On the bus from Hue to Hoi An, I sat next to a Norweigan guy named Einar. He spoke very good English and entertained us with some magic tricks (he earns money as a magician aside from studying). The bus dropped us off at a nice and reasonably cheap guest house, so once we were settled, I chilled out by the pool (yes, it had a pool and a gym as well!!) and got chatting to a couple of girls. One was an aussie girl, Teagan, and the other was called Chloe...from the Wirral! Second person so far.

That evening, Vic and I went for a meal, he had crab and I had some local dishes, known as Cao Lao and White Rose. Afterwards, Vic found a local bar showing the Arsenal game (he's a Gooner), whilst Liverpool were being shown back at our hotel, so I went back.

The next day we hired some bikes and went for a sight-seeing cycle through the peaceful Hoi An town, which was the third UNESCO World Heritage Site we'd seen so far. On our journey we saw some temples and even a Vietnamese wedding party! There was a lot of historical interests and an old Vietnamese house (Mum - you'd have liked it!). In the temples, they worship Buddha but they also have a place for Confucianism, which confused me a little. We saw a traditional music and dance show, where at the end, they played and sang their version of Auld Lang Syne! The evening was quite quiet, we went out for some drinks and went to play pool.

Early-ish the next day, I checked out the hotel gym, so after a decent workout and a swim, I was ready to go to the Marble Mountains. Apparently, these were once under water and were considered islands, but are now huge Christmas pudding shaped mountains, which has previously been a source of marble for the area.

The mountains, their temples, statues and caves are beautiful, some fantastic scenery to be had. Some of the local traditions in the caves were to sample some of the natural rain water by running it over your face and hair for good luck, making the sound of a drum on a special marble hollow in the rock, and praying in part of the cave for future romantic success! We saw lots of Buddhas and our guide was getting tired, so we paid him and he left us...we felt there was more to be seen so we decided to explore some more. We saw an impressive marble Buddha, a lying Buddha (death, as opposed to reclining Buddha), located right behind a sitting Buddha (life). We were told this highlights the fine balance between life and death.

After, we went to the China beach close by to go in the sea for a bit. We saw a woman with a monkey on a chain, who unsurprisingly was quite angry. The monkey, not the woman. We bumped into Karl again, went out in the evening with Einar the magician, had beers for 20p a pint, played some Fussball, pool and met some Norweigan and Essex girls.

The next day we just chilled as we were going out that night to eat snake. It was a strange experience, as you'll see from the pictures. They mix the snake's blood with some rice whisky which we drink along with the snake spring rolls, snake in a leaf and snake soup. I can't say it was a filling meal, or particularly tasty, so I don't think I'd do it again.