It's the beginning of the end, people. The date is set and the tickets are booked for my return to the motherland. My last day in Vietnam will be the fifth of May. I'll be flying into Sydney on the eighth after a 2-day stopover in Singapore, right in time for dear old mum's birthday. After my contract finishes at the end of March, I'll be heading up to the north for a month, maybe do another motorbike trip while I'm up there and hopefully get my brother to get hi...

I find it funny that this time last year I was thinking of coming here and now, one year on, I'm thinking of coming back. I woke up this morning (ahem, this afternoon) and BANG, out of nowhere my mind is full of images, memories and dreams of home. Maybe it's that Christmas/end-of-year feeling, maybe it's that everyone is leaving in the next few weeks, maybe it's that I spent last night hanging out with the most true-blue Aussies I've ever met, or maybe it was th...

So far this road trip has been setback after setback, and we haven't even left yet! I'm sitting here at school when I should be on a train halfway to Da Nang by now, doing monthly student reports while eating cheesecake with chopsticks.We went back to the station this morning (and in the rain - it hardly ever rains in the morning here!!) to try and catch a train that was leaving at ten. Now they were saying we had to put our bikes on a service train which was lea...

Today has not been a lucky day for me...I paid too much for a new helmet, got stuck in choking peak-hour traffic, almost had an accident, couldn't find the police station to get back my motorbike registration card, and to top it all off, missed the train out of the city to Danang to start my road trip.I find that the longer I stay here, the lazier and grumpier I get. But really, even a bad day here is far more interesting than a good day back home, so I can't rea...

If I had to describe my time here, I'd compare it to being Peter Pan in Neverland. Living free in a world with no responsibilities. The main difference I see between the two worlds are rules. Australia (and Western society in general) is based around rules and order. Over here, anything goes. It tends to bring out the best and worst in people. Mainly the worst. For me, fulfilling boyish desires of motorbiking shenanigans and exploring some unknown and exotic worl...