GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, and it certainly is a good morning once you've managed to drink down a cup of rocket fuel coffee with condensed milk! Our trip of 1,000 miles from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh has begun....

Our first moment in Hanoi started with being ripped off for our taxi, but that goes without saying in the cities of Vietnam. Hanoi is the 1,000 year old northern capital of Vietnam. It's renowned for its crazy motorbike traffic which requires a death wish to cross the road without watching how the locals are doing it! Our first day was spent organising the next 2 days ahead, but we did have a wonder round constantly trying to avoid being hit by a motorbike! We were staying in the renowned Old Quater which is full of little street side cafes/bars and eateries packed full of locals sitting on plastic furniture which looks like it was stolen from playgroup! However you can't complain when you can get a decent meal and a beer for 1 pound! We've tried to delve into local food as much as possible (as there is no other choice!). Chowing down local favouraites such as Pho (fermented fish noodle soup), fresh spring rolls and washing it all down with the extremely strong rice wine. We tried to avoid ordering thit cho aka lassie, the vietnamese will try anything once. A local delicacy is having snake sliced open eating its still beating heart with a cup of its blood! Not sure that we will be trying that one anytime soon...

Vietnam is renowned for its copycats, we soon found that out when looking for a recommended tour company, Sinh Cafe, we searched for this tour office and soon became a bit of an enigma when we discovered every other building had "Sinh Cafe" above the shop door, but we eventually found the right one and booked our trip to Halong Bay for the next day.

Halong Bay (descending dragon bay) is a world heritage site made up of just short of 2,000 islands which from above looks like a dragon, if you watched the recent Top Gear through Vietnam Jeremy Clarkson and co made their motorbikes into motorboats here in order to get to the floating village within the bay. We took a scenic boat ride into Halong Bay which was soared up as a collection of mountainous islands surrounding a sheltered water village complete with its own school for the children. This community are born and die here and rarely venture to the mainland. We ate local seafood then took a small boat through the watery caves and around the village. It truly was a magical place. We then visited a couple of caves in the area which were lit up like Santas Grotto with lovely plastic penguin bins scattered, which was a bit random and ruined it slightly! The next day we bought a train ticket to Ninh Binh. The vietnamese have an interesting method of queuing which involves gouging with elbows and pushing eachother away to get to the counter, they even interupt when you are in the middle of buying a ticket! The 2 1/2 hr south was quite an experience as it's not like catching the National Express to London. Basically 3 people were crammed onto each park-like bench and the carriage was a cross between a chicken coop and an armoured military train with bullet-proof metal shutters for windows! Rob had some ladies baby on his lap the whole way. Furthermore all the announcements were in Vietnamese, the train stopped in random places with no names and no-one spoke English so we had no idea when to get off! Luckily through the use of gestures and a pen and paper we managed to find out when to get off! Getting off was also a challenge as we couldn't fit our massive backpacks through the overcrowded walkway to get off! We finally made it to Ninh Binh anyway, which is a small city surrounded by beautiful mountains with rice paddie fields. Our 1st day was spent looking for some form of nutrition that wasn't barbequed dog. The next day we got up early for a 40km guided bike ride around the local area. The 1st challenge was navigating through the scary highways of the city. Locals use their horn to warn you when they are behind you which can give you quite a fright when a lorry lets off its extremely audible fog horn. The roads are like a symphony of horns, it never stops and they toot for the sake of tooting basically! So we eventually made it to the countryside where we firstly took a boat ride down Tam Coc river to visit caves carved out by the water. It was a beautiful journey full of the aromas of flowering orchids. We then walked to an 800 year old temple where we made a prayer with incense and ate "lucky fruit" offered to us by a monk, unlucky for Trudi though as it was banana and it would have been rude to refuse so she took a few small nibbles whilst holding her breath but once the guide and the monk turned their back for a split second, she gave her banana to me! We then cycled through local rice paddie villages to the audience of multiple locals shouting "hello", conical hatted women hard at work, cockrels cock-a-doodle-dooing, mountain goats bleeting and water buffalo wallowing. I got a lot of attention from the locals whilst on our bikes - due to my pale skin and white hair, the locals see this as something beautiful and are often seen walking round with umbrellas in the sun to prevent themselves from tanning. It is a huge compliment to tell a vietnamese local that she has pale skin and many soaps etc habe whitening in made to whiten the skin.....must stay away from those says Trudi - "it will be no good for my tan!" Anyway, we then made our way to a famous pagoda (place of worship) in a mountain face and a couple of other local temples by which point we were beginning to flag in the afternoon heat and we didn't exactly dress to the occassion, forgetting we were visitng religious sites we were not covered up and got a few stares! A relief from the heat but not from the embarrassment and humility. Some parts of the track to the temples were poorly lit and the guide could see I was struggling so to my surprise he grabbed my hand saying "take care my friend" and helped guide me down the steps. Trudi was chuckling behind at my humming to try and disguise my embarrassment, however it was a very sweet thing to do and led to me doubling his tip! We then took the bumpy mountain trek back to Ninh Binh which was full of panoramic views of the moutains over the glistening paddie fields. Instead of motorbike traffic to avoid it was stray dogs and chickens. We thought we could finally get some respite on our return to Ninh Binh but not until the guide dragged us up a hill to look over the city! We could hardly keep ourselves awake at this point and we were desperate to go to the loo after having held it in for 4 hrs! All in all though one of the best trips we have been on so far, full of amazing views and rich vietnamese culture and we had a good giggle. Now waiting to get the overnight bus down to Hue which is almost halfway between Hanoi and HCMC....

