Dan was supposed to write this one but he's still asleep, also thís keyboard is weird and if you type two letters together they put the Vietnamese letters up so ill try and be careful.

We got a tuktuk to the boat dock with a dutch couple who were just about to finish their trip and gave us some useful info about Vietnam. The boat was pretty empty and we sat outside to get some breeze as it was a slow boat and it had netting to shade us or so we thought as afterwards we were all burnt! We crossed the border which was actually on land and we had to get of the boát onto rickety òld peices òf plank in ỏrder to reach the checkpoint, then got back on the boat to the Vietnamese border which was nicer with steel steps from the water- we could already tell Vietnam was going to be a much wealthier country than Cambodia. We then swapped boats with people who were doing the same as us but backwards and their bôat was full- it seems to be a much more popular way round in general. The other boat was much faster and we sat inside as I was pảrticulaly burnt on one of my arms. We arrived in Chau Doc onto our floating hotel! It had aircon and a tv with over 100 channels including an english one that just played backtoback movies. Our balcony lôoked right onto the mekong delta. We went to go sêe some òf chau doc and to find an atm as we had no Vietnamese Dong and our dollars were running low; we found it to just be a normal town with nothing to see but we did mânge to find an atm-which had its own air con. We headed back to enjoy our hotel room as it was the nicest place we've stayed so far. We ate dinner at the hotel above our room- we had an ok meal - I had shrimp nôodles and dan had a fried rice- mine was spicy and i think it has made me a bit ill.

The next day we got breakfast included and then headed off for a tour of the Mekong- we saw a floating fish farm in someones house and then went to look round a Cham village. Cham people are muslims but they only pray on fridays and they only celebrate râmdan for 3 days. The village was nice but quite poor êspecially for the rest òf Vietnam. We then got on a bus to go to Ho Chi Minh/Saigon. We stopped at a place called sam mountains (i think) where we climbed up it to a massive pagoda at the top that lôoked like it should be in China. The man said that it was built because a woman used to live hêre with a snake? I didnt really understand it to be honest. In the cave where she úsed to live they put two massive plastic snakes with light up red eyes down the sides of the caves. It was weird. Apart from that it was beautiful though and had great views òf vietnam.

We then had a massive journey stopping at vinh long( i think) to pick mỏre people up that had done a different longer tour. When we stopped there there was a man with a deformed face begging- his face was 2/3 times larger then a normal face and I found it really upsetting and sad- we later found out he mustve been effected by chemical orange after the vietnam war as vietnam has many cases of dẻformity because òf the chemicals the americans dumped on their lands- the Americans have paid ,millions in compensation to old soldiers because of deformities of their children from being exposed to the chemical but have given none to Vietnam even though they admit it is their fault. The cancer rate is also many more times higher here than everywhere else because of this chemical. We eventually arrived in bustling Saigon where we mânged to walk to our hostel as it was luckily just around the corner from where they dropped us off.