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 bulbuls; near-black birds with bright red bills and legs. It was the day's only new tick. We drove on. Still quite a lot of forest, both pine and broadleaf, but sadly much evidence of logging and forest fires, and the ubiquitous litter dumped in festering heaps along every roadside. In a few years the trees will be all gone and the country will be one vast rubbish tip.

Next stop was a coffee plantation. We're familiar with coffee berries and beans from visiting Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru, but when we continued on to a processing shed, we saw proof of the infamous Vietnamese twist on the production technique...yes, there were weasels in cages (some kind of civet I think, they were mink-sized); yes, there were sacks full of weasel s*** with coffee beans in it...and yes, I did drink some. It was OK actually. I usually won't touch coffee without milk and a pinch of sugar, but this was smooth enough to enjoy black and unsweetened. They were distilling rice wine (actually a spirit) in the same place. Boiling the rice, fermenting it in mucky looking buckets then boiling it in a very primitive boiler from which a pipe passed through a big water tank and a fine dribble of alcohol ran out into a plastic canister. I tasted some and it wasn't nearly as rank as some cheap spirits I've come across in my travels. I don't know how they make sure they're not getting too much methanol...it all looked very hit and miss to me...

Next we visited another pagoda. This one had several giant Buddhas inside it. One was a lady Buddha with thirty-six arms, eleven heads
and one thousand eyes. Outside was a two story high "Happy Buddha". He was pale green with a big fat stomach and little children climbing on him.

Below the pagoda was Elephant Falls, a huge waterfall over basalt columnar rocks. We scrambled down slippery pathways to the foot of the falls, and I was able to walk almost behind the curtain of water before I got too soaked.

We politely declined Linh's invitation into a lunch cafe since the place was buzzing with flies and decided we'd prefer hunger today to food poisoning. We looked around a hand-weaving place run by some of the tribal people, then went on to a silk factory. This was fascinating. They were unravelling the silkworm cocoons, spinning it into threads on ancient machines and then weaving it on Victorian-looking power looms, programmed by punched-card templates. The noise was terrible. The poor girls tending the machines had no ear protection. They'll all be deaf by the time they're my age.

We looked in at mushroom farm where the mushrooms are grown in thousands of plastic bags full of sawdust, suspended from the roof of thatched bamboo sheds.

The final stop was a cricket farm. Yes, they farm crickets to eat. And yes, I did eat some, stir-fried. They don't taste too bad - a bit like crispy bacon with legs on it. The owners were all sitting around eating and looking like they'd had rather too much rice wine already. I got more rice wine forced upon me, and given some barbecued meat to eat. I hope it was pork, that's what it tasted most like, but somebody joked it was dog. At least...I think he joked.

They dropped us off back at the hotel. Robbie's ATM card got swallowed by the same machine that nearly had mine this morning but you don't want to know about that, it's a horrible story. We're down to two working cards now. The annoyance is that you can't withdraw more than 2 million Dong per day (£70).

Dinner was at the Da Quy again. We're unadventurous I know, but it is good there. We came out and it was "walking city Saturday". They'd banned all motorised transport from the town centre until 11pm. What joy! We danced down the middle of the road all the way home.