So what was supposed to be a 10 hour journey to Hue turned out to be a 17 hour nightmare journey from hell! We stepped onto a bus crammed full of locals not only in the seating area but lying all over the floors as well. It was a bank holiday so I guess all other transport was fully booked. We were made to take our shoes off, ironically for cleanliness, however when the 1st break stop is after 14 hours and there is only one toilet between 60 people, the toilet floor slowly started rising like a yellow oil well! There is nothing quite like enduring a bumpy hot bus ride with yours and, 59 other peoples feet saturated in eachothers bodily fluids! Somehow someone had managed to get it all over the wall and handrail so going over the bumps whilst trying to hover - there was basically no escaping it! Getting to the toilet itself was like scaling some kind of human assault course with many foot to face episodes! Due to good cleanly upbringings from our mothers, on immediate arrival to Hue all clothing, footwear and skin was thoroughly boiled! This was supposed to be a sleeping bus (the chairs were like bunk beds) but due to constant horn blowing by the bus driver and there awful, cheesy music videos showing it was like trying to sleep on the M25 with everyone blasting out europop from their radios.

Hue, a world heritage site is approximately 200km south of the old demilitarized zone. On arrival here all we wanted to do was go to sleep and have a shower, however to add insult to injury our hostel decided that due to us being 8 hours late they had put us in a massive dorm room full of annoying, loud australians rather than the tranquility of the private ensuite bedroom we had requested. Most of our time in Hue itself was spent recovering however we did venture to a local market famous for their production of conical hats, of which Trudi purchased one. There was once again an unusual fascination with Rob's complexion leading to one lady in a pharmacists seductively stroking his arm! That night Rob spent the night vomiting due to some bad food (from western food can you believe it!). We then had to rise at 5am to go on our 400km DMZ tour, however the experience was worth it. We visited a number of famous areas along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the RockPile (a famous GI base), the infamous Khe Sanh base where one of the most brutal and bloodiest fights occured and is name home to some well known vietnamese coffee. We finally squeezed down Vinh Moch tunnels which are 3 storey labyrinth of tunnels down to a depth of 25m. For a gore-fest and pyrotechniques addict who owns a vast collection of Vietnam war films, it was extremely thought provoking being here, providing almost a sense of guilt for our ignorant enjoyment of these films for the wrong reasons. Standing on crater scarred earth surrounded by lifeless mountains where thousands of tonnes of napalm has led to baron soils underwhich countless US and VC bodies still lie entombed by unexploded ordinance and landmines too dangerous still to allow the search for these men, it really evokes what terrible atrocities and anguish both sides endured. Also when walking through the claustrophobic tunnels where hundreds of vietnamese civilians lived in fear for days on end enduring countless rounds of napalm, clusterbomb and battleship rounds slamming into their home it gives you a sense of sheer admiration for their tenacity. Compounding this emotion are the scattered, now grown up children that spent the majority of their developing life in these tunnels, who are now mentally impaired, deaf and mute.

