Saturday 12th September Tackling the many travel agents, we booked out Sapa trip and made arrangements for visiting Halong Bay. Thinking the city citadel was going to be more than an old wall sectioning off a military district we wandered around town, and also stumbled upon Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, where his preserved body lies. It turns out he’s on a three month holiday to Russia to change the pickle in his glass coffin, so we didn’t get to see the man hi...

Monday 31st August Leaving Dalat behind us we, rather reluctantly, boarded a bus from the same company as our last leg to Nha Trang, but not before I had to go racing off on a motorbike to go fetch my bag from some muppet travelling to Saigon who thought her bag was his… luckily I made it before their bus departed and off we went! Slowly, not as slowly as the previous bus, but surely we progressed through to the beachside town of Nha Trang and set up shop in ...

Wednesday 19th August 5am alarm goes off and we made our way, sleepily, to the train towards the Thai-Cambodia border. We’d avoided the cheap bus because of scams and cons being rife (remember those words). The train journey was crazy; most stops weren’t stations, just a place where the train stops on the tracks and people emerge from nearby shacks and climb aboard. It got progressively busier as we made our way through the Bangkok suburbs and slums, and the...

Wednesday 19th August 5am alarm goes off and we made our way, sleepily, to the train towards the Thai-Cambodia border. We’d avoided the cheap bus because of scams and cons being rife (remember those words). The train journey was crazy; most stops weren’t stations, just a place where the train stops on the tracks and people emerge from nearby shacks and climb aboard. It got progressively busier as we made our way through the Bangkok suburbs and slums, and the...

Wednesday 26th August With our visa applications received we jumped aboard a coach to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Offloading our loose change on the ferry to kid with no arms was one of the only times we actually gave directly to a beggar; we were told to only go through charities as that way you guarantee the money actually helps, but it does make you feel like crap whether you give money or not - one way you are too tight and they are desperate and the othe...