Andrea: We had mentally prepared ourselves for Hanoi. Meditations, chants and prayers to God, the Buddha, Vishnu and Tom Cruise were all meant to show us a good time in northern Vietnam. We'd heard some horror stories about Vietnam and we hadn't really had much trouble as of yet, but other traveler's stories would have us believe that Hanoi was the worst for scams and touts. In fact, almost everyone we had met who had already been to Vietnam had been happy to lea...

Vern: Bunk beds on a bus are a rather good idea and we arrived in Hoi An relatively well rested. Rested enough for me to notice that Hoi An is an anagram of Hanoi, the capital. This isn't remarked upon anywhere in the guidebooks or tourism literature and both cities are major stops on the tourist trail. And when I point it out, most people just shrug. Words are FUN, people! The 'ancient centre' of Hoi An is cluster of mustard colour buildings on the bank of the ...

Vern: The colonial French founded the pine-scented hill station of Dalat in the 1930s, finding the cool mountain air a welcomed reprieve from the constant heat. The impressionable emperor Bo Dai welcomed them in (or at least did not put up too much resistance) and chalets modelled after those in the Alps started popping up on the hills. The gentle slopes were cleared to grow wine grapes and other agriculture favouring a cooler climate, and Air France put out colo...

Vern: It turns out that Ho Chi Minh City is still very much called 'Saigon'. Despite being renamed after the fall of South Vietnam and the reunification of the country in the late seventies, no one, except a few bureaucrats use the official name. Saigon conjured up grand images in my mind of a historic and exotic pulse of the Orient, but the images I leave with are of motorbikes. Millions of motorbikes, herding through the city's grid system twenty-four hours a ...

Vern: In Asia, rice is everything. It is 75% of one's daily calories but so much more than that. Rice is etiquette and innuendo. In Thailand, the equivalent phrase for 'Hi, how are you?' is 'Have you eaten rice today?' and in Vietnam, couples who share a bed before marriage are said to be 'eating rice before the bell'. Rice is life and rice is death. A glutinous variety of rice is especially enjoyed at funerals, so instead of 'to kick the bucket' the Vietnamese s...