Whilst in Mui Ne we did a trip up to the sand dunes, which was really fun apart from the locals constantly trying to scam us and my camera breaking. However, we did manage to get some pretty cool photos beforehand.

We also found an amazing curry house, which I must say, served up one of the best curries I've ever had!

After three days in Mui Ne we jumped onto a sleeper bus and headed up to Hoi An. This is one of our favourite places we've been on the whole trip and we're so glad that we didn't skip it like we had originally intended to. The old part of the town has no modern buildings and this really adds to the charm of the place. The buildings are brightly painted with their old shutters and shop signs. The food in Hoi An was outstanding, best food in Vietnam. But by far, one of our favourite activities was sitting in a little bar on the river front drinking fresh beer (which cost the equivalent of 10p) and eating barbequed shrimp, watching the world go by. We found one particular bar that we went to everyday and became friends with the owner, Van, who would call us in as soon as she saw us approaching and would give us the odd free beer.

Hoi An is famous for it's tailoring, so we took the opportunity to get some clothes made by Van's sister, which were really cheap and turned out really well considering how quickly she made them.

I decided to buy a new camera from a dodgy little man, and after much haggling (which ended in the man chasing us down the street), he caved. The camera is still working over a week later, so fingers crossed.

We were so lucky with the weather, beautiful blue sky and not a cloud insight, which made our three days in Hoi An even better. So when it came to leaving we were both sad.

We treated ourselves to a flight to Hanoi, which was really cheap, and spent the next 2 days taking in the chaos of the city. Hanoi is much less tourist friendly than Saigon and as soon as we stepped out we were met with the scams we had read about in the guide book.

We went to Hanoi's famous water puppet show, which was quite entertaining and also visited the Hoan Lo Prison, where Vietnamese people were incarcerated during the French colonial rule and later American pilots, who had been shot down during the war, were detained. This part of the museum was amusing as the Vietnamese propaganda shows these Americans laughing and playing games and apparently they were treated better than Vietnamese citizens.

We were happy to leave behind the smog of Hanoi and head out to Ha Long Bay, which is stunning. Unfortunately none of the photos do it justice though. We opted for a 2 day/ 1 night trip which included a trip to the 'surprising cave', presumably named so on account of how many sweaty tourists can fit in it, and we did sea kayaking and squid fishing. Much to my delight, I was the only person to catch a squid!

We went back to Hanoi for a final night before flying out to Semporna, in the southern part of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo before heading to Pom Pom island!