First of all, I would just like to say…Dad, don't kill me (just remember I am alive and that's all that matters!!)

We spent the last 7 days on the back of a motorbike(!!) traveling round central and south Vietnam. It kind of happened by accident, and turned out to be the best thing we have done so far(although a bit impulsive!) We were having lunch on our first full day in Dalat, and planning on going to a tour agency to book a 3 day 2 night trekking tour at Yok Don National Park, to get away from the touristy towns we had been in. A couple of guys in "Easy Rider" jackets started talking to us from the next table about what we were doing next and whether we wanted to come with them on their bikes for a tour of the central highlands. We have been approached by so many motorbike drivers trying to push us in to coming with them, that our automatic answer had always been no, but for some reason it was different this time. They weren't pushy, just gave us some photos and a book that other people had written in saying how amazing the tour was, and although we were a little skeptical, we ended up saying yes to 4 days and 3 nights, up into the central highlands and then down to Saigon (we already had a bus ticket for the journey to Saigon, but we gave it to them for their book in the end!) It was $60 a day, double our budget, but everyone had said that it was worth every penny etc, so we tried not to think about that. We signed a little contract, and walked away from the restaurant thinking, "what have we done?!!" They said they would pick us up the next day at 8.30am, and we just had to believe them…it could have gone horribly wrong (they had our deposit)…but luckily it didn't!

We were picked up on the dot of 8.30am, and they strapped our massive rucksacks to the back of their motorbikes. My guide was called Xuan (nickname "Hollywood"?!!!)and Craig's was called An ( Nickname, "An-the-man-who-can!!"). I haven't been on a bike before and was extremely nervous about falling off, but it turns out this is pretty impossible, and off we went, not knowing what on earth to expect!!!The first day started off as the day tour that they offer around the countryside of Dalat, which was beautiful, only 10 minutes outside the town we saw all the scenery we were expecting of Vietnam, so many rice paddies, jungle and coffee plantations. They took us to lots of little places along the way and stopped regularly so that we could walk and stretch (it was tough on the ol' bum). We were shown how silk is produced in this area, the silk worms are kept in bamboo baskets full of leaves and allowed to eat and sleep until they are very fat, then they start to make the silk cocoon, which is about an inch long and when unraveled can produce 800m of silk, each of the cocoons is emptied (the larvae are fried and eaten…yum) and the threads are run through various machines to produce the material, using huge paper patterns with thousands of holes to guide the machines, and then dyed. It was a pretty amazing process, the machines looked ancient, but they did the job.

We saw so much in that first day, much more than we had really seen of Vietnam in weeks. We went trekking down to an amazing waterfall called the Elephant falls, which was extremely slippery, and I seem to have a habit of falling over at the moment!! It was worth the climb and was like a miniature Igazu falls. We were taken to a few minority villages, to meet some of the people and to see how they live. At first we felt very awkward about wandering into these people' homes as if they were a tourist attraction, but the more places we stopped at, we realized we were the tourist attraction. The kids seemed so excited to see a westerner, and all shouted hello and waved to you from their bicycles, the parents all pointed you out to their children and were so friendly to us. It just showed that what we were doing was something that a lot of tourists miss out on, and we were told that these people very rarely see any tourists at all, which is why they seemed so surprised and kind to us. The minority villages were set up by the government for the people who were still living in the Jungle, possibly as a way to keep tabs on them, and to make sure they are contributing to the state. They have been given land and farming jobs to earn their money, and they are extremely hard working. They have so many children, with the older ones taking care of the younger ones, apparently even the 5 year olds can put the rice on for dinner (I cant even cook rice properly!!) Their houses were very basic and simple, and they are obviously very poor, but our guide explained to us that they are very happy with what they have and do, and just get on with their farming/fishing etc.

