We caught the red eye from Nha Trang, the 45 minute flight cost a fraction more than the train, but saved us around 6 hours. Ho Chi Minh city is far bigger than Hanoi, 5 rows of two-wheelers and 2-3 lines of four-wheeled vehicles inch along the four lane motorways. Even in the centre of town the roads are far wider than those of Hanoi and so the greater numbers of people and vehicles are better accommodated. We stayed round the corner to the backpackers area and...

The overnight bus journey from Hoi An was remarkably comfortable. We both had seats on the 'upper level' (the top bunk of bunk beds). The seats recline almost flat but they only incline to about 35 degrees so we had to lounge rather than sit unless we wanted to sleep. Our feet went into a cubbyhole under the chair in front and if you are under 170 cms tall, I reckon you could be very comfortable indeed. We both managed to sleep at least 7 hours of the 12 hour tri...

Our 5 hour coach journey took us by vast paddy fields, through mountains, across wide river crossings and alongside the ocean, the scenery is stunning in all cases. Hoi An is a small riverside town, famed for its pretty side streets and cheap tailors. Our hotel was about 3kms outside of the main town but a pleasant enough walk along the main thoroughfare found us amid the hundreds of small tailors and restaurants. We had done a fair amount of homework on the the...

The ancient city of Hué was an hours flight away, the journey to the airport was incident free until about 3kms away when a taxi driver flagged down our van. The long and short of it was that the cabbie was scamming his two female customers, he had picked up a friend en route and then drove the two women around the backstreets trying to intimidate them. He finally claimed he'd broken down in the motorway and demanded they pay 1.5 million dong (£45) for a fare t...

We were collected from our hotel in Hanoi and taken 3 hours east to our boat moored in Halong Bay. En route we were asked of we had any special dietary requirements, a couple said they didn't eat seafood, Jan said she didn't eat meat, to which she was asked "but you eat chicken, right?" Uh-oh. The bay is host to over two thousand limestone islands, a handful of which are inhabited by humans. We jump on a small launch and wave goodbye to the mainland for a coupl...