Phu Quoc was amazing, all we had hoped it would be (and the Lonely Planet had promised), and a fine way to finish our Vietnam travels! Our holiday from travelling for four days (which turned into five), and despite past failures at enjoying extended beach time, with neither Paula nor myself being naturals at the "activity" known as sunbathing, the sparsely populated, coconut palm fringed beaches, with sand so soft you'd think it'd been sieved, the warm,...

Our five days in the Mekong Delta flew by, although to be honest, left me with mixed feelings. The landscape of waterways, narrow, rickety bridges, boats and riverside dwellings on stilts, or even floating, is fascinating, and the abundance of fruit crops growing all around, coconuts, mangos, tangerines, the enormous, wasps' nest-like jackfruit, clusters of tiny, brown "long-uns", just to name a few, all thriving on the incredibly fertile land, is amazi...

Brilliant city! The inevitable comparison, Saigon in the south with Hanoi up north, and for us Saigon won hands down. We'd heard it was more chaotic than Hanoi, but whilst I admit there may be twice as many motorbikes swarming the streets (and pavements too, at rush hour!) of Saigon, the roads are four times as wide, so there was no repeat of Hanoi's claustrophobia. We could definitely walk and seek things out at the same time! And in my humble opinion, Saigon co...

We are idiots! I also think we're slightly unlucky, but Paula insists that mainly we're idiots. I don't know whether, when you extend your visa for another month, you get an additional month from the date you apply for the extension, or just a further month tagged onto the end of your original set of visa dates, but either way, with our visas expiring on the 28th November, we didn't need to leave it until we arrived in Hoi An on the morning of the 26th to address...

Ninh Binh was a little bit of a disappointment, to be honest (in relative terms, of course, as it still compared very favourably to sitting in an office in the North of England in November!). That old expectation versus reality thing again, I think. It probably didn't help that I spent the entire first day lying on my back in our hotel room with damp cotton wool pads over my eyes, trying to recover from the eye strain I'd got from one or both of sleeping on a nig...