We had the first of our meals with our guides at lunch time, and were so surprised. The places we ate in from then on were all local and the kind of places a tourist would walk past, either because of worrying about the hygiene/tap water, or because there were no menus, let alone in English so you wouldn't have a clue what to ask for. We found that this food was the best food we had eaten in Asia so far, 5 or 6 different dishes, chicken, fish, squid, soups, noodles, rice, and we paid so little for it. No meal came to over $3 each, and most were less than that. They called these restaurants sidewalk cafes, and we have seen them a lot, full of locals, you sit on tiny little stools on the street, mostly serving the same thing to everyone, but they look too intimidating to go into without a guide, who ordered for us, and stopped us from paying tourist prices. We have been so spoilt for food now, that when we came back to Saigon, we had a sandwich and I left half of it!!

The rest of this day was spent whizzing around the countryside, I absolutely love motorbikes now, they are the best way to see a place (especially if someone else is driving!!). We were pretty exhausted after our first day, even though we were just sitting on the back of the bike, there had been so much to take in, and we stopped at a really nice resort, where we stayed in a little bungalow, before having dinner with the guides. The restaurant was huge, and several giant cockroaches kept scurrying towards my feet, but apart from that it was great! We stayed in pretty decent hotels along the way, and our guides always tried to get the price down for us.

Over the week, we went to lots of different minority villages, and were shown so many people's jobs along the way. We stopped to talk to a guy who chisels huge blocks granite out of the side of the road to sell to construction companies (which is illegal, as anything like this belongs to the government). People sucking up the silt from the river bed with huge pipes (again for construction.) A pottery shop, where the huge clay pots are built from molds made from sand. A family who do woodcarvings out of the most amazing pieces of wood, worth thousands of dollars once they are finished, they were so intricate and done with really basic tools. The guys in this family were really funny, and asked (in Vietnamese) to have a picture taken with me on his mobile phone, I got the gist and was squished into his photograph!! We went to see noodle making in action, huge sheets of wet sticky rice paper were flattened out by a mangle type machine, and then laid out to partly dry in the sun on bamboo rafts, when they were ready they were put through another ancient looking machine, and noodles came out the other end! We saw fruit farms, coffee, pepper corn and tea plantations, basket makers. The rubber plantations were the most interesting, rows and rows of rubber trees, planted by the French, they cut each one on one side in a downwards spiral, and stick a metal spout into the tree to allow the drips to run off, this is caught by a bowl attached to each tree, and in a few hours the bowls are full. We went to a tiny rubber "factory" (only a handful of people worked there) and we were shown how the white liquid rubber is treated with acid and then set, and dried to produce sheets of smelly, tough yellow rubber that they then sell to Europe. It was messy business!! The ply wood factory we went to, used a machine to literally unravel logs of wood, shaving off the top layer and leaving huge sheets of thin wood which are then stuck together. Everyone working there was absolutely covered in black and dust, then I looked down at my own feet and realised I was probably dirtier!!

At the brick making factory, there was a ginormous mound of clay, which at the bottom had been compressed down so that chunks could be cut out of it, which we then thrown into a machine which reminded us of a playdough factory…in went these big messy lumps, out came a constant, long rectangle which was sliced up by machine, stamped and put outside to dry before going into the kiln. The highlight of this place though was the children, they came running up to us as soon as we arrived, wanting to have their photo taken, they love digital cameras so that they can see themselves afterwards. We had no idea what they were saying to us, but you could still vaguely communicate, and they just kept wanting more and more photos. They then started throwing clay and giggling at us which they found highly amusing!! The brick kiln was fired using cashew nut shells, which is another big thing in this area, we went to a factory where the nuts are roasted, and then the workers shell each individual nut using a vice/nut cracker. We bought some cashews when we stopped in a village, and they are so much cheaper than in England, 1kg would have cost just over 6 pounds, we bought 250g in the end, which didn't turn out to be enough because they were so yummy.

