It's been an eventful few days... First of all, we travelled to Hue (approximately pronounced "whey", although it's endless fun trying to get the different nationalities in our group to say it), which is roughly in the centre of Vietnam. The optional trip we all took was for a motorbike tour. This involved sitting on the back of a motorbike and hanging on as the driver zoomed up dirt tracks, past obstacles such as bicycles or people. Much like the motorbike taxis in Hanoi, although the roads are worse. At least we were offered the chance of wearing a helmet - mind you, quite a few of us took one look at the helmets on offer and decided it would be safer to go without... The motorbike tour took us past several interesting landmarks around Hue - there was Bunker Hill, the Forbidden Purple City, a couple of pagodas, a woman with one arm (thanks to Agent Orange) who makes conical hats, a place where we were able to roll an incense stick, a mad old woman who read everyone's palms (I'm going to have five children and live to the age of 89, Steve and Joanne are apparently going to have two more children starting from next year - this came as a bit of a shock them, since Steve pointed out in his usual delicate Kiwi manner that she'd already been spayed)... For some reason, though, the biggest "wow" factor for me was a decaying blue Austin car tucked away next to a An Quang Pagoda. The car belonged to the Most Venerable Thich Quang Duc. On the 11th of June 1963 he drove from An Quang Pagoda and drove to the intersection of Ohan dinh Phung street and Le van Duyet street in Saigon. He then climbed out of the car, sat down in the lotus position, and burned himself to death in protest against the then regime's discriminatory policies against Buddhists. (The image of him burning to death has been used many times, for example on Rage Against The Machine's first album cover.) As we left Hue, we were rejoined by Cath and Chris, bringing our group back to Jesus and his 12 disciples (although Jami keeps pointing out that she's Jewish, and I reply that so was Jesus). Perhaps tiring of the constant cries of "Jesus, when are we meeting for dinner?" he appeared yesterday morning sans beard. Now that we're back to capacity, it became amusingly apparent that our group had split down the middle again - the two couples and the sisters at one table, the six single people at the other. We have managed to keep up with some sporting events. Pauline (who turned 57 on Saturday) is the resident bookie, I lost some money on England getting through to the quarter-finals of the world cup, but I then won 100,000 Dong on them being beaten by Portugal. She won it straight back when the All Blacks beat Australia, but I've just won it back (again) courtesy of Italy's win in the World Cup. We are currently in Hoi An, with a total of three nights here (the last one's tonight). Today was a free day (which was a blessing, as you'll soon see) but yesterday we had an optional snorkelling trip for $25 (US). It was pretty much an unmitigated disaster - it was run by two utterly disinterested arrogant French stoners who treated most of us with contempt and disdain (except for those of us who were wearing bikinis, for some reason). Then we couldn't actually go snorkelling because the water was too rough, but that was actually fine since the "equipment" was the same quality as you might find in a large Christmas cracker. Still, it presented a marvellous opportunity to gloat later... After dinner at a restaurant by the waterfront Doug, Jami, Veronique, Rachel and I went to one pub to see the end of the Wimbledon Men's final then went to Bar Tam Tam with the intention of watching the football (kick-off: 1am local time). We were just about keeping it together, but were all in danger of flagging as the match kicked off. Thankfully, a miracle cure for tiredness was presented by our discovery of Tequila and Red Bull. The arrogant frogs were in the same pub, so it was fantastic to watch their faces when Italy won the penalty shoot-out. By this time it was nearly 4am, but the caffeine and adrenaline meant that there was not much likelyhood of sleeping. For some reason we then went to the fish market to look around, and see some of the life of the town when tourists aren't normally present. Pleased to report that fishwives are the same the world over - screeching, pushing harpies that they are. There was an astonishing amount of activity as people shuttled around crates of freshly caught fish, sharks, eels, tiger shrimps, and who knows what else. Then it was time for a quick snack at one of the stalls in the fish market - and, as usual, it was much tastier than the crap they usually serve to the tourists - before cycling around the side streets at dawn. I managed to (accidentally) run over a snake that tried to slither out of the way. I don't know how injured it was, but it couldn't have been too happy... So after breakfast at a stall near the day markets (number of tourists visible: zero, except us) we returned to the hotel. It was just after 7am, and I found that Doug had helpfully locked the door to our room when he'd returned, so I went down and had a coffee with the early risers (i.e. Steve, who last night sent an e-mail to Intrepid complaining about the snorkelling fiasco). The caffeine is wearing off now, so after a couple of hours sleep this morning and an afternoon sitting on the beach, it's either time for a beer or a sleep. Most likely it'll be one after the other, in quick succession. At least there's a chance for a lie-in tomorrow before we fly to Saigon.