Arriving in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City we were dropped straight in the main backpacker area- consisting of more than 100 different hotels and guesthouses, shops, bars and restaurants! And not much else in the close area! My favourite bar- although more expensive than most was of course Allez Boo!! We took a tour to the Chu Chi tunnels, an hour from the city, where communist gurilla fighters dug a tunnel network to fight against the French, and then the Americans...

After another two amazing days of diving and theory lessons! We had an exam to do. We learnt so much in the three days- including doing horrible skills like taking our masks off underwater- and our instructor turning off our air to make us practice sharing air! We both passed our exams and so are qualified Open Water divers- meaning we can dive on our own- if we wanted to!! Obviously this called for a celebration so we went on a pub crawl around Nha Trang with ou...

Our few days in Hue were spend mostly being very lazy! (and playing pool in a bar near our hotel!) We hired a moped, for 5 USD for one day, and went to the local beach. I was going to try driving once we'd got out of the town, but the moped was so old and sketchy, jumping around, we decided it propably wasn't a good idea! The local beach (about 15km from Hue) was deserted, with people from beachside cafes (shacks) running towards us when we got there to make us s...

On 20th Sept (Happy birthday yellow hat!) we crossed the border into Vietnam. The border crossing was called 'Friendship Gate' and was between Pinxiang (China) and Dong Dan (V). We woke up on the sleeper train to Nanning- there were only hard sleeper beds available when we booked- a new experience from soft sleepers- which have four bed compartments. the hard sleeper had triple bunks, in sections of six beds, but with only very thin walls between, and no doors- ...