So what happened then???

Hello... well we really have no excuse for not having this finished ages ago so sorry about that. Well we headed to Kota Kinabalu, hung out and watched some fireworks for Chinese New Year, then got a flight to Kuching, or cat city as it is also known for the end of the Chinese New Year festivities.

What we hadn't quite realised was that it was serious rainy season down there... and all the Kuching peeps had taken time off and headed out of the city to celebrate with their families. We booked ourselves into a nice hotel (no-one around so cheap!) and waited out the rain for 3 or 4 days not doing much but staring out over the river and wondering if we could avoid fast food for dinner again. Not much to report really!

We hopped on a flight to Singapore where the man who inspired this blog Andy Leonard put us up for the night and showed us around as well as very generously allowing us to store out bags at his place whilst we headed off to the Philippines... (We go back there and so I'll talk about Singapore later)

The Philippines are lovely, of that there is no doubt... Manila however is not an easy city to love... the Jeepneys (kind of local buses with the front of a jeep... and the back of a covered flatbed truck... generally painted garish colours and with Catholic accoutrements) add a touch of charm but the traffic is massive and doesn't move and walking around is pretty much impossible... our impression wasn't helped by the fact that having pre-booked a room and followed the instructions we then found ourselves approaching midnight in the foyer of a place with the same name... but without our booking which had been made on the other side of town... we should have had this cracked by now :) they found us space in what appeared to be a converted cupboard... we had to keep the door cracked open to allow any air in... it wasn't all sunsets and seafood.

To be honest it was probably such a shock as it came straight after Singapore which works perfectly, is clean and has little traffic etc. we had lost our travelling armour in just a couple of days! We headed south and for the islands as quickly as we could. We spent 2 weeks in ending the trip pretty much as it had begun... we sunned ourselves, went snorkeling and ate on the beach most nights overlooking the ocean and watching the sun go down... we had intended to travel around the islands but when we found a lovely spot and met some people we decided that we had done enough wandering and maybe we should just relax... and so we did.

We ended our trip in Singapore, we explored with Andy, went to the amazing zoo and the night safari as well, traipsed up a jungle hill and wandered around in a daze at how clean and efficient Singapore is "what do you mean you don't have to agree a taxi fare in advance? Are you quite mad?' we traipsed along the imported beach (no really.... from the Philippines actually) and ate ice cream whilst Andy explained how you could measure the economic climate by counting the number of ships you could see from his window... this was back at the beginning of the year, when he moved in there were no ships at anchor... now they stretched over the horizon and it meant the world wasn't moving things around.... how right he was.

Thanks for reading, we had an amazing time. Hopefully this allowed people to keep up with where we were and what we were doing. For us it will be an account of a great trip and remind us of the things that are already fading from our memories. Thanks to the people who recommended places to go and things to see (Amy, Will, Emil, JT & Pip, Andy and others we met along the way) and to people who let us know that they were enjoying the blog, you made the trip better and easier than it had any right to be and kept us carrying on with this record that we are both really pleased to have.

Cheers

Ben & Deb - September 09 - not lost anymore and settled in Perth.

Lost in Borneo

Right now where were we? Ah yes, we had set of for Borneo after a second encounter with bed bugs... we managed to avoid them after this but we did spend part of each night before bed feverishly checking for evidence of their presence!

We landed in Kota Kinabalu ahead of schedule and without much of a plan as to what to do... we had plans to climb the mountain of the same name as it was reputed to be easy... the websites boasts that a 90 year old Italian grandmother had made the ascent... whether she survived to make the descent is not disclosed. Well we had pretty much decided to go for it when two things happened:

1) We found out that the Malaysian government has leased the rights to the climb and the accommodation to a single company... meaning that the climb with accommodation was going to be 2 or 3 times what we had expected at around £300 each which put it out of our reach really... unless we ignored the budget and just did it anyway.

2) An unwritten rule of internet cafes was broken. When using skype or something similar... you are required to understand that the person on the other end has a volume control, and the whole thing works through magic... you don't have to shout loud enough for them to hear you... Well thanks to flagrant disregard for this rule... we, together with the surrounding suburbs, were able to share in the experience of a fellow traveller who was 'farkin knackered' and who's 'legs feel like they're gonna drop off innit' ... apparently she had made the trip already... over the collective grinding of other patrons teeth we were able to discern that 'we was walking for 12 hours man' and 'it's fuckin dark up there and freezin' which was enough to persuade us that our money would be better spent doing something else... preferably in the warm and possibly looking at fluffy or glittery scaly things.

