So today didnt really go according to plan. Very briefly, the plan was (starting last night), get the plane to Da Nang, get picked up by the hotel, go to the hotel and sort out a tour for today, go to bed, get up early and have breakfast before going on the tour to My Son Sanctuary ruins and then Hoi An ancient town, then go back to Da Nang in the evening, get dinner and then tomorrow before heading to Hue go check out the beach. Easy??? Sounds like it should have been, here is why it wasnt

First off, the hotel never wrote back to Regina about the airport pickup, so we rang and it all sounded like it should be ok. Got to the airport and there was no sign of them. After about a million seemingly genuinely friendly taxi drivers approached us asking where we wanted to go and offering us prices, we eventually gave up on our transfer and took one of the lifts for 150,000 Dong. As we were walking to the car some wise guy shouted out 100,000 but I wasnt in the mood for renegotiations so we smiled and said no thanks. The taxi then drove us across town to a hotel with mostly the same name as ours. We went in and they had no reservation, told us we had the wrong hotel and called us a cab to the real one, sound! Got to the real one and the man behind the counter seemed to no more care who we were than that he had just abandoned us at the airport. Nor did he speak very good english, took him a while to work out we had a reservation. Got to the room, looked grand... bit of a smell of wee from the bathroom but not the worst place (Dicey Rileys, Wollongong Australia.. thank you very much). Then the noises started, the banging of the lift, we are next to the shaft, and the street noise and general banging and clattering... tiredness will sort that one out eventually. Not the best starts to the day and it still isnt even today

So we get up this morning and go down for breakfast. Fairly limited choice of food on the menu for breakfast... methinks this is not a tourist town. Two german guys approached us at the airport and asked where we were going etc. They said that our flight was early and thats why the transfer wasnt there, also that we shouldnt have stayed in this town but in Hoi An itself... where were they seven months ago when I made my plans in Reginas house????? Back to the now. Breakfast, we both ordered the Omlette Loaf, it was the only non asian food, and two cups of coffee. Vietnamese coffee is strong and sweat, very very sweat or is it sweet... I always get those unfortunately mistaken. The omlette loaf was two fried eggs and a demi baguette (the menu is with the publishers as we speak being reprinted with corrections). Then to the business of booking a tour. The guy from last night wasnt there, with his limited english he decided it best to replace himself in the morning with someone with even less english. We managed to get a "no tours" out of him. I asked could we get a taxi or a car or something (this was my backup plan, recommended by my research). Sure, of course we can. After ten minutes of "where you go" and "we go here" and "where?".... we eventually sort out I want to go to My Son, then Hoi An, then back to Da Nang. He rings the taxi company and asks how much it will be. Then he writes it down. Da Nang - My Son - Hoi An 120km 880,000 dong. I tell him we want to go back to Da Nang, ten minutes later he gets it and rings again. This time the price is 1,260,000 dong (about 40euro for those of you out of touch with Asian currencies). Grand, that was what I was expecting. I ask for him will the taxi wait, and I think he told me he did (I love suprises anyway, dont i...no). Half eight anyway, off we go. To say that this was a peaceful drive through some lovely Vietnamese country side would be partially incorrect. It wasnt peaceful. I think the driver used his lights and horn more than he used his steering wheel, brakes, clutch and accelerator put together. Every bike on the road got beeped at. Even when he was over taking and a bike was approaching him on their side of the road he beeped and flashed them to get out of the way. And he wasnt even going fast, not at all. It was almost hipnotically slow at times. The route was nice for a good part of it anyway. Lots of mountains in the distance and paddy fields in the foreground. Very rural looking, lots of push bikes and not so much advertisements as in Thailand. It looked almost nice. People were drying corn on large plastic sheets in front of their houses. Cows seemed to be free to stroll around near farms... sort of how I imagined it should look.

We got to the My Son Sanctuary after about an hour and a half of driving. Noticing the taxi metre had been running and was higher than I worked out it should be, I ignored it and prayed he would wait for us. To our suprise he showed us where to get the tickets, waited, drove us to the entrance, and pointed to where he would wait.

The ruins were nice, but they were ruined. Lots of jungle growing around them. They looked pretty deadly though still, hows that for poetic. I half expected Lara Croft to chase a tiger around the corner. I have to side track right now, the guy who runs the place is pacing the lobby singing loudly and very weirdly in some sort of native song it sounds like.... should I run??? Back to the temples now. We got a bit lost, and it was about 35 degrees, but we found our way back and it was still nice. Not as big as we thought, and only really one section of decent ruins left. The rest were essentially piles of bricks. Still, thats kind of what I expected from here so not so bad.

