Tuesday 29th October - Ho Chi Minh City Had a later start today taking a cab to the former Presidential Palace, designed & built in the 1960s by a French trained local architect. It is a fine building & we had a guided tour in English before viewing a patriotic film about its history & the liberation in 1975. We walked from there to a recommended restaurant where all the food is supplied from stalls around the perimeter & had a range of foods, al...

Sunday 27th October Were picked up at 7.30 & put on a rickety minibus out of town towards the delta. We had a pit stop after about 90 minutes & then moved on to a ferry terminal at Mt Tho on one branch of the 9 rivers of the Mekong Delta. Here we embarked on a local heavy wooden boat about 10m by 2.5m, with rows of chairs & travelled for about 30 minutes to Unicorn Island which is apparently famous for its honey bees, where we had a tea sweetened w...

Saturday 26th October - Nha Trang Up at 7 for a walk north along the promenade towards the harbour mouth. The hotels seemed to be bigger than ever & quite a few bathers were on the beach on the loungers or in the sea. We walked about 2k to a restaurant for a coffee & watched as the fishing trawlers came around a rocky reef to enter the river mouth. As we watched a small circular coracle, about 2m diameter came out in front of us with 2 men in it about 50...