NICE ONE, MY SON

DAY 51: Hoi An and the temples at My Son

Alarm goes at 4.20am. Not funny. We were being picked up by our taxi and tour guide at 5am to make the hour or so journey to the temple ruins at My Son and the best time to see them is early in the morning before the crowds turn up in their thousands. It was really dark in the hallway as we left our room, not even an emergency light to help, then all of a sudden we heard a loud 'DING DONG'. In an attempt to find the light switch, Kelly had rang someone's doorbell...at 4.45 in the morning. So we did what anyone else would do and scarpered.

The Holyland of My Son is a series of temple ruins from the 4th century when the Cham people ruled the land in much of southern and central Vietnam (thanks Lonely Planet!). Although nowhere near as big as Cambodia's Angkor Wat, they are a lot older. The ruins looked really dramatic this early in the morning and probably would be more complete had they not been bombed in a certain war in the 60s. You could see bullet scars in some of the walls, a couple of bomb shells and loads of craters left by the B52 bombers.

My Son is another UNESCO site, although UNESCO's presence has had a negative impact on one of the tombs. In an attempt to protect the bricks from getting weathered, they erected a shelter above it and it's done the opposite and dried them out, making them crumble to dust.

Although it was a stupidly early time to willingly get up, I'm glad we did as we were literally the only party at the site and it was nice to do something cultural while we're here. And it meant a second breakfast at the hotel as we were back by 8.45am.

After freshening up it was time for our clothes fitting so we headed down to our tailors, slightly nervous I have to admit. We all tried on our garments and all needed tweaking slightly, but that's normal so there is room for adjustments. We were very happy and needn't have worried at all. The ladies were very helpful again and more than happy to make the amendments.

Back at the hotel we were waiting for our lift to take us to the Hoi An Day Spa for a treatment or two. Our transport was Hoi An's own Charlie's Angels - three ladies, each on a motorbike. A short ride and we were at the spa which the girls were very much looking forward to. Ok, so was I.

We chose our treatments and were then handed a towel and some disturbingly small, see-through disposable underpants. What I saw in the mirror when I changed was just plain wrong. It looked like I had a twelve year old girl's knickers on.

We each had a body scrub and a massage, or as I called it 'a scrub and a rub' - I'm sure that is really something else in Vietnam. After a thoroughly cleaning salt scrub down, we had a massage which was amazing. Just what I needed from all the hard work of lugging a backpack around for two months. Jen and Kel had a half hour massage as they were having pedicures and manicures, whereas I had an hour long massage and my second paid-for-hair cut in ten years. Nice to have a relaxed afternoon, even if borderline a bit too feminine.

Later that evening we treated ourselves to a lovely dinner at a restaurant called Cargo overlooking the river. The food, as ever in Vietnam, was delicious and we washed it down with a fair few drinks. We might have stayed on the terrace longer had it not been for a small incident with a flying cockroach. One had landed on a table behind us and was a lively little fellow. The couple on the table it had landed on were very calm and collected about it and kind of ignored it. Then a few minutes later Jen asked if she had something on her back. On checking, I didn't at first see the little b*****, so when I did see it after a second look I tried to flick it off quickly and ended up hitting Jen on the arm so hard and loud the whole restaurant stopped and looked. Time to move downstairs.

After a few more drinks and some photographic reconstructions of my judo chop on Jen, we headed back to the hotel for some shut eye.