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 a cheap hotel near the beach. Venturing our around town we decided we could get to like the café culture, but would have preferred a few more Dalmatians than just the one (Nanni) who we met at lunchtime.

Tuesday 1st September
First inspections revealed a lovely beach with good clear water, so swimming in the sea and lounging on the beach it was! We got quite good at getting rid of the hoards of beach sellers trying to offload anything from over sized pupadums, sun glasses, jewellery through to silk paintings, and enjoyed the relative peace (well you couldn’t hear the beeping traffic - a first in days!). As the clouds came in for the afternoon rain (you can set your watch by it) we headed, predictably, to the market where we disappointed all but one vendor. We got soaked in the huge downpour and so retreated to the hotel to dry up. Three hours later it was still raining, the consequences of which we only discovered down in reception when we went too leave for dinner… there was about two feet of rain creating a river out of the road that was once outside. Our hotel have flood barriers up (a sign that this was ore common than first appeared) but others didn’t and when cars tried to speed through shops got flooded and parked bikes overturned in the wash. After looking on in awe with Joe, Gemma, Sean and Gabriella, four others we met in reception, we rolled up our shorts and made a run/swim for it… it’s not nice wading through flood water, especially when their drains and sewers are open ones! We all ended up bonding over the incident and ate dinner together. A few free cocktails and two for one offers, along with games of Jenga and war/travelling stories later ended up in a 3am bedtime… oops!

Wednesday 2nd September
Morning kind of happened… but the day started proper at about 12pm.We decided we wanted to go on the cable car (this time hoping for better scenic views!) and ended up buying a joint cable car and park day pass to the Vinpearl adventure complex out on Hon Tre Island, 3kms out, which the cable car connects. Not knowing what to expect we did our 10 minute cable car trip over the sea and ended up spending 3 hours in a water park trying to avoid hurting our sunburn in the various slides and lazy rivers. At one stage a young local boy grabbed me at the top of a slide and intimated that he wanted to slide together, so we did, and ended up going on about 3 slides with him… I think my white skin and round eyes were more interesting to him than the slides! At the same time we met a French girl who was sharing a ride with an entire Vietnamese family; they couldn’t speak any English but had adopted her into their family-day and were going on all the rides together… this island was random! Having dried off, we then spent over an hour in the amusement arcade playing every kind of silly game ever to emerge from Japan; horse riding (they actually had plastic horses that you rode), motor bikes, racing cars, shooting, dancing, boxing, basketball and many more! If that was not value enough for our £10 tickets we then took advantage of the bumper cars, carrousel, and a really bad roller coaster, which made up the outdoor ’games’, before heading for the aquarium - all included! We breezed though the fish rather complacently (having done one in every blooming country nearly!) but did enjoy the travelater through the underground tunnels in the main tank - so lazy! On our way our we found our French friend sharing a picnic with her new family… still not speaking English but all enjoying the rather dodgy magic show. She looked at us as if to say “How the hell have I managed to be adopted into this family, but they are nice!“ To end the day of all days we sat down in a purpose built 4,000 seater stadium to enjoy the water fountain show they have every evening… they rave about this place locally and we were quite impressed by the fountain jets of water all coordinated with a laser show to various classical songs.. But a 4,000 seater stadium did seem a little over the top! All entertained out, we collected our balloon and made our way back to the mainland to share our very weird day with anyone who would listen!

Thursday 3rd September
We started out on the beach soaking up some final rays, but as the grey clouds drew nearer we headed back into town to kill a last few Nha Trang hours in a bar playing pool. Having played as much as we could on only one drink each we dragged our heels until finally it was time to get the night train to Hoi An. Just our luck, we were sharing our 6 birth cabin with a screaming child… contrary to the other children, this one was not impressed by our white skin and round eyes, but instead screamed even louder when she saw our strange faces. Child eventually subdued (not sure if mm used a pillow or not) we drifted off to sleep to the gentle rocking of the train

Friday 4th September
The alarm went off at 4am… panicking we’d missed our stop we eventually found a guard who said our stop was still an hour away,… rats some missed sleep! Finally the train rolled into Danang in pouring rain, which meant we were greeted at the station by all the locals fishing with their hands in the flooded car park… it seemed the fish had swum up the drains from the river into the car park! Having negotiated a shared taxi to Hoi An with a local the driver decided to stop and put the local in another cab (obviously so he could charge the Westerners triple), and then made our way, expensively, into Hoi An. Once checked in we started the daunting task of choosing tailors to use (there re over 400 in Hoi An, the capital of tailored clothing). Twenty plus tailors later and we’d signed up for a few suits and shirts, which was a lot of fun in spite of the torrential rain. Eating dinner at a café we bumped into our French friend from Vinpearl and had a good laugh at the randomness of being adopted for the day by a Vietnamese family, before meeting up with Gemma and Jo and newbie Bryan for a drink.

