I boarded the flight to Ho Chi Minh City and once again I got a whole row to myself, which meant I could spread out! I was one of only a few westerners on the flight and was just hoping that the transfer I arranged from the airport was there to meet me. Once in arrivals I found a lady with a piece of paper with my name on it and she pointed me in the direction of the car we would be using. Looking around I appeared to be the only westerner and it was quite a strange feeling. We set off to the hotel and I noticed that the roads were so congested with motor bikes, I had never seen anything like it! Not only were the roads so busy there did not seem to be any road rules and people were driving everywhere, including the wrong way down the road, we had a few near misses on the way to the hotel. I really was not sure what I had let myself in for.

We finally arrived at the hotel, I checked in and went and found my room, it was basic but clean and the bedding had childrens cartoons on it - very random! It was after dark and I had no idea where I was so I decided to have a shower and an early night. The air con did not work and it was so noisy outside that I did not sleep very well at all and ended up watching Australian Masterchef on the tv. First night by myself and it really did feel lonely.

In the morning I sorted the air con and after another lovely cold shower I managed to get some much needed sleep. Later on in the afternoon my room mate for the trip arrived - Amy from Vancouver and it was so lovely to have company again. We attended our welcome meeting with our tour leader Dara (American) and another new arrival Tina (German) and then met the rest of our group before heading out for dinner at a local market. Including us 3 new arrivals there are 9 of us on the tour - Jake, Alex, Kate and Claire from England, Linn from Norway and Ivan from Sweeden. Dinner consisted of a dish where you cook your own beef on a roof tile which is over a small fire and then you make your own spring rolls using noodles, a variety of greens and rice paper. Dinner was really good and a bargin - under 3 pounds for dinner, a beer and a water!! After dinner we headed out for a few drinks so we could all try and get to know each other.

The morning after I treated myself to a lie in as originally I planned to visit the tunnels, but the trip was booked up, which I was gutted about. After checking out of our hotel Amy and I headed to the coffee shop near the hotel for some much needed breakfast and a smoothie. We then headed to the maket for a look around before heading to the backpacker area. We stumbled upon a residential area and wondered around to have a look, the street was narrow, just big enough to fit a motorbike down and most people had their bikes parked in their small front rooms, alongside their large flat sceen tv's. We spent the rest of the day walking round most of District 1 visiting the Reunification Palace (which I was not that impressed with), the Notra Dam Cathedral (yes, Paris is not the only one) and the old post office. In the afternoon we walked round a few parks in the city where people were using outside exercise equipment, appeared to be doing Zumba and taking part in other dancing/aerobic classes (which it was far too hot to be doing), went to the city square and to the river, while continuing to dodge motorbikes. By the end of the day we figured the best way to cross the road is at a steady pace so they can dodge you and this seemed to work as we were not hit once, which I though was quite an achievement.

In the evening we all headed to the train station, our train left at 8pm heading for Nha Trang. We had a 4 birth sleeping cabin that I shared with Amy, Tina and Alex. I took the top bunk (which was cold because it was so close to the air con) and after putting my large ruckack under the bottom bunk took all my valuables with me to the top bunk as there are a lot of reports of people having things stolen. Luckily we could also lock our cabin from the inside which meant people could not just come in. Before closing our door we attracted a lot of attention as we were the only westerners in this section of the train and the locals liked to stop in the doorway and just stare at us, its a strange feeling, I imagine this is what it must feel like to be famous? The train kept stopping and starting all night and there was a lot of noise so did not get much sleep at all and we finally arrived at Nha Trang at 5.20am, where we all stepped off the train half asleep to find our driver and discover what there was to do in our next destination.