Hi everyone,

Again, thanks for all the messages. V funny, always greatly received!

Emma - Happy Birthday, sweetheart. Hope you have a really good day. How old are you now? 16?

So, after the hideousness that was Da Nang, we rose early the next morning to get the hell out of there. We headed for Hoi An, which we had been told was pretty flooded (we'd met quite a few people who had gone there and left the same day) but we decided to give it a go anyway - a flooded Hoi An could be no worse than where we were.

The journey was 40 minutes by taxi and the first 20 minutes was spent telling the driver, "no thanks, we don't want to pay $5 extra to go to see marble mountain", "no, we just want to go straight to Hoi An", "no, we just want to get dropped off at the hotel we've just told you about, not the one in the brochure you keep thrusting in the back of the cab", and then to the man in the taxi office who the driver has just called, passing the phone to me, "no, we still don't want to pay extra to see the mountain on the way". Anyway, we got to Hoi An but unfortunately, the hostel we were headed for was on the waterfront and was flooded, so we then had people on motorbikes (who the taxi driver had asked for directions) following us and trying to persuade us through the window to go to their hotel instead of the other one we told the driver to go to as there's was much better and cheaper. Blimey, these people are exhausting! Thankfully when we got to hotel choice no. 2 they had rooms and they weren't flooded and it was actually the nicest place we'd stayed in so far. It was the little oasis of calm there we were definitely in need of after the last 24 hours.

So, we ventured into tiny Hoi An (which is an UNESCO world heritage site) and found to our relief that it is a really lovely colonial place. People weren't lying when they said it was flooded, but luckily the rain has lessened over the past couple of days and only the waterfront and one and a half streets back were flooded. This was shame, but didn't take away from the charm of the place. In fact, it may have even added to it as when you walked down the little streets lined with tailor's shops (Hoi An is famous for having so many tailors who can knock you up a suit in a matter of hours for as little s $50) you came across a flooded street which had people floating in little wooden canoe-like boats, still selling groceries, wearing the wooden 'conical' hats that Vietnamese people always wear and inadvertently creating a good photo opportunity for Stuart and his SLR (he went for the black and white 'arty' shots in this instance)!

We were actually only going to stay for one night and then move on to Saigon, but we decided to stay for two seeing as though it was so lovely and relaxing and we thought we owed it to ourselves and the tailors to get some cheap garments made while were there. When we had made this decision we thought we would just go with the first tailor we came across who tried to entice us into his/her shop.... it didn't take long; approximately 3.57 seconds. And so there I was, marched into a makeshift changing room with two women who had my clothes off and a sample dress on me (which I wasn't actually in the marker for) before I had chance to protest (or feel any modesty!). Meanwhile, Stuart is swathed in different fabrics of varying shades of black and brown - looking as camp as I'm sure you can all visualise - and before you know it, he has ordered two suits and I have ordered a dress (reluctantly) and two suits which we were promised would be ready before 2 the next day. And all of these items came to the grand total of $250... fabulour!

So all in all a lovely couple of days were spent in Hoi An. We headed back to Da Nang after this (boo!) to catch the overnight Reunification Express train to Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City as it's officially (but not often) called now). It is a whopping 17 hour journey and allegedly one of the greatest train journeys in the world. We will reserve judgement until we arrive in Saigon and can assess how numb our bums are.....

We will endeavour to get the blog up to date over the next week or so (we are in Australia now - arrived in Melbourne this morning) but seeing as though most of you will probably be finishing work very soon and banishing the laptops to the bottom drawer in favour of turkey and booze, we will say now that we hope you all have a really great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Lots of love... us xxx