We're at Saigon airport now, waiting for our flight to Hong Kong. Yesterday morning we went out early birding again. It had been raining in the night and the birds were quite active, but it was difficult to identify that many. We got a good look at a hoopoe and an Asian barred owlet along the roadside. Came back to the Ven Ven for breakfast. Then we mooched around the hotel grounds until 12.00, packing bags and so on. We travelled with the proprietress to the tow...

We got up early this morning to go birding in the forest. It was hot and sticky already outside at 6.45am. We walked along the road half a mile and were rewarded with a sight of two hoopoes flying across our path, but most of the birds hadn't woken up yet. We found a side track away from the road (which was quite busy with motorbikes for the hour of morning), and it lead us to a rather grim looking dam that held back a black and stagnant pond. It had been built r...

This morning we both slept in because we'd got thick heads from the Dalat wine we'd drunk last night. The Ven Ven hotel is quite nice really for the trivial amount of money we're paying. There's a short path into the forest and a shady bench and table, the buildings are all surrounded by trees and bourgonvillea. I think we had a civet on our roof last night - something with scrabbling claws woke us up. But the restaurant is just a pain. We're still the only guest...

We got picked up at the hotel this morning at 8.15 by our driver who was called Le Hoa. He took us out of town the way we'd come in, through the pine forests, but then took a country route towards the coast. We drove through some very extensive forests, some of it dense tangled broadleaf jungle, so we started to forgive Vietnam a little bit. There were some picturesque little paddy fields in the flat areas, and we got Le to stop several times for photos and looki...

We got picked up at the hotel this morning for our tour of the local villages. Our guide was a young man called Linh who spoke good English, and we had a driver too. They drove us out of town into the pine forests, and our first stop was one of the flower farms. We looked inside some growing tunnels which were all framed from bamboo. They had acres of Gerberas, roses and Sweet Williams inside. At a viewpoint further on we got a good look at a pair of black bulbu...