Day 85 Wednesday 2nd December 2009 Stacey says Arriving at 6am to HCMC , there wasn't any hotels open yet, so we followed suit with the locals and sat on a street café for a cup of tea! Groups of taxi drivers sat together and had their mornings gossip. It was good to sit and observe the city coming alive, with more and more motorbikes filling the street as it got towards 7am. It was enjoyable watching the locals being hassled by the morning lottery ticket and ...

Day 81 Saturday 28th November 2009 Stacey says Arriving at 6am this morning, we got a taxi to the central area and picked up a guesthouse, with a palace of a room, 2 double beds, balcony, high ceiling and big bay windows for just 1.80p each per night!! Unbelievable! So we go a few hours sleep waking up around midday. Headed for some lunch and then made our way to the beach, it is much warmer here than further north. Ahhhh…. The beach was fairly nice, so we di...

Day 78 Wednesday 25th November 2009 Stacey says We had a 4 hour coach transfer from Hue to Hoi An today, arriving mid afternoon. By evening, we had both been to the tailors and treated ourselves to some new outfits, ready to be collected tomorrow afternoon! Steve buying 2 cashmere and silk suits (with extra trousers), shirts, ties and 2 cufflinks, for 200 pounds. And I bought a suit, shirt, dress and winter coat for 130 pounds. Steve doing very well with his ne...

Day 76 Monday 23rd November 2009 Johno says We journeyed through Hue and arrived later than expected at 9am, it was strange being on a bus and seeing people go about their daily business in the horizontal position!! Once we settled into our hotel (which we found 20 minutes prior to arrival recommended in our newly purchased lonely planet Vietnam book) we set off to see what was on offer in town. Most of the sites are within a 2m thick 10km long walls of its Cit...

Day 72 Thursday 19th November 2009 Johno says Our transfer to the harbour at Halong Bay went reasonably quickly. Halong Bay basically consists of 2,000 Islands and was designated a world heritage site in 1994. Once we arrived we were taken to our Junk (luxury Chinese style boat) where we would sleep tonight amongst the Islands out at sea. The boat was really comfortable with our cabin having a hot shower and large bed, better than some of the hotels that we hav...