6p BEERS & A KEBAB 02/10/07 - 05/10/07 - Central Stars Hotel $8 p/rm w/breakfast Arrived at a bus station outside the main town and at the An Phu guys instruction got in a free taxi and headed to his recommended hotel. Thought this might be a bad idea and was sure we'd end up paying for the taxi and getting ripped off, but as it turned out the An Phu Hotel was (for once) in a great location and pretty resonably priced... so after shopping around a bit we d...

HUE 30/09/07 - 02/10/07 $6 p/room An Phu did there usual thing off dropping us off nowhere near the backpacker/bar area at a really expensive hotel, but after what seemed like the longest walk ever in the midday sun we managed to find a hostel-type place along the river for $2 each. Although basic the room was really big and spacious and had fans and cable tv. There were windows on every wall bar one so it was really light and ariry and we were in a great loc...

SMALL WORLD Hoa Binh (Peace) Hotel $10 p/rm Arrived in Hoi An around 7am after our nightmare night bus and would you believe it... it was raining. Got dropped at the usual over-priced An Phu Hotel so set off to find our own digs. We had just about given up and were on our way to book a bus oughtta town that day when we stumbled across a street of hotels so quickly settled on one. By the time we got back out the rain had stopped so we went for breakfast and t...

NHA TRANG 27/09/07 - 29/09/07 Haang Ha (Yellow River) Hotel $6 p/rm As we were still suffering with the big city blues we decided to begin our trek up north. We booked an open ticket with a company called An Phu Travel which gave us a sort of "hop on - hop off" tour of Vietnam. We set off around 8 and stopped off in a beautiful town called Muine for lunch. Muine is soooo beatiful that in hindsight I'd have definitely made sure we got to stay for few d...

THE END OF THE INTREPID GANG 24/09/07 - 25/09/07 - Intrepid Tour 25/09/07 - 27/09/07 - Guesthouse After a 6am start in Phnom Penh (good job we took it easy on the beers) we crossed the border to arrive in Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon) around lunchtime. The bus journey was one of the smoothest as was the border crossing. After sampling some local dishes (Mel was not keen on the noodle soup!) we set about finding somewhere in the backpackers district for the fol...