Well, we're here now. I'm utterly exhausted. A couple of hours of broken sleep on the plane between London & Hong Kong is all I've had since early yesterday morning. It'll be about 4.30pm back home now... The flights all went without a hitch though. We went with Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong airline. Their staff are all wonderfully polite & helpful. Hong Kong airport is spotless. They've got an underground train that takes you between terminals.

We took a taxi from Saigon airport to our hotel. The roads are terrifying in this city. There are people on scooters swerving in front of you everywhere. Millions of scooters. The driver dropped us on Pham Ngu Lao, the main drag for the backpacking community, and waved us vaguely in the direction of some travel agent shops. No sign of the Hoang Phong Hotel where we'd paid for a reservation. A lot of questioning and confused searching took us down a grubby looking alleyway between the travel agencies, & we finally found a neon sign for the hotel in the most unlikely looking back alley. Trouble was it appeared to be pointing at the Golden Winds Hotel. Both very very tired & confused, and nobody we asked seemed to have heard of the Hoang Phong. But we eventually figured it out: one hotel, two different names! Obvious, eh?

The room is very good though for about £20 a night, so mustn't grumble. We've been out for a great vegetarian meal & sat drinking a beer at one of thousands of bars, watching the vast herds of scooters zipping about. You sometimes see a family of four riding a single scooter. And once a lady with 3 dogs on one. Beer is about 50p a bottle. I'm gonna like this country...