Apologies to Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman for cribbing their tagline. Today, after 24 hours on the road, it certainly seemed like we had travelled "the long way round". We knew moving on from Hoi An was going to be slightly more difficult as the nearest train station is at DaNang, necessitating a journey there before catching a train to Saigon. We also knew that part of the track had been damaged in the last few months when someone managed to crash into a supporting bridge. Rumour suggested that for this section of the journey passengers would be bussed to the next bit of functional track.

Despite wanting to make use of the Vietnamese trains we decided that on balance a 24hour bus from point A (Hoi An) to point B (Saigon) would be the most straightforward option. So tickets were purchased, and bags packed, we waited at our hotel for the 6 pm pick up. It was the usual Vietnamese sleeper bus - three lines of bunk-style seats running from front to back, with a facility for semi recline. As we got on there were the usual raised voices, and waving of plastic bags before our feet made it past the front door. John made his way into the bus saying "any seat, any seat? " with no response to this he started to slide himself into one of the lower bunks. This immediately initiated a reaction from the crew member who sprang to life and gestured to John that he should move further up and climb into an upper bunk. In return, this elicited the cry of "I asked if it was any seat, I'm 56 I can't climb up there." The crew of these buses speak little English, and on transfer days John's touch paper is always shorter than normal so it's not a good combination. Fortunately, World War 3 was averted by telling John to just sit down in a vacant lower bunk, and he was soon sleeping and snoring like an old boar. The journey seemed pretty uneventful. At 10 pm we stopped for a 40-minute break, which turned out to be 20 mins - just about enough time for a quick squat and a slurp of noodle soup, and we were off again. Gradually everyone nodded off, only to be roused at 4 am by the stereo playing at an incredible number of decibels to wake us all up. As people rubbed their eyes and looked around it became apparent we were in a town outside a closed travel agency. As the bus wasn't due to arrive in Nha Trang until 6 am everyone was unsure what to do. The bus crew had got off and started offloading backpacks onto the pavement. Enquiries soon revealed we were in Nha Trang and we were to wait outside the travel office for our connections. The streets were still dark, except for the street lights, although a few traders had started setting up roadside stalls and carts. At 5 am the lights went off and for a few minutes, the street remained in darkness. Then seemingly all of a sudden the darkness lifted and we were surrounded by daylight.

Some of the backpackers from our bus had just curled up on the pavement and gone to sleep, others had crossed the road to try the noodle soup. A woman pushed a cart into the space next to us, and soon her first customer arrived. Without exchanging pleasantries, or indeed any speech whatsoever, she took the lid off the large silver pot and deftly using a pair of chopsticks transferred a large pile of rice into a polystyrene tray, topped it with a sprinkle of something and handed it to her first customer. This continued with the steady stream of people, male, female, young and old who came over to the stall. Across the road, a young woman was doing similar trade selling bunches of herbs and bags of noodle from the back of her motorbike. It certainly adds a new dimension to meals on wheels.

A short walk to find a toilet took me to the seafront, whereby 6 am hoards of people were engaging in games of badminton, aerobics, or swimming. It was difficult to see many free sun loungers, even at this hour. Eventually, the tourist shop behind us opened its shutters and the young woman emerged with a clipboard, asking for tickets. We were the only ones going to Saigon. All the others were heading to the hills of Dalat, a delight we will have to save for another time. Shortly after a minibus pulled up, and we were told to get on. After a drive around town, we eventually pulled up at a bus station which seemed to be on the edge of town. Our driver kindly showed us to the appropriate bus, which was refreshing as we hadn't asked for directions at that point, and we climbed aboard. The luggage spaces soon filled up with mopeds and boxes but they found space to squeeze in our backpacks, and we headed off just after eight-thirty- an hour later than scheduled.

Many of the Vietnamese coaches seem to function as long-distance buses for the locals so there were numerous stops to pick up additional passengers along the way. We were soon driving through roadside towns, where the rice harvest had obviously already taken place. Fields looked arid as the stubble dried in the sun. The straw leftover from threshing stood in huge ricks alongside the road, and cows grazed wherever they could find something to eat. This is Vietnam - rice fields, mopeds and free-ranging animals. The journey took an interesting turn as one of the women who had just got on with a plastic shopping basket full of grapes started selling them to the rest of us. The bus set off and when it stopped again further along the road we were joined by corn sellers, more baskets of grapes, and women with small baguettes and pate wrapped in banana leaves. The bus was awash with grapes. As each vendor filled carrier bags with fruit and checked the weight on their portable scales. When grape sales reached saturation point the women left, leaving every conceivable space filled with grapes, corn and baguettes purchased by the passengers.

We'd not been back on the road long when we stopped again. This time there were no buildings close by, just a small roadside shrine. The drivers assistant proceeded to light a small fire by the shrine and burned various bits he'd brought with him in a carrier bag, before letting the bag flutter off in the breeze, as seems to be common practice here. After driving off again more and more passengers joined the bus, but few left. The bus population grew until all the seats were full and overspilling into the passageway. After each stop, the driver seemed keen to make up lost time pressing his horn loudly as he approached any traffic, but then losing the advantage as we had to stop and collect more parcels, or people. After the eventful journey, we eventually arrived at the hotel around 8 pm, 26 hours after leaving Hoi An.

Saigon city (Ho Chi Minh) was much nicer than we'd been led to believe and pollution levels seemed nowhere as high as Hanoi, despite the large numbers of mopeds. We spent the next day catching up with ourselves, and just explored the local environment. The lack of obvious transport systems to explore the city meant that unlike Bangkok where we could shuttle around the city on the Skytrain or metro, negotiating Saigon appeared to rely on taxis, local buses or feet. Otherwise it had many of the hallmarks of a major capital- numerous skyscrapers housing banks and hotels, a few areas of parkland, and lots of global brands. The humidity was high, and temperature in the high thirties, as it has been for most of our trip, so we weren't too sorry to return to the hotel, and the cooling effect of the air conditioning.