Hello, amazingly we've made it across China to Beijing which was no easy feat. But I'll tell you more about that later because I don't want to forget about Vietnam.

I found Vietnam a very pretty country, but with a prettiness that is distinctively its own. It very much suits the colour grey, which is strange because usually I think of grey as cold and depressing (think London) but in Vietnam it is full of blue and purple hues that set off the colours of the street and environment. This was especially true of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) where we began in Vietnam. For city of 8 million people it was amazingly clean and the area where we were was very pretty with lots of lights from the restaurants on the streets and little alley ways where alot of the city life actually takes place hidden away. We spent Christmas there, Sarah and I ate alot but unfortunately Sylvia wasn't feeling well. To recover from both we watched Christmas movies on HBO for most of the day. The next day we went to the War Remnants Museum, the grim propaganda tone convinced me of what I already knew and America should've - don't mess with the Vietnamese. It will just create alot of tragedy for everyone involved and you will lose. This was drummed home the next day when we went to a water park (if you don't like being stared at do not expose most of your white skin in an enclosed space filled with hundreds of Vietnamese families). Sylvia decided to try out the 'Wild River' ride which in itself failed to live up to its name, consisting of only a gentle current that carried you leisurely around the park on a floating ring. The people were a different story. Dozens of Vietnamese kids and teenagers attacked each other and us with splashing. Ducking under the water to escape I arose to an armed little boy looking for all the world like a child soldier in a third world war zone agressively shooting at me with his watergun. As I said, you don't want to mess with the Vietnamese but if you want to befriend them you'll be doing well. In the same park we were running (probably away from the Wild Rive ride) when we were stopped by a man yelling 'hello'.He was well set up for the day, surrounded by his whole extended family with a table of snacks and a huge crate of beer. Before we could say anything we were sat down fed and given beer and a plan was made to find me a Vietnamese boyfriend.
At the same time I felt someone stroking my bare back. I turned round and found it was in fact a boy, but given that he was about five years old, I'm not sure it would have worked out. That and the fact that much later in our stay in Vietnam it was revealed to me that I could never get married. Apparently spilling rice pancake mixture is not conducive to becoming a Vietnamese housewife.

We spent four days in Ho Chi Minh. My highlight was a bizarre park set around a lake. It had alot of rides and very high ferris wheels with beautiful views but the weirdest thing was the ice sculpture room where we put on huge fluro coats and walked around a freezing hall filled with the world sights made out of ice. It was very cool (I promise I didn't mean to make that cheesy pun).

Next we took an overnight train to Da Nang where we got a very crowded ('for 18, for 18 people' 'there's only 12 seats' 'no, no, for 18 '') but luckily short minibus to Hoi An. This was one of my favourite places in Vietnam. It couldn't really not be - the things it's famous for are food and clothes.It is a shopaholic's dream or nightmare depending on which way you look at it. The tailors that line the streets will make any clothing (or shoes, or bags, or anything you can dream of really) that you can point to a picture of in your size within less than 24 hours. Me and Sylvia got a few things made including some beautiful dresses, but both of us plan to come back here with an empty suitcase and have a tailoring spree.

We were also luckly enough to be there at a festival in which all the electricity by the river was turned off so that all the shops and restaurants were candlelit and hundreds of candles in floating paper boats were put onto the river.

After beautiful little Hoi An, Hue was quite a shock . It reminded us of the Vietnamese version of Hamilton and we felt a bit down about spending New Year's Eve there. Luckily it managed to redeem itself. We ate delicious tiramisu at one bar then went to another one for the rest of the year (and the beginning of the next one). We also had the cheapest drinking New Year's Eve in history, starting off with two for one cocktails (which only cost us $3NZ inthe first place) and then being bought drinks for the rest of the evening by a man from Californian who worked in the entertainment industry (who else?). The bar was alot of fun but it turns out that in Vietnam they do not count down. Instead the only way to tell it is midnight is the cheesy 'happy new year' song that starts blaring and the fact that people start lighting sparklers on the dance floor and throwing them around (it is fun to imagine the heart attack OSH would have in these countries).

