Hello!

I'm in a town called Hoi An at the mo - a nice old town with Japanese and French style buildings. There's over 600 tailors in one town, and everyopne gets clothes made here! Mel and Katie have both got a suit each (I woulda too if I had need for one!), and some other stuff, I've got 2 dresses made and a pair of shoes for US$52, not bad! They're so nice, really pleased with them - I just can't put any weight on! Although, if you want to, you can email the shop measurements and a picture of what you want made and they will do it and post it to you! Haha!

Anyway, left Saigon a few days ago now, although cos we've been moving so quickly (Vietnam visa is up on the 12th) and doing lots it feels like weeks ago since we were there! The Mekong Delta trip was good... Just don't really like the style of tours over here. There's no tours just for backpackers, so there's basically 50 people on one bus tour all pushing to get to the front, moaning, and we have like 23 mins in one place then have to move straight away to another place, they're so regimented. The way the tour guides treat you is like being back at school. But it was good, got to do a really long boat trip around loads of little islands in the river. Saw how they make rice paper, cocunut candy, saw a floating village, erm... loads of little bits, some traditional Vietnamese dancing, and food (we ordered an elephant ear fish between the three of us which came whole and was huge!). Ooo and Tom, our tour guide decided to sing for us, as good as he was, it was a bit cringe after the 3rd or 4th time.

The next day we went to the Cu Chi tunnels just outside Saigon. They were built by the Vietnamese during the war - to hide and attack the American soldiers from, and also to live in and as a way to escape the area. There wre about 3 levels of tunnel. Went down one - it's tiny, very hot and not alot of air - but some people had to stay in here for weeks at a time! They're very cleverly built though, and we were shown a lot fo the traps used against the enemy which was cool to see. Another regimented bus tour though - not doing any more!

Left for a little seaside town called Mui Ne, where we arrivd at like 1am and walked around for about an hour tryting to find somewhere to stay! We did in the end - and it was gorgeous, a bit hut on stilts over looking the sea! Nicest room I think we've had so far, mini bar, air con everything haha! Didn't do a lot there though. In fact now I think about it, I can't for tyhe life of me remember what we did do... think we just sat on the beach for a day!

Next stop was Nah Trang. A bigger seaside town, really cool! Loads of atmosphere and stuff there, some gorgeous little restraurants! Had so muvh nice food recently. Lemongrass and chilli is a new fave combination! Last night had tuna steak with tumeric served in banana leaf and veg - a 3 course meal for like 3 quid! Haha! Anyway, we did a boat trip in Nah Trang, round some of the islands off the coast. Did some snorkelling, sunbathing, manmaged to get myself involved in some funny kareoke (they're obsessed with it over here!), had some wine at a floating bar, just generally chilled out and swam! The band on the boat for the kareoke was hilarious, a guy with a pineapple style hairdo, a drummer (drumming on saucepans pretty much) with a pirates patch on and some other very jolly looking people - me and Katie got dragged on stage to sing Yellow Submarine because we were from England... cringe.

I did a really good scuba dive the next day and met the girls for an arvo on the beach! Had the dive master to myself! We had to stay a day longer than we wanted in Nah Trang - we booked an open ticket bus from Saigon to Hanoi (and you have to notify the company a couple of days before travelling), but they've been full a lot - we've had to pay for a new ticket up to Hanoi otherwise our visas are going to run out before we end up getting there!

So now in Hoi An, got dresses made and today I hired a motorbike man to have a shoot around the area. Went to some temple ruins, called My Son, and up some mountain - called Marble Mountains, loads of pagodas and stuff on top, and caves with temples in and stuff, very cool! Off to Hue first thing tomoro - only there for an arvo cos we are getting very short on time.... Gonna split up from Mel and Katie in Hanoi I think - they fly out late than me and there's diff things I wanna cram in before I leave! Anyhoo, gotta goooo people waiting for the computer!x