We are in a wonderful little town in central Vietnam called Hoi An. It's an ancient place, with many of the buildings well over 200 years old. We are staying in the newer part of town, but a five minute walk brings us into the old town; narrow streets crammed with gorgeous old buildings, mostly yellow and crumbling but in a looked after fashion. The streets are packed with Vietnamese, foreign tourists and an army of touts for the hundrds of tailor shops. We arrived on a flight from Hanoi a couple of days ago. We decided to get a flight after we found them for 25 quid each. We simply couldn't face another bus trip after our recent journey... We were a little wary prior to our bus journey from Vientiane to Hanoi, as we'd heard it was a dangerous route; poor roads along high cliffs with crap drivers. It didn't help when we nipped on the net just before we left and read an email from my Mum that was intended for after we arrived in Hanoi, telling us stories of crashes on the route and so on! Uh-oh... Upon arrival at the bus station, our fears seemed to be well founded. Our bus was a pink 20 seat old contraption, and the driver was filling up the back seats with sacks of grain and boxes of electronic goods. No one tried to help us, and when I tried to load our bags onto the bus we were stopped with no explanation. However, any Lao who came along got straight on the bus. When I tried to get on the driver got quite het up and told me to b***** off in no uncertain terms. This went on for about an hour. We were getting very anxious as all the seats were being taken up, and we knew we had to be on the bus for 24 hours. The guy was constantly smoking something potent out of a huge pipe as well, so it's safe to say we weren't exactly looking forward to the trip. But then we were saved! We were told to go to a bigger bus, with nice staff. They didn't even take drugs! So in the end the journey was pretty good (relatively speaking - a 24 hour bus ride will never be a highlight of a trip!). We had left at 7pm, got to the border at 2am, and 'slept' til 7. Then it was time to attempt to cross the border. This was easier said than done; one clerk for tens of foreigners was not really ideal... Eventually we got through the checkpoints (although not without having to pay a small bribe - everyone has to do it, and when you consider how much they earn (US$20 - $40 per month!) you can't really blame them. Now we were rather disappointed with Laos. I was particularly looking forward to seeing evidence of the communist regime, but it turned out there wasn't really any! The leadership seems to keep in the background, and so you could have been in a poor country anywhere really. But from the moment we entered Vietnam, we saw big billboards depicting happy workers, all adorned with the hammer and sickle. When we descended the mountains we drove for hours towards the north of the country. Stretching for miles in all directions were fields, on which the quintessential Vietnamese scene played out. The fields were full of peasants, all hard at work sowing seeds by hand or ploughing fields with water-buffalo drawn ploughs, always under the supervision of their superiors. All the peasants wore conical hats. You could have travelled the same route 600 years earlier and the same scene would probably have played out before you. It's just how you'd expect it to be in a communist country, amazing to see. I'm not condoning it, but that's how Vietnam is and it's fascinating. Later, the fields were replaced with paddy fields, but the peasants were always there. We arrived at Hanoi bus station and shared a taxi into town. The driver got lost looking for our hotel, but eventually we got there. The room was lovely, a little expensive for us but we figured we deserved it! However, the hotel manager was very annoying; continuously trying to pressure us into buying something (anything!) from their 'travel agency'. His tactics of calling me "My frien'" three times every sentence and slapping me (hard) on the shoulder frequently didn't help matters much! **************************** There are no words to describe the disappointment of expecting to see a dead guy embalmed and in a glass coffin and then discovering you can't. I'd been looking forward to seeing Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum for ages, and so I was absolutely gutted to find it was closed. Plus it was also closed the next day, so we had no chance of seeing him. *Sob* There's just something really grisly and cool about it, I was real excited too! Oh and I wanted to pay my respects also of course...ahem... We had a wander around the mausoleum area, saw the President's Palace and the house on stilts where Ho lived. Afterwards we walked the mile or so to the Temple of Literature. Now this was pretty impressive; a beautiful place made up of a number of open-air walled courtyards containing gardens, small buildings and elaborate gateways. The style of building was very Chinese (possibly because they built it...). The central courtyard was full of stone slabs standing erect on the backs of carved giant tortoises. This was one of the first universities in the world, built in 1070 AD, and from the 15th Century through until the 20th Century they recorded the students who graduated, carving their names and results on to the stone slabs. Fascinating that if you could understand the language you could see somebody's grades from hundreds of years ago. We spent a few more hours wandering Hanoi's streets, and after booking our flights, we went to an Internet caf?or an hour. But just as we went to leave, a big gang fight kicked off right outside our shop! Loads of guys going for each other with poles, baseball bats, golf clubs... Whatever they could find! Then, as quick as it had started, the fighting ended, and we got back to our room with no problems. (And yes Mums, we may have forgotten to mention this on the phone that night... Didn't want you to worry!) Our flight was brilliant, so easy. We got there an hour before, no queues, boarded half an hour later, the flight was only just over an hour but it saved us 15 hours on the bus. From start to finish, the whole journey took less than 2 and a half hours. We happened across a great hotel, Vinh Hung 3. (In Asia loads of succesful hotels open new premises with the imaginative appendage of a number. Vinh Hung 1, 10 minutes away, is a famous hotel: scenes from the film 'The Quiet American' were filmed there.) We managed to blag a room for US$10 a night, and when we saw the room our jaws hit the floor. It's gorgeous - loads of mahogany furniture, beautiful local artwork, huge billowy insect net above the bed, loads of lamps and a huge bed. And the pi? de resistance... a bath!! We hadn't had one since we left England, and had been longing for one! Showers are all well and good but you can't beat a bath. That settled, we headed out to explore Hoi An. As I said, the old streets are amazing, it's such an attractive place to walk around and just gape at your surroundings. There is certainly no dearth of tourists here, but it hasn't detracted from the beauty of the town and it's buildings. The only downer is the touts. There's got to be 250 tailor shops here at least - and this for a town smaller than Rugby. We decided to get some clothes made here. After much internet research by Mother Janice, we went for a shop called Yaly Couture, an absolutely cavernous shop with mountains of fabrics. We both decided on Italian wool, mine grey and Katie's navy. After hunting through hundreds of pictures I chose a very swish Hugo Boss design to be made, and Katie decided on a pinstripe skirt-suit. We went for our second fitting today, and they look great, you can tell they're high quality. These were great value but still quite pricey for our meagre backpacker's budgets. I also fancied getting a 'mod' style suit, skinny and fitted, so we went to the nearby cloth market where they have lower quality material, but the prices are incredible. I'm having one made for $52 with three ties (that's 25 pounds!!) and Katie is having a 3 piece trouser-suit made for the same price. I might even get another 'cos the price is just unbelievable. We're going to see some ancient ruins at a place called Myson tomorrow, and then we are heading a few hundred kms down the coast to Nha Trang, a beach resort, for a couple of days. Undoubtedly Hoi An has been one of the highlights of our trip, and we'll be sorry to leave.