Leaving Saigon we headed briefly south for a one night 'home stay' on the Mekong delta. This is a polite was of saying we had to sleep in a dormitory. With other people - people who would snore and may have other unpleasant habits. Although we only took daypacks, mine was bulging with eye masks, earplugs, and my winceyette pyjamas. En route to the south we stopped off at a Cai Dai temple - it's a newish religion started in about the 1920's - it's a mixture of...

Finally arrived in Vietnam - my but Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh as the locals now call it) is a frightening place. Traffic levels like I've never seen before - imagine Hyde Park Corner populated by motorbikes, cars, people, dogs and old people carrying 2 hundredweight of goods either end of a long pole, all criss-crossing at will. Crossing the road is a new skill to be learnt, it involves launching oneself into the road and crossing slowly but surely to the other si...