This journey has taken me through the whole spectrum of Vietnam in a nutshell. Ancient ruins from centuries past, breathtaking misty moutains, electric green rice paddies through the countryside, lush green jungle in the pouring rain, loud, chaotic and crowded cities, picturesque sunny coastline to minority villages from another world, high up in the mountains. Hell, I've run out of adjectives...

It feels like we've skipped all the boring bits and just done the highlights. It just got better every day. We've been on the road for a week, but it feels like we're still to begin. Probably because we haven't had time for anything except endless roads, mountains, roadside coffee shops, bowls of pho, rice paddies, speeding rattletrap busses and dirty lorries and waiting at sua xe's(mechanics) for repairs and cruising past gorgeous scenery for days on end. Nothing has had time to sink in, its just been go, go, go.

The last day for me was the best strech. The drive from Quy Nhon to Nha Trang was (again, but even more so) simply amazing. Jaw-dropping scenery all the way. Gorgeous landscape overload. Sun, cliff-hugging highway, beautiful exotic islands and dramatic cloud formations all the way. There was something amazing to see around every corner.

We took the newly-completed coastal road from Quy Nhon to the town of Song Cau, devoid of traffic and unbelievably beautiful. From there, we took Highway 1A the rest of the way to Nha Trang, which is a great stretch of highway with more breathtaking scenery and suprisingly little traffic. The rice paddies gave way to palm trees and white sand with jagged mountains for a backdrop, it was like something out of Jurassic Park. Everything that could have gone wrong with bike went wrong. I had 2 flat tires, a snapped clutch cable, engine failure, a loose chain, a borken speedometer and my headlight stopped working. If I've learnt one thing from this for next time, its to expect the unexpected. On the last stretch of highway coming in to Nha Trang, we had 3 blown tires in an hour (2 of them mine...). Funnily enough though, each time there was a sua xe (mechanic shop) just a few metres away, and it only costs about a dollar. How convenient. The second time I almost had a massive accident, I was going about 50km/h when the tire blew out and I totally lost control of the bike. Miraculously I didn't fall off, it kind of bucked like a friggin horse! Getting to Nha Trang, what a feeling of accomplishment. After 7 full days of driving from city to city, zig-zagging across South Vietnam from coast to mountains and back to the coast, north, south, east (I think...) and west, through rain, sun, dust, potholes, mud, cows, kids and bugs. We had earned the right to just kick back on a beach and soak up the sun after all that crazy, tiring, sensory-overload driving. I needed a day to just let everything sink in and reflect. We went down to the station today and shipped our bikes back to Saigon via cargo train, and we take a sleeper train back tomorrow afternoon. I'm very much looking forward to fresh clothes, washing my filthy hair and going through a full memory stick of photos. Nha Trang itself is a lot bigger and wealthier (by Vietnamese standards) then I was expecting. Massive hotels line the beachfront, across from a tree-lined promenade, and the streets are quite clean. Its a city of excess doesn't even feel like Vietnam, you could be anywhere. Its just all the motorbikes and hawkers that give it away. Vietnam's disneyland, 'Vinapearl', a blight on a large island off the coast, is connected to the city by a cablecar. The sight of it totally ruins the feel of the beach, when looking to the south. Its got a massive hollywood-style sign imprinted on the side of the island's mountain, which lights up at night, and that stupid cable car... I refuse to go there. I spent the day listening to my ipod on the beach after cruising around the city on my bike and filling up the rest of my camera with photos, not having to wait for anyone or follow anyone, going at my own pace again. Nha Trang is a pretty nice place. Its the halloween weekend, so there's a tonne of people wandering around in costume. It does look a bit out of place in this country... Alright, enough blathering. This internet cafe is about to close. And so Tayne, Laura and Shannon arrive safely back in Saigon, and live happily ever after....until they go back boring lives of routine and the daily grind back in their respective countries in the 'real world'. Tam biet from Nha Trang.