After our interesting entry into the country, we took a short bus ride to our hotel in Hanoi where we stayed for a night before taking another bus ride (four hours this time) to Halong Bay. When we got there it was crazy busy - tourists everywhere and the harbour was full of boats - but once we got going it was fine (Halong Bay is really quite enormous). We had an incredible lunch on the boat: fresh prawns, fresh crab and fresh fish, and a small dish with a lime on it and some salt and black pepper which we mixed together to make a delicious dipping sauce. After lunch, we visited the Sung Sot caves which were huge and, well, cavernous and quite impressive. Once we'd worn ourselves out with all the climbing up and through the caves, we wore ourselves out a little bit more by jumping into a kayak and going around the bay, and kayaking through a small cave out into a secluded cove - it was beautiful.

The next day we headed back to the harbour early in the morning for another drive back to Hanoi. Hanoi is a pretty city and full of French architecture and motorbikes. The way to cross the road is to all stand side by side and just walk, slowly. This way, the bikers can ride around you; if you stop or run, they'll knock you over - scary stuff but not too bad once you get used to it. We visited the Hoa Lo prison, locally known as the Hanoi Hilton, which was interesting but really quite biased against the US (fair enough you would expect but actually it made us feel a little uncomfortable - it's nicer just to be given the facts so that you can draw your own conclusions about it all). That afternoon we took a Cyclo tour around the city which was really interesting - you get to go slowly enough to get a good look at everything, even if you are at the mercy of your driver's traffic-dodging skills. It's a wonder that there aren't accidents everywhere but they all seem to be quite good at it. Afterwards we were taken to a traditional Water Puppet show in a theatre about the size of the Winston Churchill, where in place of a stage there is a large pond with bamboo curtains at the back, behind which puppeteers control the puppets from under the water.

The next day we did a little more sightseeing and had a lovely hour-long massage for ₤4 before a quick dinner and an overnight train to Hue (quite comfortable and uneventful except that we discovered that a mouse had got into one of our bags, eaten a hole in our crisp packet and eaten the crisps!). Hue was a 36 hour whistle stop tour where we visited, amongst other things, the Citadel which saw some of the fiercest fighting during the Vietnam/US war and was also featured in Top Gear. We took a boat ride across the Perfume River where we visited a pagoda (very pretty; we stumbled across a big bunny rabbit who liked eating the flowers and was quite happy for us to stroke him!). On the way there we also came across some chicks - one of the ladies in our group picked one up and gave it to me to hold, very cute).

The following morning we took another four hour bus ride (beautiful weather and scenery) down to Hoi An, home of the tailors, where we stayed for three nights. Hoi An is a beautiful town, with very pretty French architecture and almost every shop is a tailor, shoe shop or art and craft shop, or a restaurant. We found ourselves a tailor on the first day, and got measured up for clothes: three 3-piece suits, three shirts, a dress, and two traditional Vietnamese Ao Dai (pronounced oh-yie). We also had four pairs of shoes made - two pairs each - and ended up spending about ₤400 on the whole lot, not bad going!

We did manage to fit in a little bit of sightseeing in between all the shopping, and on our last day we cycled around the countryside for a couple of hours with a local guy which was amazing. We got to see all the bits we wouldn't otherwise have seen, away from the tourist area and shops. We cycled through rice paddy fields, peanut fields, herb allotments and past a primary school where all the children came out to wave hello to us. We ended our bicycle tour at the beach which was beautiful; we were really hot after all the cycling and so we went straight for the sea - the waves were so powerful it was like being rugby tackled everytime one hit you and it was brilliant fun. We both got knocked over several times!

Yesterday morning, we stopped off at Marble Mountain in Danang on our way to the airport - more temples and caves, very pretty and very hot! A short flight later (during which there was some turbulence so I closed my eyes and hung on to Simon so I had no idea we were close to landing - when we did I still had my eyes shut and thought we were all going to die!) we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by a lot of the south Vietnamese). It's a big city, very westernised and even more full of motorbikes than Hanoi. For some reason our hotel room had been upgraded and so we're staying in a room with its own lounge area and a jacuzzi bath in the bathroom - not very backpacker style :)

Yesterday afternoon we took a Cyclo tour and visited the War Remnants Museum (interesting, felt a bit sick afterwards) and then the Notre Dame cathedral (a replica of the one in Paris). Today we visited the Reunification Palace, which is still used for government business today and was the home and workplace of the President of South Vietnam, and the site of the official handover of power during the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, after which the city was officially named Ho Chi Minh City. Tonight is our last night in Ho Chi Minh City and we're off tomorrow morning at half past seven to drive to Cambodia.

We've really enjoyed Vietnam and every city we've visited has been different from the previous one. The food has been great and so have the people - it's definitely a country we would recommend.