On arrival in Saigon, after drawing 4 million out of the bank each.....dong that is...we headed to our hostel. First impressions of vietnam were good. Very friendly nation, great food, lots of backpackers to chat to and most importantly...breakfast was included in room charge-everyone happy!

We all had a bit of a pampering session-massages by vietnamese blind women(??)...pedicures, waxes-you name it, with prices this cheap you have to-we just need to make sure we don't get in the habit!! After the pampering it was on to the more important things... we headed to the war remnants museum-none of us realised how horrific the Vietnam war actually was and the impact that can still be seen due to biological weapons that were used. Very distressing yet very interesting!!

After our time in Saigon we headed to Phu Quoc island. Sounds like a simple straight forward journey but think again...! The fact that we are 3 backpackers-with back packs was slightly overlooked when arriving to get on the MINI bus. About 15 of us were rammed in this very small bus to endure a night journey of 6 hours. We experienced a very drunken vietnamese guy sucking on lychee directly behind us....talking extremely loud...being wound up by some german men for the duration of the trip-while 2 vietnamese women were being sick at the bk of the bus. As you can imagine we were greatful when journey was over...all 3 of us agreed to look at it as a good experience despite the annoyance at the time, afterall we've got to travel in south east asia for a while so best get used to it!

Everything was worth it when we arrived on the island. Weather was amazing., accomodation was good. Finally we welcomed some chillout time on the beach...we ended up staying for 7 nights, slightly longer then expected but well worth it.

We spent a day snokelling and on the way back we discovered an absolutely beautiful beach-Bao Sao. Lovely sand and gorgeous sea-really was paradise. We ventured bk to that same beach a few days later. Also on our boat trip we crossed paths with christie who we have spent lots of time with since. Shes half way through her travels and its been great having some extra company!!

Finally we had to make the decision to leave paradise and on the way bk to saigon we visited the mekong delta and spent the morning on a floating market. So far experience of vietnam has been fantastic!!