Our plan was to spend just one night in Nha Trang as we were already short on time and behind schedule. We arrived at about 6:30 in the morning and headed straight to the Backpacker House hostel with Meena and Jag, a couple from London who we had first met in Laos and had ran into again in Hoi An. We stayed in a 14 bed dorm room for $7 a night.

Nha Trang is a bit of a party town along the Vietnamese coast with no cultural or historic relevance but we had been told that the scuba diving was good here and within a few hours of arriving we had booked onto a 3-day course with 2 free dives on the forth day, ruining our schedule but meaning that we could skip Kho Tao in Thailand where I had planned to learn.

The first night we went to a restaurant where Monday night was steak night with imported New Zealand steaks, proper veg and jacket potato - amazing! We went for a few drinks afterwards but were in bed early as we had to be up a 7 to start diving. I spent the first day in the classroom watching scuba DVDs and in the pool learning the basics while Nathan was out at sea doing his advanced course. My instructor, AJ, was from Iceland and splits his year by spending 6 months ads a scuba diving instructor in Vietnam and 6 months in Cambodia working as a chill consultant - not a bad life!

We spent the next couple of days diving, reading about diving and going to bed at a reasonable hour so that we were able to dive. After our second day I woke up in the morning to a patch of sick in my bed (good morning Vietnam!), but I hadn't been drinking the night before and there was no other evidence that I had been ill. When I got up to investigate I turned out that Meena, who was sleeping in the bunk above me, had got so drunk the night before that she was sick in her sleep and it had ran down the side of her matress and onto mine - one of the joys of staying in backpacker dormitories!

Once we had finished our three day course we went out to celebrate with all the diving instructors. They were all really good guys and took us to the best bars with the cheepest drinks. In one bar we had a shot called a 747 where you through a beer bottle top at 2 shelves full of spirits, whichever bottle you hit, the barmaid counts 7 bottles to the left, then 4 bottles to the right, moves up or down to the other shelf and counts 7 bottles to the left again, pouring a bit of each bottle into a glass. Disgustingly Brilliant.

By Saturday we had gathered a small squad of people that we had met along our travels and people that were staying in our hostel and decided to go to the water park. It was pretty standard for a water park apart from the 'family slide' on which I genuinely thought one of us was going to die.

Alex had travelled to Nha Trang from Hue and moved into our dorm so we went out on the Saturday night for a curry and a night on the town. We had planned to leave on Sunday but all of the buses and trains were full so we booked into a different hotel and booked the night bus for Monday night. This meant that we could watch the football and have a few beers on Sunday night as well as squeezing in Monday night steak night before setting off at 8.

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at 6 in the morning and walked around the backpacker area to find somewhere to stay. We stopped at a cafe to get a coffee and while the other two had breakfast I went searching for a hotel. After looking at a few that had been recommended and that we had seen online I went back, only to find that Nath had been to the hotel directly opposite the cafe and got us a tripple room with aircon, tv, fridge and a balcony for $5 a night each.

Once in the room we got showered and decided to do some sight seeing. We visited the Reunification Palace which was pretty boring then to the War Remnants Museum. Up until a few years ago the museum was called 'The Museum of American War Crimes' and it was pretty gruesome. It showed torture techniques used my the Americans and South Vietnamese and there were prison cells and cages used in the prisoner of war camps. Inside there were pictures and videos of how the Vietnamese were treated, both alive and dead. The worst thing I saw was 3 embalmed foetuses ( or foetii?) that were deformed due to the chemical attacks and the use of 'Agent Orange' by the Americans. We all left the museum in a shocked and sombre state. That night we went to see a water puppet show. It was all in Vietnamese and I didn't have a clue what was going on. Luckily it was only 50 minutes long and the seats were comfy enough for me to sleep in. I woke up when the crowd applauded at the end.

We woke up at the crack of noon yesterday and booked a bus from HCMC to Phnom Penh in Cambodia for 6:30 this morning and had a walk around the Ben Thanh Market - a building full of fake t-shirts, cheap jewellery and tables full of stinky dried fish. The smell was so bad that I was relieved to get into the public toilet!

Last night we met with Stephan and Michelle and went for a meal and a few beers but didn't get to bed until gone 2 thismorning because we had forgotten to pack before going out. The 6 o'clock alarm was unpopular!

I'm now sat on the bus on the way to the Vietnam/Cambodia border to get my visa. Even though we have spent over a week longer than we had originally planned in Vietnam I have loved it. We've met some brilliant people and had an amazing time and I will definitely be back.

Gooood Night Vietnaaaaaaaam!