Saigon is nice - well nicer than we expected, as we have been told by loads of people we've met in Vietnam that it's smelly, noisy and ugly..... We've been to the War Museum, which was pretty harowing, and doesn't pull any punches - not the sort of museum you'd see in Britain or America, put it that way! In Saigon I've managed to pick up a copy of the Guardian weekly, it's nice to be able to read a British paper again - my first since Belgium! Helen doesn't really understand, of course! Also there is a nice backpacker scene here with a great nightlife, I've made a few friends and had quite a few late nights :)

We are leaving Saigon tommorow morning, and taking a boat up into Cambodia. The only problem is the visas - they haven't been done in time, and so we are going to have to travel without them tommorow, and the travel company that we paid to get our visas will ship them up to us in Chau Doc. Apparently this sort of thing happens all the time, but it doesn't make it any less worrying for us! We can't wait another day in Saigon and pick them up ourselves because our Vietnam visas expire on Wednesday....

After several failed attempts at uploading the piccies on my camera, I've decided to give up for now. The problem is that all the machines in the internet cafes here are pretty low spec to start with, but then they are all riddled with virii, have about 10 different memory-resident programs all running at once, and in general are just INCREDIBLY frustrating to use. Just finding a cafe with any machines with CD ROMS installed is difficult in itself - after that I need to install some picture-editing software, then use the software to resize the piccies them smaller (they are much too big to upload as they are) save them and upload them to the machine where alvo.co.uk lives in London. So all that will have to wait I'm afraid until I'm at a machine which can stand being used for something more than browsing the web. Apologies to everyone I've promissed piccies to.

The night bus from Hoi An to Na Trang was a bit of nightmare - I only slept for about half an hour, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as some plane journeys I've endured. Na Trang is a very nice, although touristy, city on the coast. I'm going through a 4 day course to get certified for diving with Rainbow Divers which is really hard work (up at 6 each morning) but great fun. I'm diving in the sea for the first time tommorow! Also we're starting to think about our journey into Cambodia - we can only really get Visas in Saigon for an overland trip, and from there we'd like to take a boat up the Mekong to Phnom Phenh (sp?) time remaining on visas permitting....

Hue was pretty dull, without a great deal going on - so we only stopped there for one night before setting off again southwards. We took a minibus to Lang Co beach, which isn't really on the beaten track for backpackers - and it shows! We had some difficulty getting ourselves fed, but after a combination of the trusty phrasebook and some friendly cafe owners who were happy to decide for us what we wanted to eat, we managed not to starve. Lang co has a a beautiful beach, and it's virtually deserted along most of it, we stayed there for two nights. The only problem was the noise - because Lang Co is is on Highway 1, the main road between Hanoi and Hoi Chi Min City, there is loads of huge lorries all night, and in Vietnam they just love to use their horns.....

We took another bus on another 2 hour journey to Hoi An, where we arrived on Sunday night. This place has been one of the highlights of the trip so far. It's a picturesque town with a great beach 5km away, and we've got a load of clothes made for little more than the price of the material. Later today we've got to go to the post office to try to send them to poste restaunt in Auckland so we can pick up our nice new suits and shirts when we get there for our (hopefully plentiful) job interviews, we have far too much stuff for us to carry. :) The plan is to loose some of the warm weather gear we took with us for Scotland and Siberia too. The next stop is Nha Trang where I'm keen to try some diving - I think Helen is just going to chill. It's a 12 hour bus trip which I'm not really looking forward to, but we've already stayed here quite a long time - 4 nights - and we're hoping to get a bus overnight this evening.

We've been in Hanoi for a few days now, it's pretty hectic in the streets here with all the motorbikes... and it's um.... an 'experience' trying to cross the road. You basically have to just walk slowly into the constant flow of motorbikes and trust the drivers to weave their way around you. We did a weekend trip to Halong Bay and Cat Ba national park which was ace, one of the nicest beaches in the world is there apparently and it was nice to be able to relax for a while, even if it was just for an afternoon!

Later today we set off on the train again to Hue. After that there is Hoi An where there are loads of tailors and hopefully I should be able to get myself a whole new wardrobe! (quite an exciting prospect if you have as much difficulty getting clothes that fit as I do)