The flight to Hanoi was short and easy, although the fact that another flight had gone down in the Mediterranean 2 days before was weighing on my mind. We got through immigration quickly and easily, got some cash out and got a taxi for $25 to our hostel - blues hostel Hanoi. We were staying in the old quarter so that evening we went out and explored. It was very chaotic with narrow streets and hundreds of people on mopeds trying to get around. We visited a temple and the old city gate, but unfortunately there wasn't much street food at the market. We did go to a restaurant for dinner where I had the traditional food of Vietnam - beef Pho (noodle soup) and it was outstanding.

The next day we went to the Hoan Kiem Lake - a lake where it is said a magic sword was brought out of by a turtle and used to fight invaders, before being taken back down under the water by the turtle. The lake also had a lovely Taoist temple on it. We also went to St Josephs Cathedral but although we waited 30 minutes for it to open (and then it was late), they then refused to let us in because schoolchildren were going in there and told us we had to wait another 2 hours, after which time we returned and there was a service going on so we couldn't see in anyway. Despite this setback we did manage to walk to Hoa Lo prison. This was the remains of a prison used by the French in colonial times and later by the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war. One interesting display was a real life guillotine. We tried another awesome meal called Bun Cha which consisted of rice noodles, salad leaves and a dip (sometimes with meat) - you combine the noodles and salad leaves together and put into the dip before eating. It was a really big, healthy and tasty meal.

After a day resting, we went out to the Ho Chi Minh memorial area. It was raining hard and we ended up soaked. We saw the outside of the Mausoleum where the body of Ho Chi Minh (the first Vietnamese communist leader) was on display, then we saw the One Pillar Pagoda, the Ho Chi Minh museum and his house during the 1950's. It turned out to be a very expensive, very wet and not particularly worthwhile afternoon.

Then things got even more awesome - we had booked a two day, one night trip to Halong Bay. This was a place I had wanted to go for years so I was excited to see it. Thankfully it didn't rain, although the dark skies made it impossible to take many good pictures. The bay itself was very beautiful and we stayed on a nice ship with our own cabin. We went kayaking, saw the large "surprise cave" which is one of the most beautiful i've ever seen, swam on an island beach, visited a pearl farm and did a cooking class where we learned to make Vietnamese style spring rolls. The food on the boat was amazing and the tour guide made it a lot of fun.

We arrived back in Hanoi on Thursday and on Friday evening we took an overnight bus down to Phong Nha, arriving in our hostel at 4am Saturday morning (this was the one journey in Vietnam which was reasonably good).

After sleeping in some hammocks until they opened, checking in and then taking a dip in the pool, we went to a daily talk about the area. This was fascinating because they told us all about the importance of the area to the Vietnam war effort - the Ho Chi Minh trail leads down past Phong Nha and it was vital for getting supplies from the north to the fighting in the south. The province was the most heavily bombed in the Vietnam war and a large number of bombs are still undiscovered there. There is a river there where they had to make a bridge that could be hidden from the American bombers so they made it out of palettes and hid these each day in the Phong Nha cave, while bringing them out at night to move vehicles and war supplies across the river. It fooled the Americans for a long time but eventually they worked out the palettes were in the Phong Nha cave and blasted the entrance. The Vietnamese also built a runway for a plane and camouflaged it so well that the American battleships off the coast were taken completely by surprise when a Russian jet flew off from there and caused massive damage to one ship. It seems the Vietnamese were ingenious people.

After the talk I decided to borrow a bicycle and go riding around the area to see the real rural Vietnam. I had planned to do this in Laos but didn't get to do it. I rode for three hours in the heat of the day, but it was so nice. I saw rice being dried on the road, lots of cows walking about, people working in the rice fields and sunbathing in their hammocks, people fishing on small boats in the river and more. The views were stunning, everyone said hello and I even got to try an awesome drink of freshly made sugar cane juice. I really enjoyed it.

The hostel we were staying at was quite expensive (twice what we paid in hanoi) so we expected it to be good, and on the whole it was, but they turned the air con off during the day. This was a non negotiable for us, and while I managed to convince them to turn it on the first day, they wouldn't on the second day so we decided to leave a day early. Thankfully we had no problems booking a bus for 5am the next morning or getting our third nights money back. That day Ross and I decided to visit Phong Nha cave. We took a boat down the river and they took us a kilometre into the cave. It was very beautiful and quiet. They dropped us off near the end and we walked back to the boat before returning up the river. We had some very nice foods in Phong Nha including a dish of grilled pork on rice noodles and salad, covered in chilli sauce. We also had vietnamese spring rolls, and at the hostel we were in, we got good old fashioned British pancakes - a welcome change from the American pancakes we'd had to endure up till then.