With that out of the way we headed East to Sepilok where by a happy feat of not being able to read the map (we knew who had it.... but not how to use it) we found ourselves not only where the Orangutan rehabilitation centre was... but also at the jumping off point for the jungle river camps that we were considering as alternatives to mountain climbing... well that's that money spent then :)

At the rehab centre they have a stage 1 area where the orangutans are released within a large area of forest, but there are regular feedings at two posts and they can come back to get fed if they wish, one of these areas has viewing areas open to the public but there are no guarantees that you'll get to see any Orangutans... well we got very lucky with a couple of mothers coming back with babies holding on together with a couple of younger males jostling for dominance and chasing off the wild monkey troop that come by for the free food as well. We returned the next day hoping for more of the same but a torrential downpour put paid to that... although we were treated to the site of an Orangutan holding his hand over his head in an attempt to ward off the rain, determined to get his feed despite the torrential downpour with an expression that said he wished he'd stayed in bed that morning.

With ourselves and our stuff again wet through we set off to the deep jungle to stay in a river camp. It wasn't quite as rough as we had anticipated however as our accommodation was more like ski chalets than rough mud huts. We went for two days and were up at the crack of dawn to board our boats and go in search of Elephants, monkeys and monitor lizards! We were again so close but yet so far with the elephants... we saw tracks and heard the wards being used in nearby plantations but we couldn't track them down. We did see proboscis monkeys, a pregnant, and truly wild Orangutan, Vipers, Macaques, Horn bills... oh and lots of jungle obviously. We saw the sun rise over the river and on a trip with a lot of nice skies we saw what felt like the whole milky way.... there's not much in the way of light pollution in the deepest jungle :)

We went another night walk... this was more wild and we encountered a sleeping kingfisher... did you know some birds just sleep on a branch? We didn't. We 'found' a whole load of leeches... but not much else... possibly due to the enormous scream given out by one of our party when a confused moth repeatedly bumped into their head torch.

Next stop is Kota Kinabalu again before catching a flight south to Kuching, we have two stops left after that, we are reaching the end but we're feeling excited about what's to come.

He marched them up to the top of the hill... and they had a cup of tea, which was nice.

OK so we arrived in the Cameron Highlands which is in central Malaysia, we took an extra bus and took an extra 3 hours to save some cash but felt pleased with ourselves as we'd navigated ourselves using public transport rather than hopping in a minibus!

The highlands are named after the British chap who 'discovered' them which probably came as news to the people already living there. It is a popular place for Malaysians to get away as due to the altitude it is a lot cooler than the rest of the country, the Brits built lodges up in the hills and built tea plantations that remain today.

The thing to do in the highlands is to walk around and up and down the hills peering into tea plantations and stopping off in tea rooms for tea and scones, we spent the first couple of days pottering about on the lower slopes before attempting 'Devils Peak' (it's 6,666 ft above sea level). One of the saddest things was as you walked alongside a mountain stream the trees alongside were festooned with plastic, a trip up an observation tower was a little hairy as the first 3 or 4 steps were missing... well it was 4 by the time we left as one didn't survive our trip up... I was grateful for the tetanus shot as I managed to step on a rusty nail.

The walk up Devil Peak was to be the high-light of our stay, it was bigger than any of the other walks we had tried but the chap at our guesthouse thought we would be OK and so off we went! Well the path was perhaps a little more jungle than we had anticipated. We were often clambering over tree roots trying to avoid spiders and imagined snakes at every turn... for those of you who have seen the film it reminded us of the fire swamp in the Princess Bride, we joked about ROUS's and tried to keep our spirits up as the skies darkened and it started to rain.

Our spirits took a bit of a dive when after an hour and half of clambering up tree roots we found that the path was missing up a head... in fact the path was still visible but it was 500 feet below together with the rest of the landslide. A glance between us was enough to decide that unless it was completely impassable we would be going on...we had come too far to give up now! We were not the first to pass that way and by following some scuffed footprints and broken twigs we found a way around but we were beginning to suspect that this had been an overambitious trip for us. We were wet, sweaty, dirty and tired and the path ahead was steep and overgrown. Oh, and our shoes were very wet again. We geed ourselves up and a tiring hour later we emerged blinking into the light to find a sign telling us we had arrived at the top... we turned to admire the view but were shrouded in mist, it had been that kind of day but we were elated to have made it to the top.

