It was a 5am start and we jumped into a quick taxi and before we knew what had happened we were sitting on the plane to Bangkok. Emma was a bit concerned about getting the DVDs through customs after the fiasco in trying to send them home and was a bit nervous as we approached the scanners. I reminded her about the plight of terrorists and the panic they have to go through when they get on a plane and through the scanners, only to die at the end of it. She never actually said anything to this, but I think [View Full Entry]

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The bus journey was interesting and every time we were drifting off the bus decided to stop for a break or pass through a toll with extremely bright lights. As the night went on and we grew more and more restless I was beginning to think that Brid and Mary's comfort was going to be interupted as I was sure Gary was tempted to steal their travel pillows!! The bus seemed to come to a halt and was stopped for some time, there had been a motorbike accident on the road in what seemed like the middle of nowhere!! We were [View Full Entry]

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Next stop Hue!! As our time in Vietnam was beginning to run short we decided to make our stop in Hue a short one. We left Hoi An around lunch time and after a 4 hour drive we were dropped off outside what looked like an OK guesthouse. We were also now out of the tropics which meant no more monsoon rainstorms, so that was a bit of relief too. It was only going to be one night in Hue as our bus for Hanoi was booked to leave at 6pm the following day. As we suspected the hotel rooms were [View Full Entry]

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Our bus journey to Hoi An from Nah Trang was at 6 in the evening and as it was a long distance, an overnight 12 hour beast of a trip was on the cards. As a result, we ended up having to kill a bit of time after our hotel check out at 12 noon, so we ended up wandering around Nah Trang, where it was raining heavily, and sought shelter in the local Mexican restuarant/bar, El Coyote. It had a pool table so we played a few games and had some food before heading back to our hotel for the [View Full Entry]

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Following the sunburn we planned to spend the next few days out of the sun in order to let our bodies recover and explore a bit of Nha Trang city itself. Staying out of the sun was not a problem in the slightest as the following few days it rained for most of the day in Nha Trang, and at one point one of the roads turned into a river. Day one of our sunburn recovery was spent nearby the hostel as we were both in a lot of pain and simply getting dressed had become a bit of a strategic [View Full Entry]

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Yeah, we were off to the sun and heat again. Bags packed, shorts and flip-flops back on and we were sitting on the bus on the way to Nha Trang, a beach resort on the coast of Vietnam. The journey was OK and despite the thunder storm when we stopped for lunch, we could feel a difference in the temperature already, and we still had a couple of hours bus drive to go. Arriving in Nha Trang, we decided on a room at the hostel, recommended to us by the tour company. It was a really nice room, perhaps the nicest [View Full Entry]

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We had a long lie in on our first morning, mainly due to laziness. After getting up and marvelling at how cool (temperature wise, it wasn't really going to win awards for style) our room had been during the night without the use of air conditioning/fan, we headed down to the centre of Dalat to see what it had to offer. We were too late to have breakfast at our hostel (included in the remarkable rate of $8 a night as well as free internet!) so we stopped off at a local cafe to have breakfast. It was a pleasant surprise [View Full Entry]

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We had been told that Dalat was much colder than anywhere else we had been in Vietnam, but coming from Scotland which had just experienced a very poor summer we thought that it really couldn't be that bad!!! We left an extremely hot Mui Ne around lunch time for what was supposed to be a 3 hour journey on our "locals' bus (Gary could not fit in any of the seats and had to spend the entire journey with his back leaning on me and his legs in the isle), however it took slightly longer than scheduled. The roads, at parts, [View Full Entry]

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We woke up from our hostel to catch our bus to Mui Ne, a beach and fishing resort a few hours from Saigon. We weren't feeling particularly great due to the excesses of the night before so we weren't particularly looking forward to our bus trip. Those fish bowls had a lot to answer for!! The bus was smaller and less air conditioned than what we were used to. After an uncomfortable 5 hour trip, we reached our destination and were desperate for a place to dump our stuff and rest our heads for a while. Because the bus company gets [View Full Entry]

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Our last day in Ho Chi Minh and our anniversary, although the day didnt start out as good as we had hoped!! Following Gary's problem with the ATM, as instructed, he headed back around 9am in hope that the print out would show up the discrepency, however it turned out the maintenance guy turned up at 8am and not 9am!! Next instruction was to go to the bank itself, whereapon Gary was told to return at 11am!! Gary returned to the hostel rather frustrated as you can imagine and to top things off, we were informed that our room had been [View Full Entry]

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