31st December 2005 We feel like we have deserved our lie in this morning, especially as we had a relatively sleepless night with the bed creaking really badly and the hotel staff waking us up at 6am by shouting to one another through the hotel. We immediately notice that the traffic here is equally as bad as in Saigon with the one major difference - the streets in the old quater are much narrower than Saigon and although it gives the place much more chara...

Wednesday 28th December We get up and prepare to leave Hoi An. First things first though and we have to post the clothes and other stuff back home. At 12kg the parcel nearly weighs as much as one of our ruck-sacks. Me thinks that we may have gone a little bit crazy in this town. We are now used to the post office personnel rooting through our items (probably just to check that we are not sending illegal or items dangerous to the republic of Vietnam ou...

24th December 2005 After a long night, feeling like we have been sleeping in a washing machine, we finally arrive into Danang at 6am. We exit the station into a melee of taxi drivers all shouting various prices at us. We think we have negotiated $8 to take four of us to Hoi An and then suddenly the price changes again. After much more bartering another taxi driver appears who agrees to $8. This is all fine until after driving for about 2 minutes he stops...

Wednesday 21st December Up early doors again for the trip to Nha Trang, we take one look out the window and the weather again confirms that it is time to move on. The journey is relatively crammed in at the back of the bus but the scenery on the way down is spectacular once again even though the mist came in and it was raining. The road on the way down was pretty narrow and snaked it's way around the mountains. The road itself was in a pretty terrible cond...

Sunday 18th December This morning we left Saigon and caught the 8hr bus ride to Dalat way up in the mountains, in the region appropriately named the Central Highlands. The weather when we leave Saigon is a cosy 25 degrees and a little overcast. We are expecting it to be a little cold in Dalat but hear it is a pretty nice place to spend a few days. We leave with our Irish buddy Fergus at 8 in the morning. Which actually turns out to be around 9 by the time...