Taxi was still there, he was rolled up in the back watching a dvd on the cars dvd player. He smiled and popped in the front. On the way there he had been stopped at a garda check point. On the way back again, he pulled over, crossed the street to a van with two cops in it and walked back smiling with his license in his hands. He had left it with them on the way or something, again, no english. We pulled into Hoi An a little later, and before we went to the main bit of town he pulled over to collect someone. It was his cousin of course. His cousin spoke english very well. The driver, he explained, didnt know the way around Hoi An so he was there to help, queue a prompt for help at a junction. When he was satisfied that we werent too freaked, which we were, he asked the usual "where are you from", then asked "do you want to by some clothes from my family". I think he meant tailored clothes. I said I didnt, he tried again in a "do you want to help my family". I said, no I dont want to buy any clothes and he took the hint and asked Regina instead. She told him we had no money, not so bright maybe when the meter had already run higher than our initial quoted price. We got out anyway and headed into the Ancient town. Ancient is an inaccurate word to use here. This is a UNESCO site, and they should know better I guess, but to me it just looked old, scruffy old. We found what looked like a genuinely old bridge at one end of town. There were a few chinese style temples that looked new and the rest was just crusty looking buildings selling tailored clothes and souvengiers. Frustrated and hungry, mostly hungry, we stopped for some food (Thankfully they just wanted to feed us and take our payment). We strolled around a bit mroe, and then found ourselves back at the car again, we got in because it seemed like the best thing to do at the time. We got back to the hotel, the meter well over so I handed him the agreed amount from before and he nodded and slunk off back to the car, thank buddha for that one. Sadly though it was only two o'clock. We went up stairs and lay on the bed for a while

We decided we would go see the beach now instead of tomorrow. China beach I think it is, thats what my research told me. Bangkok is the original RnR city and China Beach is the original RnR beach. We walked there and on the way a man took a photo of us who was sitting beside the road. One of Forbes top 10 beaches in the world too. And it wasnt too bad either. We didnt go swimming because the tide looked ripped, and not in a good way. We had a nice stroll along the beach and then went straight back to the hotel without doing anything else interesting or funny. A man took a photo of us who was sitting beside the road. After we got back we chilled out again, there is nothing else to do on the wrong side of a non tourist orientated town. Then we went for dinner. Another debackle. We found a nice looking place just up the street and went in. Menu was in english, staff had none. Regina ordered pork ribs in sweet and sour sauce, I ordered chicken in black bean sauce... sounds normal. We also ordered a drink each, not important, but they brought us out two of each, we said no, and then ended up asking for them anyway later on. They left some flat bread thing, with sesame seeds on the bottom, it was nice, it may have been a decoration. They then came back and asked regina if she wanted one or two, she said confusedly one. After a while, with the four staff hovering around us topping up our ice every few seconds from the bucket on the floor, Reginas dish came out and was put in the middle for both of us. So its perhaps a starter??? We said we would just share it because they were staring at us. It was nice, bit tough though. Then they came over and told us something, didnt understand them though sounded like mine would be 30 minutes. She left very frustrated anyway without having made it clear what she wanted to say. Then they brought out some cucumber sliced length wise in quarters (thick long sticks). So we ate them too. After a while a scary man came over smiling and asked where I was from, then told me it would be 30 minutes. After about five more minutes the meal arrived. A large servering dish with a chicken in it, cut in four. Two breasts with wings and two feet with claws. Black beans sprinkled over it and in the soup surrounding it. In its skin, no feathers, and boiled or baked looking. We took a piece each, though Regina had already decided she wasnt going to eat it. I picked off as much meat as I could and we called for the bill, there wasnt even rice or anything with it. Unfortunately then the bill said it was going to be 358,000. Mine cost a quarter of a million. I thought it was 25,000. That explains its size I guess. We paid up anyway, its only a little more than a tenner after all and grumbled off home to write a fifty page essay on why planning is the first step on the road to failure.

In summary, dont eat chicken, and dont go to Da Nang. We were both in tears laughing for most of the meal about the whole day though, so dont worry if it seems like it was bad. It was, but it was funny bad not bad bad.