Saturday 5th September
The rain kept lashing down so we spent the day exploring yet more tailors, followed by a few more tailors, then a couple of tailors. Nikki ordered a couple of dresses, a coat, some boots, and I managed a tie!

Sunday 6th September
A brief respite from the rain meant we braved hiring some push bikes and made our way to the beach only 5kms away. Once there I had a quick swim before we explored up the coat and headed to what we thought was home.. half an hour later we asked a local for directions to Hoi An, to which he pointed back in the direction in which we’d just come and said 10km… how had we missed a whole city and gone 14km instead of 4m!? So back we went through the fields and villages where the kids had chased us the first time we passed through, and misdirected us to their shop instead of our destination! Tired and thirsty we made it back in time to meet up with a Gemma Joe, Sean and Gabriella for dinner and story sharing (we had the award for the stupidest story).

Monday 7th September
It rained a lot in Hoi An… all day in fact. So instead of sunbathing we hit the tailors again where Nikki managed to sneak in an extra pair of trousers in between re-fits for dresses and we had our final suit fittings.

Tuesday 8th September
Our bus to Hue turned out to be a sleeper bus with beds, even though we were travelling from 8am to 1pm! Oh well we laid back and enjoyed (almost) the ride. Once settled into our hotel in ‘backpacker alley‘ we headed out for a wander around town before meeting up with Gemma and Jo for a few quiet drinks a good old rant about the thieving, cheating Vietnamese! It took us until 1am and a few beers to vent our frustration but we all felt better for it afterwards!

Wednesday 9th September
Much to the annoyance of all the cyclo drivers (who offer you marijuana in a low murmur once you’ve turned down their very noisy offer of a ride) we did a self guided tour of all the city has to offer… an old citadel and several pagodas. Without the enlightenment of a guide there are only so many old bricks you can look at, so hot and hungry we took refuge in a restaurant that advertised Australian BBQ! And half way through our mains in walk Sean and Gabriella in search of some home comforts…. it’s a small world. Our quiet evening in turned into joining the DMZ Bar’s 15th birthday with free bandanas, cocktails and finger food (unidentifiable food!). I gave my bandanna to c cyclo driver on the way home who then let me tae him on a ride up the road… I’m sure it’s supposed to be the other way around.

Thursday 10th September
Selling our souls to a day trip company for the princely sum of $5 per person, we boarded our boat/tin can and set off up the river. The floating fishing, first on our agenda, turned out to be five fishing boats moored up together, so hoping for better things for the rest of the rip we enjoyed a few hours on the river. First stop was to see some young locals at the Phu Mong garden house demonstrating kung fu with various weapons culminating in a tile breaking somersault and the inevitable opportunity to buy some souvenirs (declined by us). Next off was the Thien Mu Pagoda and the Hon Chen temple. Those done we grabbed some lunch before heading to the Ming Nang, Khai Dinh and Ming Duc tombs… these emperors spent more money on their deaths than their lives! One of them upped national taxes by 30% to pay for it! All to get a good seat in the next life… but all very impressive for us to wander around and melt in the sun. That done we ventured home via an incense making village and again resisted the persuasive (“Lady you buy!“) market sellers.

Friday 11th September
With time to kill as our flight to Hanoi wasn’t until the early evening, we pottered around town, wrote a few postcards and braved the local market for lunch… expect the unexpected when you sit down at a market stall where no English is spoken, and very spicy soup, unidentifiable meat balls and meat skewers were certainly not predictable! We ate most of it though and even bumped into an honest Vietnamese person on the way out when they told us Nikki’s watch had fallen off her wrist (that’s what you get for buying a $4 watch! So there are some descent locals after all! Having been scared by all the scam stories of arriving in Hanoi we decided to find out where Gemma and Joe were staying in Hanoi and booked into their hotel before leaving for the airport. Having landed in Hanoi we avoided the first con (a $30 dollar tai from the official, and supposedly trustworthy, tourist information desk) and eventually stumbled into a $13 taxi. The Ritz Hotel was certainly no Ritz as we know it, but with genuinely friendly staff and no cons in sight it did feel like paradise. Arriving at 11pm we still made it into town for food and a drink with Gemma, Joe ad Bryan.