Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) We arrived in HCMC expecting it be very much like Hanoi but we were pleasantly surprised! It is a much more modern city, and the people are noticably friendlier! We arrived on bus (our usual method of travel these days) and we were organised enough to know of a couple of guest houses just 2 mins walk from where the bus dropped us off - so off we headed down a very narrow but busy alleyway which we otherwise wouldn't have ever...

Mui Ne So we weren't sure why it was a sleeper bus despite it being a 6 hour journey during the day! But we opted for top bunks this time and worked out that not all beds are the same size - so we found the best ones for us and we were more comfortable than before! Although this was tainted a little bit by a 1.5 hr unscheduled stop at a petrol station which didn't sell food/drinks! When we arrive at Mui Ne in the heat of the afternoon we assume the usual ro...

How fast can you run in flip flops?! We set off from Hoi An on a sitting bus this time! It was an overnight bus leaving Hoi An at 6pm and arriving in Nha Trang at 7am the next morning. After about 2 hours of travelling on the bus we pulled into a service station for a 'comfort break' (I would like to point out that there is absoultly nothing comfortable about going to the toilet over a hole in the ground, with cockroaches dropping on your head!). So we get off t...

Hoi An Hoi An is a UNESCO world heritage site and when you arrive here it's not hard to see why; it is a beautiful quaint fishing town on the banks of a small river with the beach only about 5km away (the other end of China Beach). After having to drag ourselves away from China Beach we were expecting our next destination to be a disappointment but Hoi An wasn't - and it is only about 15 miles from China Beach. Hoi An has beautiful french colonial architecture...

We took a sleeper bus from Hanoi to Da Nang - which was a 17 hour journey! The sleeper buses sound a lot better than they really are - they are basicaly a bus that has been decked out with purpose built bunkbeds (see the pics when we get round to putting them on). Which sounds ok apart from they are built for the average sized Vitenamese - sarah was fine in hers she fit quite snuggly in her little bed - I however ended up trying to fold myself up in order to fit ...