We've spent four days in Hoi An, about halfway down the coast between Hanoi and HCMC anda stop for most tourists visiting Vietnam. Chinese influences can be seen across Vietnam but not least in this former major trading port that is heavy with the legacy of the Chinese, Japanese and other merchants who settled here.

Hoi An hasn't been a port for a long time and is now quite a small town, but is a main location for the silk trade in Vietnam with a lot of visitors getting suits and dresses made up here for a fraction of the price at home. We're not organised enough to do that, but enjoy spending a few days wandering around the Chinese pagodas, eatingnice food and on the last day we hired some bikes to go to the beach. The beach didn't have much to offer- the weather had started to turn and the wind was really strong - but we found a nice bar over the river to get a drink on the way back. The ride also made us feel like we had done some exercise after lots of eating and drinking for days, including a fantastic restaurant called Morning Glory that did some of the best spring rolls we have had here (and we have had a lot!). We also ended up with an interesting selection of purchases from one of the street hawkers who was a lot more persuasive than most, convincing us to spend Singapore $5, £5 and a lot of Dong on two bracelets, a bunch of bananas and a wooden turtle that makes a noise when you blow through it!

We also took a day trip to My Son, a site of some old temples / religious sites built by the Cham people many centuries before (not a great description, but a bit like Vietnam's Angkor Wat but on a much smaller scale). Unfortunately quite a lot of the site has been damaged over time, not least by the Americans during the war, but impressive nonetheless and not least because they didn't use cement when building. We had planned to take a boat back to town afterwards but the high water levels ruled it out: over the few days we were in Hoi An there was quite a lot of rain so every night the restaurants closest to the water would be out of reach. It seems as if the town floods badly most years in the rainy season but rather than complaining the locals almost seem proud of this, with photos of the flooded buildings on the front of menus and no apparent efforts to relocate to a safer place.

Our plan had always been to head down to Nha Trang after Hoi An, to spend a few days relaxing before Nick went back to the UK. Nha Trang is said to have some of the best beaches and snorkelling / diving in the country and even though it gets some negative reviews (the Marbella of Vietnam!) we figured it would be a nice way to pass a few days.

We knew that it was rainy season but from previous visits to Asia thought that this usually meant downpours for an hour or two a day and sunny apart from that - how wrong we were! When we arrived on the first day it wasn't raining but the sea was really rough and a horrible brown colour so snorkelling wasn't going to be an option. A walk around town confirmed that there wasn't much to do if the weather wasn't nice and that the town had none of Hanoi or Hoi An's charm, but we consoled ourselves that we could visit a local mud spa or do an overnight trip to the hill town of Da Lat if it stayed overcast. We also went to the local market and saw some interest sights, including a bag of live frogs and a live eel being skinned, which has put me off eating those foods!

That was until we woke up the next morning and saw that the rains had come overnight - incessant, torrential rain that meant we couldn't even see the sea from our balcony. At first it was a bit of an adventure - we were staying in a really nice hotel so we lazed around and used the spa - but by the evening we had cabin fever and went to town for food and to see if we could bring forward Nick's flight back to Hanoi. It was only when we ventured into town that we saw that everywhere was under a couple of feet of water so we couldn't even get to the Vietnam Airlines office. We beat a hasty retreat to a brewhouse bar that wasn't submerged and spent the rest of the evening tasting their beer and wondering if the rain would even let up slightly, let alone end.

The next morning we were able to arrange flights back to Hanoi the next night so we had a lifeline! It was the opposite direction to where I had hoped to go, but everywhere in the south of the country and most of the region (Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia) seemed to be affected by this rain. We passed the next couple of days in those bars that weren't under two feet of water and went fora Vietnamese massage, which is one to store under the category of 'good for you if not necessarily enjoyable'.

The rain hadn't let up for days and we were so relieved to be leaving Nha Trang; there had been some suggestion that the flights would be cancelled because of the weather which had filled us with dread at the thought of spending more time there. We have spent a lot of time on holidays hiding out from the rain (Australia, America, Thailand) but this was by far the most miserable experience, I think because usually either we or the weather was only passing through whereas here we felt genuinely stranded and out of options or ways to pass the time. It was also such a contrast to our expectations of an idyllic beach break, instead of lying on a sun lounger with a cocktail and a good book we were tramping through three feet of dirty water just to get out of our claustrophobic hotel.

So you can imagine our horror when our taxi to the airport didn't arrive to collect us. After a few minutes we got worried and asked the hotel to call them - it turned out that the airline, who arrange the taxi, hadn't confirmed it with the car company but they would try and find a taxi now. A few minutes later and still nothing.We are starting to panic.The hotel doorman hails a local taxi and a rapid conversation in Vietnamese ensues: even though we don't understand the words we can tell that all is not well. Eventually we are told that the road to the airport is flooded so he wouldn't take us. I think that was the point when the prospect of missing the flight and being stuck in Nha Trang hit me and I started crying - not a moment I am proud of in hindsight!

A few minutes later our original taxi arrived and the doorman convinced the driver that he had to take us anyway. The receptionist of the hotel mentioned that she had a friend at the airport and would phone her to say that we were on our way. With a renewed sense of hope we set off and were making good progress through town...until the taxi driver decided to stop for petrol. Yes, really. Everything you read about Asia says that you won't get anywhere if you show that you are angry but we struggled to remain calm at that point in time!

A few minutes later - 1hr before departure - we are back on the road. At first we don't understand why the original taxi driver was making such a fuss about the roads, all seems fine. That's when we hit the first pool of water and the engine nearly floods. The driver somehow keeps the engine going through this and even worse floods. The road had also been affected by landslides and was littered with mud and large rocks. By this point we knew that we were missing the plane - it was 45 minutes to departure with the airport nowhere in sight - but were just hoping to get to the airport in one piece without the engine flooding, more landslides or going off the road where the rain wasto bad to see where we were going.

We eventually got to the airport about 20 minutes before take-off, glad to be alive!, and decided to beg and plead with the airline staff to let us on the plane although we had no expectation that this would work. Amazingly, the hotel receptionist's phone call had made the difference- we had already been checked in so we dumped our backpacks, grabbed our boarding passes and sprinted through the airport on to the plane just in time with a sense of relief and exhilaration that I can't begin to describe - we were escaping Nha Trang!