I am having a quiet day in Saigon before heading off again tomorrow to Mekong Delta and then onto Phnom Penh in Cambodia, where I'm doing my teaching thing. I feel kind of unprepared and not quite sure what's going to happen, but I feel like that anyway so hopefully it'll work out fine. And I say a quiet day, but even though I'm living between my hotel and a cafe across the road (where I went on a finally successful avocado hunt, everywhere has been sold out sinc...

Right, what have I been doing? I'll start from the latest and work backwards... Yesterday I went on a trip to Cao Dai Temple in... somewhere nearby, and the Cu Chi tunnels. There are probably 50 different tour outfits in the surrounding network of streets around my hotel and they all do the same trip for the same price, it's difficult to know which to choose! I stuck lucky with mine though as the guide was actually a veteran from the war so he was a really inter...

Chuc Mung Nam Moi! That is happy new year to you and fast becoming my most used Vietnamese phrase, as of last night it is officially 2009 and the yea of the cow. I'm liking the trains as a mode of transport; every train journey I've taken has been eventful in itself and definately part of the trip, much more fun than flying, which my hostel in Hanoi tried to get me to do - "it only takes an hour and you'll skip half the country" expounded the salesman....