After a rest we searched in vain for a bus stop or a taxi rank but finding none we walked down the road in search of tea, it was a long walk but the countryside was beautiful and we were feeling good, the sandwiches and tea when we did find them were consumed sitting out on a deck watching the tea pickers moving along the tea plants picking the tips... we were exhausted but it might have been the best cuppa ever.

We'd been lucky so far on the journey avoiding major weather problems and making most of our connections... well the week after the highlands was supposed to have been spent on a tropical island supposed to be one of the nicest in the world before catching a flight to Borneo... well we won't go into details but we arrived in the departure town late, checked into a hostel to find bed bugs again (we spent the night huddled up on the concrete outside the room) and to find that the boat to the island hadn't sailed in 4 days due to weather and that if we got there we might not be able to get back... we binged on fast food to comfort ourselves and then swallowed the painful costs of changing our flight to go to Borneo early... as we had a day to kill, and had faced bed bugs twice in a week we booked ourselves into a 4* hotel whilst we waited for the flight... and we didn't even feel guilty... well maybe a little... and people did stare as we traipsed across the lobby... but this was Malaysia and everyone stares anyway so we hardly noticed.

All creatures great and small...

Taman Negara is the largest and most accessible of the national parks on Peninsular Malaysia, for those of you that don't know (and we didn't before this trip...) Malaysia is split into two distinct parts, peninsular Malaysia that hangs down off the bottom of Thailand, and Borneo Malaysia that is on the Island of Borneo, educational this isn't it...

Getting to the park involves a bus ride through some amazing mountain and scenery, precarious roads with vertigo inducing drops off to the side and jungle stretching off to the horizon below. At one of the drinks and rest stops we made had a toilet balanced on the hillside 15 feet below the road... Debbie being the more intrepid toilet stopper made that trip whilst I took photos (of the view, not the toilet), I nearly typed a review of the toilet here but whilst people who have made similar trips may understand the obsession we developed with the availability and standard of toilets other readers may just think us strange so we shall move on...

The national park itself is huge but the most visited part is reached by taking a 3 hour boat trip up through the jungle itself and you stay in a village on one side of the river whilst the treks through the park etc are on the other side and reached by river taxi, we intended to stay two nights in the park and so quickly found some beds in a hostel for £2 a night each (shoestringers remember!) and caught a boat across to the jungle.

On our first walk into the jungle we saw a troop of monkeys, a giant colourful pigeon, some jungle peacocks and what we thought was wear and tear to the pathway (broken planks and fallen trees etc.) but what we later found out was evidence of a bull elephant that was seen near the park whilst we were there, it was the first time an elephant had been seen near the tourist area for years apparently but the jungle is so thick that they can be feet away and you'd never know they were there.

That evening we went on a guided night walk in the jungle, whilst initially cavalier about the warnings to keep our hands away from trees etc. we learnt to keep our distance when our guide pointed out some huge spiders sitting on the trees... we also saw stick insects, cockroaches, scorpions, a bright green viper and some termites which we helpfully located by standing on them... they bite. We spent 20 minutes watching a salt lick from a hide but it was a full moon and so the animals stayed away so we headed back to our accommodation... but our night animal experiences were not over...

As we lay in our bunks that night talking about what we'd seen and the jungle walks we had planned for the next day we realised we had a couple of insect visitors, nothing unusual for the jungle... and then we noticed a few more... and then a few more... our room was infested with 100's of bed bugs that were now marching intently across the bed covers... yuck.

We wandered out into the night looking for alternative places to stay but this is the jungle and there are not a great number of holiday inns or places with 24 hour receptions ... we managed to find the chap in charge of where we were staying (who didn't seem surprised by the problem) and he put us in another room but we weren't expecting to sleep much, it was 2am already and we were revising our plans to allow us to head back to a city in the morning, we did manage to get some sleep but not before our night was further disturbed.

Whilst lying awake and obsessively switching our torches on to check for more bugs we heard a growling noise and crunching of bone from the bins outside the house next door... Deb wanted me to see what it was but I mumbled sleepily about it being a dog and tried to go back to sleep...well the noises persisted and sounded more aggressive (from outside although Debbie was getting more insistent too as she hadn't seen any dogs in the village) and so eventually I was persuaded to get up and look outside the window... where we saw a mother and baby tapir who had come out of the jungle to get at the food in the bins, tapir are not common in the park and were on the list of creatures you might be lucky enough to see if you trekked deep into the park... and there they were 6 feet from our window and completely unaware of our presence.

