of the surrender in 1975, the War Remnants Museum (basically an assault on the US), Notre Dame Cathedral etc. Also enjoyed the markets and generally wandering around the shops.

We then caught a flight to Phu Quoc Island (Vietnamese island off coast of Cambodia) for 4 days of R&R before we head into our final weeks in SE Asia (Cambodia then back to Thailand and on to Oz). After a "false start" for the first night, we're now pretty ensconsed in a decent, small little collection of thatched bungalows on the beach.

Will have a go at posting a few more photos in the next few days - after all, we have little else to do but lie in the sun, admiring the beautiful view and drink cocktails.....

Oh yes, for those of you wondering why we haven't responded to you on Facebook - it's a bit like China here, access to FB is controlled by Government, so is sporadic at best!

Righty ho, bye for now.

Andy (& Gem) xxx

PS: It has been bothering me that the "Gemma's Breakfast Score", which my darling wife judges the quality of all hotels on, is in fact flawed. It doesn't take into account the cost of the establishment we are staying at - for instance, recently HCMC and Phu Quoc were abot $90US a night, so you would expect a decent brekkie whereas our hotel in Hue was $45US and had a cracking breakfast. SO, from now onwards the results will be normalised to give a truer picture.... I will rename this the GBI (Gemma Breakfast Index) on future posts..... (I am kidding of course).