We now reach the final part of our Vietnamese adventure. We'd experienced the hectic city life of Saigon, seen the devastating effects of the American War, spent time on a remote island filled with history and good dive sites, seen SE Asia's answer to Newquay and visited the quaint French colonial town of Hoi An. With great memories from all of these places we decided it was time we headed to the country's capital city; Hanoi. It was here that some of the first ...

We spent a lovely 2 days in Hoi An, a quaint old town almost untouched by modern life. Once a busy trading port, Hoi An was almost forgotten when the river running through it silted up in the early 1900's. Hoi An also managed to escape any impacts of the war with America. The result is that Hoi An appears completely different to anywhere else in Vietnam, almost as if it has been lost in time. The influences of the French colonial era are still very apparent in t...

We both liked Nha Trang, but we had to leave and we were looking forward to the next stop on our travels; Hoi An. From what we had heard about Hoi An, it was a lovely river side town with a lot of French colonial architecture. We'd decided to fly to Hoi An, thinking it would be simpler than other forms of transport and cause us less hassle. So, along with Jamie, the Australian shopaholic we met on the cooking course, we headed to the airport. Jamie's 11kg bag was...

For our last day in Nha Trang we went back to Lanterns for our cooking course. The day began with a trip in cyclos to the local market with the chef. Here she introduced us to local delicacies and helped us negotiate our way through the mounds of vegetables, raw fish, raw meats and live animals (crabs, eels, frogs that we saw being skinned and chopped up alive and a mass of snakes slithering around in a net). We took our collection of ingredients back to the...

After diving for the last two days we made the most of being by the sea and enjoyed spending time on the beach (though Luke being anti-sand preferred to be by the pool at the hotel). We also ventured out into other parts of Nha Trang for a bit of exploration. A large bridge took us over the river to Northern Nha Trang. We visited the Cham Towers that are over 1000 years old, the giant white Buddha on a hill overlooking the city built to encourage peace in the 1...