The tapir meant we didn't high-tail it out of there in the morning, we went on a walk through the jungle by ourselves again and went up a treetop cable walk, Deb spotted a monitor lizard and in the trees had a giant squirrel (about 3 feet long) nearly jump on her head and I was buzzed by a flying lizard, despite the bed bugs we had a great time and had seen far more wildlife than we had hoped for but the tapir had been the hi-light, we caught the afternoon bus to avoid the possibility of bed bugs again though.

Tall towers, bearded men, and Imelda Markos...

Hello again, well it doesn't take much to figure out that we have let the blogging lapse a little... well the reason for this is that we have a virus on our memory card so the photos are currently... unavailable... we are working on this (they aren't lost fortunately) so we delayed the blog as well.

So we touched down in KL and wandered slightly dazed from the journey around the shopping malls, fast food restaurants and general hub bub of KL. A personal delight for me is that Malaysia is the home of Proton! For anyone who has known me long enough will understand why there is now a photo of me alongside a lime green Proton...

Well we were going to try and get back to the shoestringer ethos after enjoying the minihotels of Vietnam and so we headed off to our £5 a night hostel to the dubious comfort of our room... despite the frugal nature of the place there were a surprising number of people tapping away on swish laptops but hey ho. The place itself was like a rabbit warren but we had a great time hanging out with other travellers, watching dvd's in the lounge areas and listening to the torrential monsoon downpours going on outside... we both encountered a bearded half naked man during nighttime trips to the communal bathroom who appeared to sleep in the lounge... this use of every possible sleeping area went someway to explaining how a building, that we estimated to hold 20 rooms spread across 3 floors could hold enough people to account for the approximately 100 pairs of shoes you had to clamber over on your way up the stairs... now either there were people paying £2 to camp on the roof (scarily possible if you consider half naked bearded couch sleeper) or Imelda Markos had moved in upstairs and has developed a thing for well worn flip flops.

Apart from the eccentric hostel we visited the Petronus towers, sat through a 15 minute promotional video on the Petronus company and then wandered around a sky bridge for 5 minutes taking photos... we then spent a couple of hours shopping for books in the massive mall underneath... some things don't change no matter how far from home you are.

We took some time to visit the main mosque in the city, it was the first time either of us had been inside a mosque and we weren't quite sure what to expect to be perfectly honest. The people were very friendly and lent Debbie some rather fetching mauve robes whilst we had a wander around the gardens and prayer areas in the central courtyards. The interesting thing about the whole experience was the number of men who were stretched out, facing toward Mecca whilst having a nap... it was unexpected and we did wonder whether the call to prayer had the added benefit of waking up the truly pious and sending them on their way back to work/home... maybe they could try something similar after songs of praise to send people back to the kitchen to do the dishes?

The building itself was really beautiful but like so many places in KL the times have moved around it and from the courtyard you can see a large HSBC, a KFC and a burger king with a 7-11 nestled between them with a soundtrack of honking cars and metro trains from the surrounding main roads and overhead lines, the place was peacfull but as soon as you stepped outside you were back into the hustle and bustle of modern KL.

It was whilst exploring the city that we encountered something that was to become depressingly familiar over the next couple of weeks... Malaysian men like to stare at women... hmmm actually that's not quite correct... they like to leer and it's not good. Still we hadn't come there to be stared at, or indeed to hear about the latest underwater oil drilling technology... we had come to Malaysia to see some wilderness and after a couple of days we boarded a bus to head to Taman Negara which is the largest national park in peninsular Malaysia.

Hanoi, Halong Bay, and a perfume pagoda!

Hanoi, capital of Vietnam and home to giant lake dwelling turtles (really), water puppet theatre, and a giant mausoleum containing the embalmed remains of a national hero! A hero who's dying wish was that he be cremated and given a normal send off (again... really) Hanoi is a strange and exciting place.

A few high-lights of Hanoi... Well the water puppets were ace, basically Punch and Judy in water, with fireworks and dragons... what more can you want! The soundtrack is entirely live and mostly Vietnamese singing and yet you understand exactly what is going on, and even if you don't the action is pretty self explanatory... they also have evil ticket sellers who play tricks on tourists...

