We are joined in the evening by two Liverpudlians Tim and Craig, father and son, who have just finished their trip that started in Beijing and ended in Hong Kong. We all go out for a meal together and I find out what I'm in for as a vegetarian in China. There is not a lot on offer and it's mainly cabbage and rice as predicted. I'm sure there will be other stuff on offer but it's not looking too hopeful so far. Oh I did get to try lotus root which looked a bit like grey Swiss cheese but was nice and crunchy and quite tasty. It was also easy to pick up with chop sticks ;) Aside: Aparently when westerners have been living in Hong Kong for ten years or more the locals call ... read more

First leg of my epic journey to China completed with a short flight to the very cool Schipol airport in Amsterdam. I love this crazy airport so much. There's the seating made to look like your own living room complete with sofas and log effect fires and the library, the art gallery and the Delftware teacup seats in the restaurant. Then there's the weird cocktail bar with signs saying 'see', 'smell', 'taste' and bizarrely 'hear'!! A new addition to this area was a grand piano that anyone could just sit down and play. But best of all this time was seeing a couple of uniformed police officers, complete with guns, weaving in and out of the crowds ON SEGWAYS!! As we taxi-ed over a canal (yes really!) the inflight info was saying 6,100 miles to Hong ... read more

We decided to go straight from the train station in Ho Chi Minh to the Cu Chi tunnels, to avoid the crowds and the main heat of the day. We thought we'd seen the craziest traffic possible when we were in Hanoi. Silly us! Moped madness soared to a whole new level in Ho Chi Minh City! With a population of over 6 million we found out that 4 million of them own a moped or motorbike! Even at 6am the city was heaving with massed ranks of mopeds at traffic light junctions waiting for the count-down red light to get to zero and glide, like a shoal of fish, off into the massed bipping and weaving of hundreds of other bikes. Yes, they did actually stopped at the lights, more or less, a few would ... read more

An aside to the holidaying: I bought a book while I was in Hoi An, which I have just finished reading, heavily photocopied and with some of the pages stuck together, called 'The Sorrow of War' by Bao Ninh (winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Award). Bao Ninh was born in Hanoi in 1952 and during the Vietnam War served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the 500 who went to war with the Brigade in 1969, he was 1 of only 10 to survive! The novel is a harrowing story of a young, North Vietnamese man, Kien's experiences of war, love, loss and betrayal. It starts after the war has ended, during his role as part of the MIA (Missing In Action) body collection team. What a gruesome but necessary part of war that ... read more