After 30 minutes of being in Hoi An we had our suits ordered, being recommended a place by our hotels called Kimmy's. We had to wait for our room to be free, so at 8am we went straight there, which meant it would be ready the day we intended to leave but still left enough time for them to do a good job. Due to the quality of sleep you get on a night bus we decided to allow a little time to sleep. We planned our bike tour for the next day, then headed to the night market were we got something to eat, and strolled around looking at all the stalls and lanterns. I suppose a relatively productive day but unfortunately the day after a bus journey is always a bit of a struggle, rather like writing about it.

This paragraph should be far more interesting! After our Dalat bike tour I really fancied doing another one, but this one was self organised and therefore disorganised. Our first stop was My Son ruins, a group of Hindu temples built between the 4th century and 14th century by the kings of Champa, who ruled southern Vietnam from these dates as well before been invaded by the Le Dynasty, but that's a bit complicated. However getting there took quite some time as all we had to go by was pictures of the turns on Jacks phone, and this meant stopping after every turn. The My Son were very old, and bombed by the Yanks! The bias is taking its toll on me; I uncontrollably yell down with capitalism at random moments! The ruins were rather extensive, and with the small temple here, bomb crater there, there was plenty to see. The setting of the ruins was quite special as well, set in a minor valley, surrounded by hills and jungle; the old architects seemed to have a good eye for location. However we were slightly pushed for time, and not knowing exactly how long it took to get to the Marble mountain we sped off back the way we came, and the journey was 1 hour shorter and much more fun. (We gave Adam the more powerful bike as he and Eva would be on it, but there was something wrong with it when Eva got on the back, so I got to have a good blast down the roads on it). It didn't take too long to get to the Mountain, and meant we had enough time to enjoy them. They are group of five mountains made of marble and limestone, with the biggest one having many Buddhist temples and extensive caves (Geology Jack was having a field day)! We climb to the top of it, which again was tough in espadrilles due to the slippery marble, but was worth it as we had interesting views of the surrounding mountains and towns, on one side, and the beach and sea on the other. Whilst at the top we noticed the time was 3:30, and that we had to get our suits fitted at 4, however this just gave me the chance to have another blast back to Hoi An. It turned out my efforts were pointless once I got to Hoi An though, as I realised I had no idea how to get to Kimmy's around the extensive one way systems! So I turned up 15 minutes late with Jack, Adam and Eva already getting themselves fitted; an Aesop's Fable springs to mind. Seeing our suits only made us more excited to see them finished, but luckily this would only take another day. We got up at 9am to collect our suits, but I'll give nothing away about there look, apart from the fact they are amazing. We took a brief trip around the old town, looking at the souvenir shops and galleries, before hopping on the bus to Hue (said Hway); the old Capital of Vietnam.

In Hue there is the citadel, where the old rulers of Vietnam lived, and ruled their peoples from. So the first full day there we did a tour around the citadel and then three tombs of the old rulers. One tomb used to be the house of the king, and was turned into his tomb once he died. The area was large, with canals running around it into a lake, with a small island in the middle of it. He was said to go hunting on this island, however it was no bigger than the island in Ashley Park, which lead us to the idea that they captured the game, then placed it on the island for the king to have easy pickings with. The grounds of this tomb were very natural, and the tomb was at the top of the largest hill, surrounded by tombs of all the wives he killed; how romantic. The next day we did a tour of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Hue is bang in the middle of Vietnam, and when Vietnam was split between North and South after the first Indochina War, a demilitarized zone was set up 5 miles either side of the Ben Hai river which is just north a Hue. Our first stop on the way was The Rockpile, which I was pleased to find out, was not a rock pile. It is a rock outcrop that rises 240m above the surrounding terrain, and was used by the Americans during the war as a lookout post. However it is fairly inaccessible so the only way to get to the top was by helicopter. We then moved onto the start of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Unfortunately the trail has now been turned into a highway, so that's all we saw. We still learnt a fair amount about it though. It was a supply line to the Viet Cong, and was a very thin path so most of the supplies were taken on foot. Most of the trail went through Laos, and then branched off into the necessary parts of Vietnam to provide for the Viet Cong. Our final stop was the Vinh Moc tunnels, which had less of a militaristic aim than the Cu Chi tunnels and more a protective aim. You were able to stand up in these tunnels unlike the Cu Chi, but it did mean me and Adam were craning our neck, and they housed a maternity ward, a school and very small living areas for each family.

At the end of a trip we got dropped off in Dong Ha, which has been rebuilding itself since the war ended, in which it got obliterated, and you could really tell. The town was very quiet, with not much in it at all, except many bomb craters just off the roads, or in the rice fields bridged by planks of wood. They overbooked for the bus we were getting on, but this just meant they kicked a load of Vietnamese people off their beds and gave them to us, leaving them to sleep in the aisle. We got to Hanoi when they said, which was rather strange, and booked into a hotel just for one night before heading off to Ha Long Bay.

Now in Hanoi, but not for long, as we're getting a bus to the airport within 30 minutes of me publishing this, to get our flight home. I am very much looking forward to going home and seeing everyone, so just a long flight to get through now. See you soon. xxx