We knew that the shows were popular and so wandered up on our first day in Hanoi expecting to book for the next day, we were confronted by a sign at the front of the queue telling us the shows were sold out for today and tomorrow... damn... well after some thought we decide to book for our last day in Hanoi some 5 days later, all well and good and no major drama. Sadly others were not so lucky!

Whilst we waited to buy our tickets a couple came up to us (American, not that it matters, but it's interesting to note that Post Obama (PO) a lot of former 'Canadians' are now happy to admit where they really come from...) and asked if there were tickets available for today? Well we tell them about the sign and they are sad :'( as they are leaving tomorrow and they've tried to get tickets twice before and it's always sold out... oh well it's just not to be... except that when we get to the front we are offered tickets for that night... EVIL ticket people!

We searched for the couple in vain but they had wandered off into the night, probably to argue about why they hadn't bought tickets in advance and possibly to part forever after their flight home.. and all because of a sign that the ticket sellers had probably forgotten about, and that may have been up since 2004... sorry random American couple.

We spent new year in Hanoi and had been warned not to expect too much as the real celebrations in this part of the world happen at lunar or Chinese new year. We met up with a couple of Aussie girls we had met earlier in our trip up Vietnam and followed the stream of people heading towards the giant turtle lake where we found people milling around, eating candyfloss and generally being festive! Hurrah!

Well this was the thing we thought and milled with everyone else and tried to find out what was going on... there were thousands of people all gathered together but as yet we did not know why! We found a spot to have a couple of drinks and watch the world go by and we noticed that attention was focused on the lake and that something would happen at midnight! We drank and talked and waited. A little before midnight a hush descended and we stood expectantly and looked towards the centre of the lake wandering if there would be a firework display or a countdown or something? We checked and rechecked our watches, had the time passed? Were they late? People began to stream off into the night.

Nothing had happened. The people of Hanoi had gathered together, all looked out across the lake at midnight... at which point nothing was due to occur. People waited for midnight and when it had passed they just wandered off. It was all very communist and it left us all a bit bemused.

New years celebrations in Hanoi were a bit of a let down after the build up and feverish speculation we had entertained about what would happen on the lake... and yet bizarrely they had guaranteed themselves a place in our memories and anecdotes in a way that mere fireworks could never have done. A quiet new year, but a great memory of thousands of people happy to look out at nothing together, and then go home content with the feeling of a job well done. The people of Hanoi had seen in the new year and it was much as the old one had been.

We visited the Perfume Pagoda and saw communism in action as well as the beautiful countryside and geography of north Vietnam. Tourists visiting the pagoda need to be paddled up the river for 90 minutes, and then after their visit they are ferried back, it's all by hand, no engines and it means the river is extremely peaceful and serene. The slightly bizarre aspect to the boat trip is that the government administers the boats and allows registered boats to work in numerical order with no competition, boat 1 works, then boat 2, and so on until all the boats have ferried a boat load and then boat 1 goes again, all very ordered and fair and communist. Unfortunately there are 2,000 registered boats, each boat carries 4 tourists on average and each villager gets to use their boat about 3 or 4 times a year which is a bit crazy, but no-one seems to mind, and amidst such peaceful surroundings it was easy to understand why.

The perfume pagoda itself is in fact a natural altar formation in a large cave on top of a mountain, two monks spent their lives there in meditation and prayer and they are remembered there as well as a the more conventional Buddhist altar. There are a number of man made pagodas bordering the walk up the mountain and it is considered one of the holiest places in Vietnam. The whole complex is a beautiful place and the ride up the river makes it even more impressive. The river is surrounded on all sides by huge limestone outcrops rising out of the countryside and shrouded in mist, Ibis birds glide across your path to settle on the backs of water buffalo... idyllic and everything we hoped to experience in Vietnam.

We also took a trip to Halong bay in the North of Vietnam, the bay is actually a series of limestone islands justting out of emerald blue seas that along with lord knows how many other places proclaim themselves as the '8th wonder of the world.' The islands themselves jut out of the sea almost vertically and are home to a healthy population of sea eagles and shelter a number of floating villages of fish farms and suppliers to the tourist junks. We couldn't get the scientific explanation for how the islands were formed but the traditional story goes that a dragon sent to help fight the Chinese thrashed it's tail and churned up the earth and left the almost 2000 islands lying behind it... they never taught us that explanation in geography but personally we prefer it to plate tectonics and it's more plausible than creationism so live and let live.

