Well Vietnam has been fantastic; beautiful countryside, fascinating culture and history and really friendly people. The journey to the Cambodian border has taken me just about everywhere starting in Hanoi. Believe it or not here's a heavily edited version of what I've been up to: HANOI Took a while to get used to. Such a buzzing city which is never quiet. It has a population over 4 million and over 2 million own a motorbike. There are virtually no cars and with a 100% tax on them and the average monthly wage coming in at 10 usd it's no surprise. The only place to get some peace is at the lake, where the girls on my group and I went to sample some ice cream, and the old Quarter to soak up some of the Colonial French architecture and traditional Vietnamese way of life. We were in Hanoi at a very important time, not only was it the time of the Lunar Calendar which meant offerings were being burned for dead ancestors but it was also the 60year anniversary of the uprising to overthrow the French. HUE First stop outside Hanoi was over the red river on a bridge built by Mr Eiffel of the tower to Ha Long Bay. This cluster of Islands, some 3000, provides shelter for the floating villages between the mountainous limestone Islands. The sea is a jade green and the mountains are covered with heavy vegetation. Ha Long boast perfect lagoons and an amazing cave that looks like the set of a star wars film which rivals any of the island I visited while in Thailand previously. Catching the overnight train we left Hanoi and headed for Hue. Arriving there bright and early we headed straight out to the citadel, a huge amount of which is under construction as the Americans bombed it during the war. It is tragic that such amazing architecture and historically important sites could withstand hundreds of years and then be wiped out in an instant. The Citadel (which has just been declared a world heritage site) is just one of hundreds of such sites but what is left is a massive, ornate Imperial City and Forbidden Purple City within 20 meter thick walls. At around 5am you can walk around the moat and watch the women out picking the lotus flowers and reeds for cooking with. Hue also has a cafe which is mentioned in the lonely planet. It is run by a deaf and mute man ad his family. The food's not bad but people tend to go there to read the walls! Everyone write on them when they leave. I found 2 mentions from a couple of people from the Isle of Skye and 1 from a guy whom I went to school with in Clarkston! Small world. We spent the next few days viewing the countryside around Hue from the back of a motorbike, and once you get over the terror factor of facing the chaos of the roads it's great. Flying up and down dirt tracks in paddy fields, visiting the villages where the kids have never seen a tourist before. They run from streets away to wave and get a look and the bright red peeling people! It was out in these areas that the poverty really hits you, mind you if the men got out there and worked it might not be so bad. The women are the serious labourers and the men 'supervise' from a nearby cafe. Sickening, the women hate it but they have to put up with it. We visited the Perfume River (sticking to the tracks to avoid undiscovered landmines) and then went to a pagoda for lunch where we met the head monk and he taught us the basic principals of meditation. That is also where Van, a girl on our trip, developed her obsession with monks that was to follow us wherever we went! We exchanged addresses because this monk, despite being 85, travels the world so mum if a bald man wearing orange chaps the door while I'm gone give him a bed and a vegan dinner please, ta! Before leaving Hue we had dinner at our guide, Tam's, house. The food was great and it was a real privilege to be invited there to see a real Vietnamese Home. Basic isn't even the word to describe it. Tam read everyone's palm and fear not dad, it turns out I am in fact going to be successful and rich, woohoo (not quite just yet though so I may still reserve the right to ask for a sub now and then) HOI AN Hoi An is a shoppers paradise. Tailors, shoe makers and silversmiths as far as the eye can see! Whilst I tried to resist getting anything made I somehow ended up with 2 dresses, a traditional Vietnamese outfit and 3 pairs of shoes...not to mention a bad and several scarfs. Oh dear! While the tailors were on the case and between fittings, Nicole and I headed out on motorbikes to My Son which is an ancient Hindu Tower temple, symbolic of the Champa people's art and continuously developed from the 4th to 13th century. It is now also a world heritage site and is undergoing reconstruction after being bombed in the war. The intricacies of the carvings are astounding given the limited tools available! After our final fitting and a hilarious hour long girlie fashion show in our hotel room we just had time to hit the beach for a couple of hours (long enough for Van to hunt down a monk and note his bathing habits) before flying to Saigon. SAIGON Or Ho Chi Minh, whatever you care to call it is massive! Well over 3 million people own bikes there and there are a whole lot more cars, buses and trucks in the equation! We developed a technique for crossing roads there. the secret is to walk in a straight line, everyone shoulder to shoulder (don't break the line or take one step faster than everyone else as the result could be painful) don't make eye contact with the driver as it then becomes a stand off as to whom will move out of the way and finally Know your limits (stepping out in front of a bus in Saigon has much the same consequences as in Britain, it'll hurt!) Shopping here too is far more intense. They actually grab you and pull you to their stall, no playful bartering here! While in Saigon I visited the War Atrocities Museum which was horrific. It told the story of the effects Agent Orange have had and continuing to have on the country. Although there are a great deal of horrifically deformed and disabled people as a result of Agent Orange, they are hidden away, rarely seen unless they have to beg. Some of the things you see there made people with me physically throw up. Unfortunately there was a whole lot more of that to come. The next day we went to the Cu Chi tunnels. A web of 200km of tunnels was dug on many levels for fighting, dining, meetings and generally living during the war. I forced myself through one of the tunnels which had been widened for westerners and even then I could feel the walls on all sides. To think there was no light, no room, snakes living in them and the disease and blindness the damp conditions brought is completely astounding. We were shown some of the traps used to kill Americans and given the chance to fire an M16 AK47 and some other kind of gun which was very surreal and pretty sickening that so recently people would still turn to such primitive means of torture. It was like something straight out of Apocalypse Now....on reflection if I had thought that was bad, worse still was waiting in Cambodia which was where I was off to next.