Onto Hoi An and saigon

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The weather on our second day at Halong bay had become cold ,so we'd been lucky to have such a good day to see the area in its full glory.'The trip back up to Hanoi was no less scary than the trip down , although we didn't see any accidents.
We arrived at the airport about 4 hours before we were due to fly and went to the Vietnam airline help desk to see if we could get an earlier flight. At 16.20 they booked us on to the Denang flight leaving at 17.00 hours and we checked in to our hotel in Hoi An at about 20.00 hours.
Had a mooch round the town on our arival-it is full of taylors and restaurants , with an interesting jumble of back alleys of packed dirt running down to the river where the market takes place.We didn't explore it at this stage ,but did find a riverside restaurant where we ate well and cheaply before returning to the hotel.
The following day we borrowed bikes from the hotel and cycled the 5km to Cua Dai beach, a long , relatively empty stretch of sand with sun beds , thatched umbrellas and basic restaurants.We had a day slonking -and the day after didn't do a lot more either.
The morning after that we decided to look at the town in daylight and explored the market-the photographs are up on the last blog-it was great!
We bumped into Austrlian Kirsty who'd been on the boat on Halong bay with us and we spent sometime with her and her husband Simon-they were good fun and taught us a new cocktail which you'll love-but that will have to await our return.
What were we doing in the taylor's?-You'll never guess , but suffice to say we can only just shut the suitcases now-you just get sucked in to it all!
We have moved on to Saigon now and have been here a couple of nights-now I am just a simple country lad and I thought traffic in Hanoi was bad -this place moves it up a considerable notch. For more exciting traffic photos -including the man carrying the plate glass window on the back of a scooter and irrevocable proof that I wrestled a python you'll have to wait for the next blog.......

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