We spent a couple of nights cruising around the bay, kayaked under sea eagles floating on the thermals above our heads, and explored limestone cave formations, at the suggestion of our guide we even got up at 5.30 to see the sunrise over the islands... and found ourselves alone in the cold (no-one else aboard fancied it) as the sun came up behind an island and so wouldn't actually rise for another hour at least... :( oh well back to bed! We met some Italian chaps who epitomised La Dolce Vita, their work means they get 3 months off a year and they just go and see a different bit of the world! A few beers, a few tall tales, some frankly dreadful karaoke and we ended a great trip on a high (if off key) note.

We had done Vietnam at one hell of a pace (although the length of these blog entries may make it seem like we took ages...) but we had seen a lot, the geography was stunning and will be the thing we remember the most although the silent new year will also live long in the memory, probably a lot longer than the clothes we bought in Hoi An. Next stop is Malaysia which we decided to visit at the last minute rather than return to Thailand... we decided that we had seen a lot of temples, and would see more beaches in the Philippines so we wanted to see more nature and more jungle! So off we fly in search of Orangutans... but more likely leeches!

VIETNAM HO CHI MINH!!!

Vietnam is probably the most geographically impressive place we have visited on this trip, it is also unashamedly communist (with certain concessions in the Chinese mould to capitalism that has seen it's economy grow rapidly over the last few years). The communist outlook leads to some strange practices... but more on that later.

Exploring Vietnam is most easily done by open tour bus, you buy a ticket at one end of the country and pick the number of stops you want to make and head on out, you confirm your ticket the day before you want to travel from each town and that's it basically. We started out at the bottom in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly known as Saigon, and planned to make 4 or 5 stops on our way to Hanoi in the North where we would take a couple of side trips before flying to Malaysia, we would be in Vietnam for Christmas and New Year and we were both unsure what that would mean in terms of celebrations or catching up with family or friends.

So the first stop on our tour of Vietnam was HCMC, former base of the southern Vietnamese fighters and their American allies... it has a war museum that was formerly known as The Museum of American and Chinese War Crimes... but in these days of normal diplomatic relations is now somewhat unimaginatively renamed the War Museum. There are tanks and bombs and war planes from both sides, there is more than a little bias in the exhibits but it's understandable to be honest when you see the photos of the effects of agent orange and other chemicals dropped on the country.

In the markets around HCMC you can find examples of war memorabilia from both sides with engraved Zippo lighters being the most appealing to the casual observers (you know, watched a couple of Oliver stone movies), if you believe the market vendors then just about every American GI must have had a lighter, decided to get it engraved with some witty slogan or sexy lady... and then promptly dropped in on the floor for people to find later... still they were fun to browse through and the genuine ones were pretty interesting, a couple of our favourite slogans were: "We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful. and the less poetic, "killing for peace is like fucking for virginity..." both appealed for different reasons but both raised a smile.

The biggest shock to the system in Vietnam is the traffic and the road rules for pedestrians... the traffic is almost exclusively 2 wheeled and there are 3 million scooters in HCMC alone. Pedestrian crossings are rare and the advice given out, and practiced everywhere you need to cross a road is... "Look for a gap in the oncoming traffic, look towards the drivers to try and make eye contact and walk slowly across the road, the traffic will drive around you..." not exactly the green cross code, basically crossing the road is an act of faith (step out and prey hard) that most reminded me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the last crusade where Harrison Ford has to step out over the ravine to show his faith in God and finds the hidden walkway. Debs took to this like a duck to water and thinks this is a fantastic system, the drivers do avoid you and only get really alarmed if you stop moving and it has the added bonus of not having to wait for the 'green man' to appear before you walk ... I wasn't so sure (especially when you see drivers texting from the back of their scooters) and was grateful that as we were both facing the traffic she couldn't see the look of bemused terror slapped across my face every time we crossed a road.

By the time we left Vietnam we were both happily marching out into traffic safe in the knowledge that we would be avoided... at the end of a tiring journey to Malaysia you are instantly refreshed and reminded that you have left Vietnam when you are almost run over and cursed heartily by the proton driving Malaysian whom you have just stepped out in front of and who despite your wide eyed staring and smiling has refused to drive around you... whoops.

HCMC was pretty charming and we stayed in a nice micro hotel with the smallest bathroom we have ever seen, we took a rickshaw ride around and couldn't believe how these guys avoided being crashed into and kept us alive throughout the journey, we spent a pleasant couple of nights meeting other travellers and sampling the local home brew ('pretty disgusting to be honest' said our reviewer) and enjoying being largely free of hawkers... or at least being approached by hawkers who would take no for an answer which was a refreshing change from the persistence of Cambodia.

