On the road again - final night in Vietnam, dinner in Malaysia and tomorrows breakfast in Australia. 3 different time zones, an overnight flight and 2 confused people.
Typical Geordies in the airport spending their last dong. We managed to balance our cash to the last 60p. David is most upset because that was a round in Nha Trang but useless in HCMC airport as everything costs much more than that and it's all in US $. Much to David's horror spent the morning in the shopping centre opposite the hotel. Wierd having spent most of our time in very simple places to be surrounded by high end brands. Of course all the posh shops were empty and everyone including us was in the coffee shop. The blog phot is from the breakfast terrace this morning, yesterday the breakfast was poor today lovely you just never know with Vietnam "but you don't know man, you weren't there"

Now sat in a restaurant in KL waiting for the flight to Melbourne so we thought we would give you a synopsis of Vietnam. We loved it and are sad to leave. If you are interested in visiting, hurry up as it's clearly changing rapidly. Our favourite places were Hanoi and Hoi An. It could be done in 2 weeks if you were selective on where you visited. We spent £700 in spending money in 3 weeks including several private car transfers. We got some lovely hotels on a £50/night budget with most being considerably less. The Vietnamese people usually spoke some English and hotel receptionists were typically fluent and very helpful. We didn't take to Saigon but we didn't go further south than there. Considering it was rainy season, it wasn't a problem and the majority of days were dry. The only problems we had were a couple of hotel breakfasts were below par. Street hawkers could be a pest but we quickly learnt how to get them to move on. The French effect made it distinct to other countries in the region. The older buildings were charming and the patisserie everywhere.