Saigon....

The last few days since our last blog entry have been a blur of bus journeys, beach visits, booze bucket encounters and a lot of sleeping.

We have travelled from Hanoi to Hue, to Hoi An, to Nha Trang, to Saigon in 4 bus rides totalling 36 hours. A regular width bus is not wide enough to accomodate 5 fully grown sleeping men, even if you know 3 of them (we had to sleep with 2 extra Aussies, which we met quite often on our journey south through Nam).

So in brief, Hoi An is a beautiful City even if we did have to walk for 45 minutes to get to the beach. We were rewarded though with a delicious meal of shrimp/fish (probably caught that day). It had a brilliant Chinese quarter and we met a mad American who makes his living selling Vietnamese Silk in the US for 300% profit.

Nha Trang is the Blackpool of Vietnam, it has stunning white beaches edged in graffitied concrete, filled with husslers and westerners by day, and Vietnamese locals by night. A bustling town with plenty of bars and restaurants with buckets by the bucket load. We met an Aussie who wrote for the FT (Financial Times). The only downside was that John had his camera stolen by a pickpocket on the way back to the hotel. Oh well - live and learn.

Saigon - We have soaked up a lot of culture in this City due to its War Museum and its Re-unification Palace (see photo). We spent a good few hours witnessing the atrocities of the Vietnam War - so much so that we had to go straight to the nearest bar and have 6 beers. America has definitely not gone up in our estimation. We saw some brilliant tanks though.

Tomorrow we are on yet another bus journey to Cambodia.

Speak to you soon.

Love

JDJ