We left around 2am and stepped out onto the empty streets. A slightly crazy young man who kept jumping around like a monkey offered to let us use his cyclo (like a rickshaw) for free. Thus one of my first experiences of this year was sitting in a cyclo in an empty Hamilton like city in South East Asia with Sylvia driving me and a Vietnamese man on my knee. Not a bad way to see in a new decade.

The three walls of windows in our lovely and cheap guesthouse room created a lovely open air effect during the day, but were not quite as great when you woke at 5am after going sleep at 3am. We dragged ourselves around the huge old Citadel in the hot hot sun, which was very big but unremarkable except for the awesome little thai boy I befriended who kept trying in vain to make me understand Thai. I did feel the most flattered I've ever felt when a woman next to me translated what he was saying as 'I like you, I like you' though. After three hours wandering in the hot sun we ate lunch in a delicious little restaurant run by a deaf man. It was a bit like playing a game of charades in which the prize was your lunch but it was surprisingly easy to communicate with him.

That night we spent 14 hours on a 'sleeper' bus (can it really be called that when it is impossible to actually get any sleep?) to Hanoi before getting a five hour bus - which should have taken three hours but decided to slow down every few minutes so the conducter could fish for more passengers to cram in from the open door of the moving bus - to Halong city. This city is feels utterly souless, is grey, drizzly and cold but we were stuck here for the night because we had missed the boats to into the beautiful Halong bay.

After catching up on some much needed sleep we were able to take a boat in the next day. Halong Bay is one of the most beautiful places in the world. We were there in the low season but despite the cold, it really suits this time with the mist shrouding the karsts (steep cliff islands) rising out of the turquoise water. Although it was all stunning(except for when we stopped at a floating fishing market and watched a giant fish being whacked to death), the most beautiful experience happened the next day when me and Sylvia went out on a boat deepet into the bay and went kayaking off it for an hour. It was utterly silent, just the two of us paddling through the descending mist. The water was completely still except for the little flying fish that kept jumping in swarms like fountains.

After otherwordly Halong it was strange to get back to the busyness of Hanoi. Across the road from our hotel I spotted an alleyway restaurant named Puku which sold - wait for it - marmite on toast (what are the odds?). I don't know that I've ever been so excited. I ate there everyday for breakfast (and sometimes dinner as well). We generally ate very well in Hanoi. As well as Puku we found an Australian cafe with amazing salads and hot chocolates. We missed out on the icecream buffet at the unfortunately names icecream store, Fanny, but consoled ourselves with a 17 scoop icecream fondue. Our timing for the icecream buffet may have been off but was more than made up for by the fact that Joma, our favourite bakery cafe chain in Laos, had just opend in Hanoi and it was 50% off all food and drinks. We had a feast.

Eating wasn't out sole activity in Hanoi (although it was our dominant one). We also went to see Ho Chi Minh's body. My hate of petty officials who like to lord over you with the little power they have was tested to its limits, but the whole experience was hilarious. No you may not walk across the obvious entrance to the complex, you must walk down a number of side streets to a smaller more secure entrance. No you may not walk at your own pace across the courtyard to the building, you must walking an orderly straight line. If there is a marked pathway or mat don't you dare put a foot off it. Keep your hands out of your pockets, at your side and don't you even think about laughing. Suddenly all I wanted to do was laugh. I determinedly did not meet Sylvia's eyes, I could tell it would have resulted in hysterics, in which case we would possibly be arrested (or shot). I later found out that as we walked round Ho Chi Minh's peaceful wax-like (some say, just wax) corpse she was thinking about a comedian who liked to set of the Nokia ringtone and bring out a giant cellphone at inappropriate moments. We are going to see Mao tomorrow. I don't know how we're going to cope.I'll let you know.