Hey hey!

Last vietnamese instalment as promised! After Hue i headed down south to Hoi An, which is a charming little tailors town where you can get anything you want made or copied! I got a 4-piece suit designed in a wool-cashmere mix which is seriously cute if i do say so myself! i just hope it reaches england before i start work in january!

Unfortunately it was typhoon/flood season in central vietnam when i was there - so continuous rain for 3 days, which is pretty depressing & makes you spend lots of afternoons in bars/restaurants! At one point the first row of houses next to the coast were completely flooded...about 1 metre underwater!

So escaping the rain i headed off to nah trang, which is definitely overrated - in comparison to the beaches in malaysia and thailand, it was not as pretty & i worry about vietnam's nightlife if nah trang is meant to be the best in the country.

Mui ne on the other hand was gorgeous - hot every day, tonnes of hot kitesurfers ;) & awesome people - i drank far too much there and had some serious hangovers, which i have learnt are truly horrendous when you have a morning 5 hour bus to saigon!!

Saigon, aka HCMC, not so hectic as hanoi surprisingly so it was no problem. still an immense mission to cross the road & i saw yet another accident - some guy drove into a lampost, which was actually quite amusing because he was ok. went to the reunification palace and the war remnants museum, which i appreciate must be biased, but my god there were some f***ed up americans in that war! the vietnamese are not afraid to put anything on display - pictures of dead babies & landmine victims, mock-ups of the tiger cages & 2 malformed foetuses preserved in vinger as an example of what agent orange does as a weapon of war. depressing stuff...

Then it was off to the mekong delta to cross into cambodia by boat, which was pretty cool - had an annoying guide again, but this appears to be standard in vietnam! went through waterways full of floating villages & did my first water border crossing - had to pay a couple more dollars to smooth things over - how i love corruption!

Cambodia coming soon...love Iona xxx