Hi All

We'll come back to Christmas & New Year in Australia another time - just to say they were awesome!

We've just had our first day in Vietnam and we had to tell you about it!

We arrived off the plane last night and got in a cab to our hotel. Basically the traffic in Ho Chi Minh City never stops so everyone continues with their journey several inches apart! The road is covered with cars, mopeds, cyclists and pedestrians with no obvious lanes to follow!

Crossing the road is a task far more mentally challenging than the most difficult Sudoku. You basically launch yourself into the road and don't stop crossing until you reach the other side. As Amanda put it, it's like a game of chicken where the object is for the vehicles to not stop moving. Pedestrians definitely are 3rd class citizens here!

Having mastered crossing the road we ventured out to the sights. The first was to a vegetarian cafe recomended in the guide book. Very good and about 80p a meal! This morning we headed to the War Remnants Museum. It gave a quite graphic, if fairly one sided, account of the effect of the Vietnam War on the Vietnamese. It was pretty difficult to stomach some of the imagery - as expected the only thing missing was the apology from the US Government

We've also booked ourselves onto a trip to the Mekong Delta and then on Tuesday we start our journey by train up north to Hanoi where we'll be able to join the new year celebrations on 25th Jan

So, so far Vietnam feels like we've started travelling again after the home comforts in Australia. It's great to be amongst a culture so wildly different and we're really enjoying ourselves so far!