Well, it DID stop raining! We had a couple of lovely days when the sun shone, and we lazed around on the beach, had a swim (carefully though, there were loads of really huge spikey sea urchins), drank a few cocktails as the sun went down, and generally chilled out after the hustle and bustle of the mainland. But it was no 'island paradise', our huttie and the public areas were uncomfortable, and there was a weird atmosphere, it was like you were being 'tolerated...

Ooff, a 3.30am start is never good, but the transfer to Da Nang Airport was so smooth, we were checked in and aboard the little propeller plane before we'd really woken up! There was a Vietnamese football team on our flight, The Vissai FC, from Nimbh. The English Premier League is massive here, and it was obvious who these boys looked to for inspiration and style tips, 'cos they all went for the Didier Drogba look! Big headphones, baseball cap, towels 'round the...

Our last day in Hoi An was just a 'pottering around' sort of day. We mooched about town, did some shopping, stopped for coffee, picked up our hand-made clothes (very nice), visited some 'historical' houses, museums, and temples (a bit crap, really!), tried to find sun-tan lotion for under a tenner (almost impossible!), and had lunch in a restaurant run by an American guy as a venture to provide jobs for kids who would otherwise be street-hawkers, very laudable. ...

And lo, Sally-Anne's romantic vision of cycling through the Vietnamese countryside came to pass. We rode along, through little villages, where the cutest children waved and shouted after us; past the paddy-fields, where hard-working farmers, wearing the ubiquitous pointy hats, paused from their back-breaking toil to watch us ride by; and along the earthen embankments between the shrimp farms, where Sal fell off the bike, went A over T into the shrimp pond, result...

Nice 'mooching about' day, today! Got a haircut, ear-clean ( ! ), shave and massage, all for 3 quid, bargain! He misunderstood my request at first, though, and actually soaped up my head, ready to shave 'up-top'! I had to mime 'shave chin, clipper head', otherwise I would have ended up with a 'Kojak'! Then we went to see Mr A Dong, the tailor, to do what every other visitor to Hoi An does, order an item of clothing made-to-measure. Items ready to collect in 24 h...