Dear all,
Well, been having mixed luck on the internet with regards to update and uploading pictures.

Anyway, to bring you up to date...

We finished off NZ in Queenstown and had an amazing stay overall. We left NZ feeling so relaxed and refreshed and those feelings only intensified in Sydney where we did lots of walks and relaxing. Sydney is a lovely place to visit and is about so much more than the Opera House and main city. We stayed in Double Pay at a lovely hotel which has old-world charm. The food in Sydney was great (had a mixed bag of food in NZ to be honest) and it's just a lovely place to relax and enjoy ourselves. It's just an easy place to stay and they're geared up for a good outdoors life.

From Sydney we flew on to Singapore for a night before flying to Vietnam yesterday morning. We were excited about Vietnam because we didn't know what to expect and I don't think anything could have prepared us for this!

Originally, we watched Top Gear where the 3 guys travelled through V by motorbike. .This inspired us to visit here. The TV didn't convey how foreign it feels, or rather, how foreign I feel.

How best to describe the Old Quarter where we are staying? Narrow streets, millions of motorbikes heading in all directions at once, no space to walk on pavements (pavements are reserved for motorbikes) and every building is a shop or hotel or tour operator... There is a street of shoe shops, a street for fish, a street for t-shirts... We wandered through a market and I retched at the smell of fish combined with the sight of a small turtle being butchered (it was still wriggling).

it's a city of contrasts naturally, and later for dinner we ate a beautiful vietnamese dinner at a french restaurant which was totally faultless (for 20 US dollars per head for 4 courses).

Our room costs 30 US dollars per night and it's good value. The people here cannot help us enough. I am in the hotel lobby using free internet and I've just been given a freshly squeezed orange juice. Today we focussed on organising a tour for the next few days and getting a few supplies.

We were warned about corssing the road. Basically it's about just heading out to the other side whilst ignoring oncoming traffic peeping and hooting at you from two directions. We attached ourselves to locals to start with but have got the hang of it! If you didn't go for it, you wouldn't be able to move!

Well we've gone for it and have booked a tour to the surrounding area and we will spend 4 nights staying with local families in stilt houses and cooking with them. Honestly? I'm pretty apprehensive about it but everyone is friendly and we're with a reputable company so I say, sod it, why not? Only live once and all that.

Anyway, best stop hogging the computer. Take care and sorry about lack of pics! Will try again soon!
Lots of love to you all, J and S xxx