We went to some pretty amazing waterfalls one afternoon up in the highlands, and were dropped off there for 2 hours to walk around the forest and have a "picnic" of fruit that we had bought at the market (2 bags full!!!) The falls were really impressive, the biggest in Vietnam, and we didn't really have to eat our fruit as another family having a picnic next to us shared theirs with us, which was really sweet. This little girl clambered over the huge rocks we were sitting on just to give it to us!!

An, one of our guides was really funny, he had somehow picked up some strange English phrases such as "undoubtedly sure" and "unequivocally" which he used constantly. He told us he was "An the man who can…undoubtedly sure" and that "easy riders are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get!!" He was also pretty scary, he had fought against the communists during the war, and had obvious distain for the government (sometimes making dangerous slips, such as referring to them as "the enemy!") and whenever we drove past the police he would say (out of earshot) "the police are number 1", sticking up his middle finger! He was covered in tattoos and had a habit of getting extremely heated when he talked (especially with waitresses) but we never understood what he was ranting about so we just had to sit there and smile!!! All this aside, he was extremely funny, and knew a lot about the war, so we stopped off at a lot of areas which had been destroyed by agent orange, war graves and bombing sites, and he would explain the history of each area, including details of where he fought. We drove along the Cambodian border and came to the Ho Chi Minh trail, where we were not allowed to take photographs as the government want to keep it a secret. There is a lot of evidence that Vietnam is perfectly ready for any one else who wants to have a go, we even noticed outside a museum we went to, there were some very large weapons that could fire up to18km, and they looked suspiciously well oiled and looked after.

We had had so many delicious meals, but nothing could beat the bizarre night we had on our "last" night. We had joined up with another easy rider, who seemed a little more raucous than our guides. It turns out he was their supervisor, and a drunken night out was probably his idea. We went to a barbeque place, which was a huge hall of people, again, tiny stools, lots of mess, and lots of staring faces! The waitress kept grinning at me and touching my nose (I have no idea why!!) which everyone else watching also found very funny!! Endless beer and endless meat arrived at the table, which you cook on hot coals in the middle. The guides got more and more drunk, and their English became much harder to understand, we got every second word, then every third etc, until eventually we were just laughing when we thought they expected it, but it was still hysterical! They turned out to be extremely sexist, and seemed bitter about having to go back to their wives, they kept telling Craig that women are evil, and danger and you don't want to be tied down etc etc, when you get married your life is over!! I was extremely outnumbered…but it was still very funny!! They also "cheers" at every sip of beer and want you to clink glasses constantly, I think we were the rowdiest table in there. We were relatively sober compared to the guides as they stumbled out to get a taxi, wobbling all over the place and talking a lot of crap!! A group of kids came up to us to ask where we were from, and were very chatty…they patted Craig on the stomach at the end and said something about him being fat!!! hehehehe!!!(I don't think that is quite what they meant!!)

The next day was supposed to be our last; we set off for Saigon, and stopped at the Cu Chi tunnels on the way. This was a tour about the Vietcong guerilla warfare, showing us all the gruesome traps and tactics they used to win the war. We went down into the tunnels that hid them from the Americans which were crazy, we were told we could go down to the first and second levels, which went down about 2 metres, then 2 metres again. I didn't even make the first level, I got down there and it was far too claustrophobic for me, about a metre high and half that wide, I had to turn back as I panicked (which the guide told us we weren't allowed to do!) It didn't help that I had a rather large American woman who quite literally got stuck in front of me and had to be pulled through, so I aborted the mission and got the hell out of there (I didn't make it far!) the second level was crawling on your tummy only, which Craig didn't do either…I cant believe people lived down there, it was horrible.

It turned out not to be our day after all, as we had loved every second so far, and we had been wanting to extend since day one. At lunch we brought up the subject of carrying on with them to do the Mekong Delta, an area below Saigon, which we were going to do on a tour bus, but really really didn't want to say goodbye to the bikes!! In a flash, it was done (eeekkk!! tooo exppennnsssivveee!!!!) and we had added on 3 more days.