Today is 6th June 2016 - 6 months since we started travelling!!

We are currently in Can Tho, in the Mekong Delta area…up until now, the weather has been pretty good, bar a few rainy bits in Ho Chi Minh…but as I write, the weather outside is resembling more of an English summer - it's raining. So I guess now is a good time to get up to speed with the blog and everything (the little of what) we've been doing since our last update.

I last left you in Mui Ne where we'd mainly spent the week playing ping pong and avoiding the rain showers (by shower, I mean complete downpour). We did make it on the tour of the sand dunes, fishing village and fairy stream (just a stream!) and it was ok. The sand dunes were just, well, sand dunes and it was very windy so we all got a good sand blasting (isn't that a beauty treatment? If not, they should do it, good exfoliator). There are 2 that you visit on the tour, the white ones and the red ones - the white ones where you can rent a quad bike for a small fortune and the red ones where you can rent a thin bit of plastic and try to toboggan down the hill - we did neither, but we did get to see some locals try and sledge down the side of the red dunes much to everyone's amusement - it's not the kind of sand for it unfortunately. The fishing village wasn't really what we were expecting either - we thought there might be a few fishing boats around, maybe a little village market…but it just seemed like an extension of the main town, so, as it was past lunchtime and it was beginning to rain a little bit, we opted for a beer stop. The last item on the itinerary was the Fairy Stream, which was actually quite nice - about a 15minute walk up a shallow stream and then back again, but the surrounding was very pretty. As it was our last night all together, we had a lovely meal out at a German (of course!) restaurant…it was a little extravagant, but definitely worth it! After almost 2 weeks, we were going our separate ways, even if we did all keep trying to convince the each other to come with us!

After one last game of ping pong the next day, the girls left to get their 17 hour bus north around lunchtime, we had a more respectable 5 hour bus south about half an hour afterwards. Seeing no need to hang around at the bus stop for too long, we hung back and finished our drinks….but that was more than enough time for the rains to come in. Wowweeeee….I'm still somewhat amazed by the amount of rain that can fall in such a short space of time. We had no choice but to brave the elements for the short walk down to the bus stop, the little lane down to the main road was now a fast flowing river and worryingly, a power cable fallen down and was now lying in the way…we gave that a wide berth - thank god for waterproof bag cover and waterproof jackets is all I can say!! I only wish I'd been able to video it, but alas, my phone is not waterproof. Unfortunately because of the rain, all the buses were running late so the girls were still there - although dry and undercover! It was all a bit frantic with different buses turning up in the wrong order, but slightly damp and only a few minutes late, we boarded our bus south to Ho Chi Minh City.

When we came to Vietnam before, we visited HCMC and saw most of the 'sights', so we weren't really in any rush to do anything. We first stayed in a hostel in the main backpacker area for a few nights and tried to work out what to do with the next 3 weeks!

Lured by the promise of a kitchen, we booked into an AirBnb apartment for a week in District 4, which was just south of the main 'tourist' area, although there wasn't much around there, it was nice to have a base and more importantly a kitchen where for the first time in 9 months, we had a home cooked meal!! Our host was lovely and even cooked us and the other guests a meal on our first night - such a treat for us not having to choose anything from a menu. Although it worked out a little bit more expensive, we chose to cook in a few nights as well - interesting with one pan and some chopsticks, but we got there in the end and for now, my cooking craving is sated!! Our room was really nice though and on the 23rd floor of a block of apartments so we had great views over the city both day and night. The weather turned out to be not so bad over that week with only one day where it rained for the whole day (so we stayed in and watched movies!). We were only about a 20 minute walk into the touristy bits of the city and spent quite a bit of time walking in and around, clocking up those kilometres again! Other than that, we achieved mainly quite normal and boring things - saw the dentist for a good clean and polish (amazingly cheap! Although we were naughty and followed it up with a cake and a cuppa at a little bakery!), bought some running shoes (after much deliberation….we're both feeling the need to start actually doing some exercise!), swapped a few books and had a week of good liver rest.

Before we knew it, the week was almost up and it was time to move on. After some gentle persuasion by Claudia and Rochelle, we decided to change our flight back to Thailand, bringing it forward by a week, so that we can meet them. We had been planning on going to Phu Quoc island where we went last time we were here, but weighing up the cost of the flight and potential weather against changing the flight and taking in a new thai island; we figured that if it's going to rain, then it's best to be with friends! So we had one week left in Vietnam (amazing how quickly time flies, 2 months already!) and opted for a trip out to the Mekong area for a change.

It's so much fun knowing you can beat the 'tourist' system sometimes. We managed to get to Can Tho for less money than some travel agencies were charging for one ticket! A few local buses and a 'local' travel agency later we were well on our way. Can Tho isn't quite the Mekong getaway that we might have been expecting, it's still a city of 1.2m people - but that feels wonderfully quiet compared with the 8.5m in HCMC. The town itself doesn't really seem to have much to offer other than the typical boat tours to the floating markets etc. Having seen a number of markets on our travels (one in Myanmar was floating), we have (rightly or wrongly) opted to forgo the boat trip to the market. Our next stop before heading back to HCMC for our flight was due to be Ben Tre, but a quick scout through the accommodation choices didn't really throw up much, so tomorrow we're going to go a bit further north to Vinh Long where we'll get a little ferry across the river to An Binh island for a few nights in a homestay/hostel. It feels like a really long time since we were surrounded by nature and in hindsight, we should have probably spent more time there than here in Can Tho, but hindsight is a wonderful thing as we all know. Anyway, I'm looking forward to being surrounded by more nature than buildings, even if it's only for a few nights.

…It's still raining by the way - see, it's not all sunshine and flowers!

Love to you all xx