The next day we took a relatively short 4 hour sweltering oven bus to the beautiful seaside town of Hoi An famous for its many skilled and more importantly cheap tailors. Trudi being the fahion queen succumbed to temptation and is having a tailor fitted silk dress designed by herself which she is very excited about picking up later today! Rob however resisted the temptation of having a leather jacket tailor made. You can't help but become absorbed in this towns quaint little windy streets lined with numerous tailors, bicycles and daintly glowing lanterns to light the paths at night. Off to the beach this afternoon before a 3 hour vietnamese cooking course tonight and a trip to the infamous My Lai massacre site tomorrow....

Al fresco vietnamese "cooking" experience involved more moments of absolute hilarity than actual culinary experience! The 3 hour lesson consisted of the 2 of us and an extremely funny south african guy. The main problem was the vast language barrier between the 3 of us and the chefs. We were taught how to make wanton soup, fried pork spring rolls, sweet chilli squid salad and BBQ beef stir fry. We were expecting to have a station each to cook (maybe we have been watching too many Masterchefs!) instead we were presented with a chopping board and a gigantic meat cleaver to wield! So as the sun went down the lighting became poor and we were expected to juliene a thousand vegetables as though we were blind folded and in front of us was an AK47 to strip under close scrutiny! However this all added to the charm and enjoyment of the class and as well as a number of great giggles with the south african guy we did learn how to reproduce the dishes.

On our final day in Hoi An we hired a driver to take us to the infamous site of the My Lai massacre in 1968. It's hard to believe that such an awful atrocity could occur in such a beautiful place, where the only provication for attack was the wind bristling through the trees and the chickens clucking in the fields. We first went round the musuem which is full of the horrific photographs of the massacre taken by the Charlie Company photographer bizarrley. A very chilling sight which really stirs the emotions. We then watched a moving documentary of one of the american soldiers being interviewed 40 years later by one of the victims. We were both sat watching the screen with watery eyes as never seen such raw emotions. Finally we walked around the reconstructed village which was plotted on the original site. We were the only people there as suprisingly it's rarely visited by tourists but mostly american Vietnam war veterans. There was an eerie silence as we walked across paths imprinted with fleeing bare feet and heavy US army boots. Each remains of houses had a plaque outside with the families names and ages who were killed and victims ranging from the elderly to new born babies. We came away with a much profounder sad and even dark understanding of what this war was.

After a much more comfortable 12 hour night bus we arrived in the seaside town of Nha Trang. We were so exhausted from travelling that all we did here was go to a spa resort for mud baths, hot springs, saunas and a massage. We didn't even make it to the beach we were so exhausted! It was only 100 yards away!

We are now right in the south of Vietnam in a place called Mui Ne beach. This is supposed to be one of the more beautiful beachside spots however unfortuantely vietnamese have little understanding as to the environmental reprocusions of littering. Therefore, what could easily have been a tropical paradise is more of a rubbish tip. A valuable lesson for back home as this is definately going to encourage us to recycle more. Furthermore, the only places to stay here are relatively expensive resorts so we had to opt for the cheapest which appears to have shot us in the foot as although clean and comfortable we have stayed in better hostels! Everytime we try to go into their beachside restaurant we are repelled by statements of, "no no we are closed, not serve food today". We were also refunded some money as once again it is a bank holiday so there are no staff to make our breakfast in the morning we depart. Luckily it's our final leg to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) tomorrow before crossing the border to Cambodia.

Apologies for no photos as yet - the computers here date back to the Apollo missions so cannot upload photos until more modern ones are found!