Vietnam, a country of crazy drivers, crazy salesmen and crazy prices. We've almost been involved in a car accident 50 times in a week and heard a sales pitch from the entire population but dinner costs a quid and beer 6p so we just close our eyes and ears and are loving it.

We arrived just over a week ago and have spent our time spent in the capital Hanoi while taking tours to Halong Bay on the coast and Sapa in the mountains. Hanoi is apparantly a fairly quiet town but to us is like constant carnage. You take your life in your hands crossing the street at rush hour as everybody here owns motorbikes. Their favourite part being the horn so it's very noisy even at 5 in the morning as we discovered today when we got back from Sapa. You end up having to just sit at a street bar and watch the locals get on with it.

After three days in Hanoi we headed for the coast. Halong Bay is a maze of mountains protruding from the sea with some nice bays scattered around. We cruised around for a couple of days and also took a walk into the national park. This was rainforest and was so humid that we managed to sweat our body weight within twenty minutes. About the same as Sean in Neros. We finished the tour with a hell ride back to Hanoi. It was like riding with Benny being urged on by Brocky while driving on the wrong side of the road. And still they discourage the use of seat belts here!

Straight from Halong Bay and back to Hanoi we took the night train to the mountains and a small town called Sapa. This is where all the ethnic minorities that live in the mountains near the China border congregate to try to sell their wares to tourists. Once we got out of the town and hiked to some smaller local villages that don't even have roads we got to see some of the real minority people and how they live. It's like stepping back 400 years looking in their houses (apart from the mandatory big TV/DVD player every family seems to have!) We had local girls as our guides for the 2 days, one 18 and one 19 years old. Everyone seems to speak really good english so we learned a lot about how people live and local customs etc. Really interesting tour, we enjoyed it a lot.

One thing we have noticed in Vietnam is that we appear to be the only non smokers, this is probably due to cigarrettes costing about 20p a pack. So come on all you smokers/drinkers and fattys (food costs nothing as well), book your airline tickets and come and join in the fun!

Off south to Hue tomorrow evening on the bus. Ten hours overnight will be a fun journey. No luxury of miniture beds this time either.

Should be some pictures on here soon as Suzanne has just received a picture CD. However, this is the second one we have sent so the first couple of weeks in China are still on a ship somewhere in the ocean as we made the mistake of being cheapskates first time and shipped them not realising it can take up to 3 months - woops.

Bye for now.

(ps Michael dictated most of this and i typed but i would like to point out that it was him who sweated his ass off doing the hike not me!)