The next stop on our journey north was a beach resort called Nha Trang, this was the first beach we had visited that wasn't on the gulf of Thailand and so saw a welcome return of some surf to throw ourselves around in! This was great for a day but instantly painful on day two when you felt all the bruises you had gathered on day 1! We boarded the bus after a couple of days still trailing sand that the waves had managed to leave everywhere, it was a just before Christmas and we were heading to the old city of Hoi An and it's collection of tailors for some Christmas cheer.

In Hoi An we saw in Christmas in the traditional British way... with drizzle... lots of drizzle. This was to be a feature of the next 10 days but actually made us feel a little bit at home :) (Well me anyway). We didn't manage to find a Christmas dinner, or any party hats or crackers... we ate Vietnamese food looking out over a cross roads in the pretty old town section of Hoi An with it's stone streets and hickledy pickledy old houses, it was a nice way to spend the evening but we did miss our family and friends and raised a glass to them.

Apart from the beauty of the old town Hoi An is also famous for the number of cloth shops and associated tailors... and having resisted the temptation all around Asia we finally cracked and spent our Christmas day being fitted for suits and shirts, dresses and winter coats all justified with the cry of 'it would be far more expensive back home' we indulged ourselves with the help of gifts from our family and it was a real pleasure to talk to the Fosters whilst we were getting fitted (we think it amused them as well). We did try to get tailored socks made as a special 'Nan' gift but we couldn't unfortunately, next time Nan we promise.

We really enjoyed Hoi An, (although not as much as one couple who had previously stayed at our hotel for a week... they sent back 100 kilos of shopping when they left... we sent a rather more respectable single box) and left hoping that the weather would improve as we headed north (not likely was it..) as we had been under grey skies since Nha Trang.

Well we arrived in Hue to rain, took a boat trip up the Perfume river and wandered round the ancient tombs of kings long dead in the rain, explored the ruined Citadel in the rain, and boarded a bus after a single night in the rain. We smelt slightly of mildew and were wondering if we would ever be dry again... oh and we only had 1 jumper each.

The tombs of the kings built alongside the Perfume river were interesting but mostly closed up, the kings themselves were buried in secret with lots of treasure (no-one knows where to this day) but not in their tomb complexes apparently and the beautiful gardens were not really explorable due to the wet conditions which was a shame as they looked really good from under the caps of our hastily purchased ponchos.

Communist Vietnam for a long time viewed it's ancient palaces and citadels as remnants of a discarded past and so allowed them to fall into disrepair and neglect (those that hadn't been destroyed by various wars... the French had destroyed lots of temples and pagodas in apparent acts of malice when they were ousted, and the US bombers took care of a lot of what was left). This means that a lot of palaces and pagodas are in pretty poor condition as the moist conditions mean the rot really sets in (our guide had explained Hue has two seasons, warm and wet, and cold and wet). The government has now realised the value of these sights as tourist attractions and are trying to fix the problem albeit in a rather haphazard way, often there are with strange modern replicas of an ancient building that used to stand on the site, as the temples and pagodas are often closed to the public you can end up trecking around for an hour to visit the outside of a modern replica of an ancient building... in the rain... it's very communist.

Whilst we were in Hue we found out that Vietnam were in the final of a south east Asian football tournament against Thailand and wandered into a crowded bar to watch the game. Vietnam subsequently won with a cracking goal in the last minute of normal time. The stunning victory (Vietnam had never won the tournament before) sent the Vietnamese wonderfully crazy with dancing on pool tables, congas in the street, and the singing along to a song to which the only lyrics were: VIETNAM, HO CHI MINH! repeated over and over again for 3 minutes... and then restarted... it was easy to sing along to though and we all joined in with the fun, it was a great night and we were lucky to experience it, it was slightly tinged with jealousy from this Englishman though who couldn't help but think that England would have fluffed the last minute chance and gone on to lose on penalties... not bitter... honest.

The final leg of our trip up through Vietnam was an overnight bus trip to Hanoi, we ended up on the back beds meaning Ben spent the night shoulder to shoulder with a charming French chap, it does bring you closer to your fellow man this trip, sometimes too close but everyone was friendly about it and a few shared tales and rolled eyes and we were ready to go... we just hoped that we would find Hanoi dryer than the middle of the country...