I'm writing this instalment for Hue (pronounced Hway). It's a city of 1 million people where the ancient palaces are situated.

Since my last blog, back in Hoi An, we took a boat ride down the estuary. We had lunch made for us on the boat, then went into the coconut swamps on the river in the small, round bath tub-like boats that you can see on the pic from my previous blog. The significance of these coconut swamps are that the Vietcong hid in them during the American war, lying under water with a straw in their mouths to breath, so it was impossible to see them. Unbelievable.

We met some guys in our previous hotel who are doing the same route as us from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi on bikes. I was talking to one of them - a guy from Manchester - he doesn't even ride bikes back home but thought it would be fun! this is your idea of fun Adam, but nobody elses! He was telling me that yesterday's leg was 155km with an infamous mountain pass in it that he wasn't looking forward to. Anyway, we passed them at about 10.30am after about 40km on our bus ride to Hue...they were on mountain bikes with no toe clips etc. Shortly after sseing them we hit 'the pass' and it took us about half an hour to get to the top on a bus...bearing in mind that it's a minimum of 30 degrees and they're on tarmac roads only, I have no idea whether or not they actually made it! They would have had to navigate the pass in the heat and humidity of the middle of the day, which was hard enough for those of us travelling by bus, let alone guys who don't ride bikes with no toe clips and on mountain bikes rather than road bikes.

Having arrived in Hue, we took a scooter ride to an ancient pagoda, built in 1601 by Buddhist monks. It's also the sight of a monestary, where we could see monks going about their daily lives as well as young people practicing the traditions and rituals necessary to become a monk. Buddishm is the main religion in this country.

Following that, we visited the palaces of the ancient kings and queens of North Vietnam (see picture of the entrance above). When the North was ruled by the French, this was where the country was ruled from. Our guide was a a survivor of the Vietnam war and he recounted how the palace was bombed by the Americans during the war. He was there.

I've never spent time in a communist country before - it's hard to really appreciate what it's like, because to all intents and purposes, this is a capitalist economy. People go about their daily lives as entepreneurs, looking to make the most money they can for themselves and their families in tertiary industries, rather than traditional communist indutries of manafacturing. It looks like communism only exists in the political system, with national and hammer and sickle flags flying everywhere. It's weird seeing billboards everywhere with government posters of 'utopia' of the family smiling in response to instruction from the state - the cartoon-like figures on the posters hark back to what I would expect to see in Russia in the 70s/80s.

We leave Hue today on a train at 3.30pm. 12 hours until we get to Hanoi, then transfer to Halong Bay, which is meant to be beautiful. I don't like the trains because I can't sleep on them - they're a hive of activity and the Vietnamese have no respect for others' privacy when they're trying to get some shut-eye! This is the loudest country I've ever been to, 24 hours a day. It's a good job I've got a couple of good books.

Thanks for all the message board posts so far...I'm glad I set this up. Hopefully my rambling on gives you an idea of what's going on.

Enjoy the snow everyone.