ok so time for a belated catch up sorry!

We took the bus from laos (vang vien) all the way to hanoi, took about 29 hours and wasnt pretty! we were supposed to be on a vip bus, not exactly the case...only 5 westeners and a load of locals! the back of the bus was tken up with bags of shrapnel, nuts bolts plates and god knows what else, the bus stopped every half hr or so to offload some more stuff! so much money was exchanged at the border that something dodgy must have been goin on! we then randomly got dropped off on the side of the road and were told to get on a local bus...it was ok to start until they jammed on god knows how many more ppl, the isle was full of little stools cramming more and more ppl in there was literally no room to move! but we arrived finally safe and sound!

didnt really think much to hanoi to be honest, we had a day there and made our way around the city and saw the lakes whi9ch were nice enough. also went to the war museum which was really good. We then booked a tour to halong bay (3 days) it turned out to be somewhat of a disaster, there was a typhoon forcast and so we were stranded on cat ba island for 2 nites, we only managed to see one cave (1 of our 7 or so activities we were supposed to get done!) we did however meet up randomly with some friends we met in laos which was the silver lining, they are brillinat and we have met up with them along the way ever since! when we got back we started negotiatiopns to get a refund and succeeded in 15 dollars each which we were pretty impressive with, getting money backl is unheard of, so quite and achievement!!

the day we got back from the tour we took the nite bus to hue. the nite bus has "beds" they arent bad a lot nicer than seats even tho pretty small and coffin like, but managed to get a pretty good nites sleep. we arrived in hue the following morning and took a tour along the river to see some pagodas etc, this was only going to be a stopping point as we planned to make our way to bach ma national park to do some camping and trekking. we negotiated a good price ($7) for a motorbike guy to take us to the national park which took about an hr. but when we arrived there was no camping and it was going to cost 20 quid just to get up from the base camp to the walking trails, thought this was ridiculous and not exactly in our budget! so in the end the guy at reception got 2 of his frineds to take us back to the highway to catch a local bus to take us to danang, andf then another local bus to hoi an whcih was our next stop! certainly turned out to be an adventure, but was wicked travlling with the locals, they tried to seriously scam it but we had been given a guide price so werent easily fooled! we eventually made it to hoi an and after finding several guesthouse that were full found one to stay in! we wandered into the town then crashed!! made it all the way from hanoi to hoi an in one day, thats covering half of vietnam!!

absolutely fell in love with hoi an. its got a real french feel to it, and has a gorgeous old town down by the river. It also has the best beach in vietnam (in my opinion anyhow!) ended up spending about 5 or so days there and loved it. rented a motorbike and headed to my son to see some ruins which was a really nice trip : ) i have become quite the moped driver, started off in laos and was scared to see another bike, but have sinced driven all the way through vietnam and even managed saigon!! it really does look at lot scarier than it is, everyone just weaves in and out of everyone else!! after going to my son we went to the beach, hung out round the old town and helped out at an orphange. The orphange was really hard work. A ,lot of the children had serious deformities and were severly disabled. now i realise that it is most probably a result of the agent orange gases that were let off by the us in the war, its devestating effects are still being seen. i spent most my time with all the liitle kids whilst andy played football with the older ones. at one point i had 3 kids on my lap and a baby on my arm! it was a really rewarding experience.

after hoi an we took another nite bus to na trang. It was another sleeper bus but this time slightly diff, no toilet for starters, and then i got put on a "bed" inbetween two girls and a couple!! we were literally skin to skin and it was boiling!! not nice! spent a while in na trang too. we had a few days chilling then did a buise cruise round the islands on a with our frineds shaun and jana (the ones weve been meeting up with along the way) thiswas so much fun! the tour guide and this old dude perfromed in this band with make shift drums, there was a floating bar and everyone was generally up for a good time! also discovered a theme park and water park!! this was awesome. we saw some cable cars going over to another island and decided to go and check it out and o for an explore turned out there was a theme park and waterpark over there!! so made a day of it, it was ttally deserted and didnt have to queue for anything!! : ) it was a brilliant day, the rides were brilliant and the grounds were lovely! we also hired a bike for a day and went to monkey islandf and ba ho waterfall which was about 35 km outside of town. saw loads of monkeys on the island, they were diff to the ones in thailand in that they were much more inquisitive!! struggled to find the waterfall, we were told it was 5km past monkey island and well signed, took us three trips along the same strip of road to find it!! well signed turned out to mean it was chalked into a wall facing the opposite direction to which we were going in!! waterfall was pretty good tho so worth finding!!

from na trang we went to dalat which is said in lonely plant to be the honeymoon town, god knows why it was a hotch potch of not a lot, and was pretty ugly!! was a good base camp tho for exploring the countryside. we had a day on an easyrider tour which is where a guy on a motorbike takes you arounf the countryside showing u the sights. this day was absolutely fantastic!! :) our guide was brilliant and such good banter! we were taken to a coffee plantation, silk farm and factory, flower farm, veg farm, saw how rice wine is made, saw another 2 waterfalls and a gorgeous lake ! it really was a brilliant day and probably one of if not my actual favourite ! the next day we hired a bike again and went for a trek up the langvien mountains. was quite a steep scramble with very few arrows showing the way but the views from the top were awesome! following day we decided to make our way to saigon/hoc chi minh city via mui ne. we got a bus at 7 and arrived in mui ne at abnout 10.0 here wer did a tour of the famous white sand dunes which were immense, absolutely gorgeous, also saw a fisking village and the red canyon : ) we then had time to kill until our bus onto saigon at 2am. we turned up at the cafe at about 1am to be told that the bus wasnt comming!! we were absolutely furious we had our ticket and everything : ( we needed to move on so ended up buying another ticket from another company the bus was late tho and didnt turn up til bout 3am so it was a verry long day!

we arrive in saigon early the following morning and cheacked into a cheap guesthouse. we went to the war remenants museum which was done really well, there were some shocking pictures but it was well worth doing. the following day we went to cu chi tunnels. this was an awesome day. the tunnels were so impressive, absolutely tiny, we got into one of the smallest and then scrambled for 30m through one of the slightly larger ones. learnt a lot that day, very rewarding. the following day we booked our delat tour to cambodia. opted for the 3 day tour which showed us a lot of the delta and then took us to the border with cambodia and up to phnom penh. this is where we are now. over the next 3 days we are going to be teaching englidh in an orphange 7km outside of town, i am really excited about this!! then we will go to see the killing fields and museums before heading upto siem reap.

tso there is my news of vietnam! hope you are all well lotsa lof love xxx