After spending the morning in bed with the dickie tummy I managed to get up and go for a wander around the town. First stop was a clothing shop - I was after another pair of walking trousers simi;iar to the air of craghoppers I already have - found a pair but they were too long - no problem the girl took them next door to her mpther who was seamstress and they were shortened in 15 minutes at no extra charge - bought 2 lovely asian style cotton shirts for a fiver each - really good quality too. SaPa sadly has been badly affected by the worst aspects of tourism - jerry built hotels, roads with craters and rocks in them, more handicraft shops than you ever imagined and local Black Hmong tribe women ambushing ... read more

November 5th and I've completely forgotten about Bonfire night back home, I get up feelling a little queezy with an ominously rumbling stomach. In short I abandon plans for a day trip to Halong Bay and go back to bed via the toilet! I did rather overdose on chillies yesterday. About 16:00 I went to a restaurant which definitely catered for tourists! The spring rolls Hue style were very nice - raw vegetables and mint with cooked chichen wrapped in rice paper - and served like that - no deep frying at all and very healthy. I leave and return to the hotel to update my blog while plotting one last visit to my favourite pho shop for supper before I leave for Sa Pa at 05:30 in the morning, I will be going easy on ... read more

31st October I drop my car off for safe storage in Wrexham at my brother Adrians and catcha train from Chester to Londo. All goes well until I try and use the Piccadily line to get to Heathrow. London Underground apparently carry out a lot of major maintenance work over most weekends and the Piccadily line was chaos - overcorwded platforms and no trains! I baled out at Leicester Sq and wandered around until I found a taxi to Heathrow. Driver was a nice bloke who had visited Thailand a lot to see his Sister and her husband who had built a house nr Phuket 30 years ago for 11,000GBP and just it and the land for 11 million!!! He was certain I was going to enjoy myself and agreed that with the diet and walking ... read more