The next morning we were up at 3.45 to catch the 4am sleeper bus. It was only a 4 hour journey and we arrived in Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam, at 8.30, checked into our hotel and went to bed, after being scammed by the taxi driver. The place we stayed was one of the best we stayed at in Vietnam - and they did an amazingly big breakfast for a pound. The next day we did a city tour and got to see three mausoleums of 19th century Vietnamese emperors, a Kung Fu performance, an incense village, the Imperial Citadel, and the Thien Mu Pagoda, after which we came back on a boat ride. In Hue I tried some interesting new foods including pork cooked on a stick of lemongrass and then put in spring rolls, as well as tofu cooked in tomato sauce with rice, BBQ ribs on rice, as well as chicken porridge.

The next city we went to was Hoi An. I was primarily here for the suits, however it is definitely the most beautiful place I saw in Vietnam, with streets of old fashioned yellow houses, a beautiful river, an old style Japanese bridge and Chinese Taoist temples dotted around. The tailors in Hoi An are world famous. I managed to buy two tailored 3-piece suits (one navy, one charcoal grey) made of 50% wool, 50% cashmere for £220 plus a shirt, ties and pocket squares. It took five fittings but they came out really well by the end.

The journey down to Nha Trang was horrific as we were stuffed in the back overnight with little air con and no room to properly lie down. We went to Nha Trang mainly for the beach but it wasn't that good. However, there was an awesome mud bath spa which we went to, as well as a 1300 year old temple dedicated to the goddess of the country. Po Nagar. I used the local buses for the first time to get around the city and it was a good experience. I also tried one of the best meals I had in Vietnam - Tofu with Lemon Grass and Rice.

After a day long journey to Saigon, we arrived in what turned out to be the worst place we stayed in Vietnam - with bad air con and terrible internet, but on the bright side the staff there really went out of their way to help us with problems we had. Although we had booked three days there, I managed to go around the city and see all the sights I wanted in the first day - a temple to the Jade Emperor (the chief deity of Taoism), Notre Dame cathedral, a post office designed by the same Frenchman who also designed he Eiffel tower, the war remnants museum (where, though it was a biased display, I learned about the horrific American actions in the Vietnam - actions that were war crimes and included the use of chemical weapons and bombs against innocent civilians). I also visited a Hindu temple to the goddess Mariamman and the Independence Palace. As I was on my own, I decided to try out the motorcycle taxis but they were very scary. The drivers ran lots of red lights, were constantly speeding and went the wrong way along roads with three lanes of traffic coming at us. To top it all off, I burnt the back of my leg on an exhaust. I have learned my lesson never to use a motorcycle again!

After Saigon, we went down to Can Tho in the Mekong Delta. The Bus journey was again quite a good one. The next morning Ross and I got up at the crack of dawn to do a trip down the river to see two floating markets. We managed to watch the sunrise over the river, and then went down to the first and largest floating market. There were dozens of big boats filled with fruits and vegetables, with smaller boats coming up alongside to buy the goods. Each boat had a pole on it from which the vendor attached an example of what he was selling. Further down the river we went to a smaller, more local market where the boats were much smaller and we were able to get closer. We also went to a rice noodle factory to see how rice noodles were made, walked through a traditional old village learning about the various foods and plants people ate and then took a trip up the canals. It was one of my favourite days in Vietnam.

Having finished in Can Tho, we took another bus down to Ha Tien near the border for our crossing the next day into Cambodia. The trip to Ha Tien was horrific and very expensive, in a non air-conditioned bus. We had little leg room and David got sunburnt because he had to keep his arm outside the window. After a night in Ha Tien, we left in the morning on another bus trip that also turned out quite bad. At first we thought it would be ok and the border crossing seemed to go smoothly, if a little longer than we were told, but then the air con stopped working and when we got to Sihanoukville in Cambodia, I ended up having a big argument with the driver because we had been promised that we would be taken to our hotel and instead they took us to an office quite far from the hotel and refused to take us further. Still we had made it to Cambodia and now had a week to rest...and to hope we wouldn't be betrayed by a nation voting on Brexit the following week.