Met up this morning with Klara, a girl from Brighton, we met las night and planned to do the tours with today.

We'd planned to share a car and a driver, but that worked out to be more than twice as expensive as a motorbike and driver each, so that's what we ended up with.

A bit scary at first, putting yourlives in the hands of complete strangers. It turned out to be a really good decision though because we got to go down little country roads and paths away from the busy main roads where we would have been stuck with the car. The drivers didn't supply much conversation though, just occasionally pointing to things that were pretty obvious like 'rice field' 'mountain' and 'tree' you get the idea...

Our first step was the Thai VI temple, which unfortunatley for us was on top of a massive hill, again. We walked it up the steep steps and we had the whole thing to ourselves! The view at the top was really impressive, if a little misty.

The 3 of us went to the Tam Coc Caves next. We squeezed into a boat that was paddled by a Vietnamese father and daughter and they rowed us up through the caves. The caves were kind of passages that go through the limestone mountains that spring up everywhere round here. At the end of the river, we were cornered by several 'shop on a boat's practically forcing us to buy 2 chupa chups, 1 pack of fake oreos and a can of pop for the boatman and daughter (we had read that they then later sell the drink back and just wanted to test out the rumour - we didn't see them sell it back but they definatley didn't open them either). Most of the journey back down the river was made a bit uncomfortable whilst Dave had to constantly politley refuse to buy tapestrys, doylies and bags that the man had kept hidden in a box on his boat, there was no escape from him as he went through everyone of his souveneers, eventually he got the point though and in a huff went to the back of the boat leaving Dave in peace. So all in all the trip out was pleasent.

After some lunch we went to the Hoa IV temple, which was the capital of Vietnam over 1000 years ago - it's now basically just some ruins and a little temple. We also made our way to the tomb of Dinh Tien Hong which was conveniantly located at the top of a load of some more sodding steps. There we met Pho, a 12 year old lad, who was friendly and could speak a little english. He bounced around the jagged rocks at the top of the hill with ease whilst we scrambled with difficulty to his reccomended view point. Soon we learned though that his friendliness came at a cost and his expectant hand came out with some big puppy dog eyes.

Out last stop was Kein Ga, a floating village. We got an hours boat ride through the river life which was very nice but by this point we were freezing! There's a bridge over the river in the village and when the boats turn up all the kids race out to open the bridge.

Got back to our hotel, cold and achy. We are catching the overnight bus to Hue tonight.