Wild horses could and did drag me away

19/4/2007 - 14/5/2007

By the time I finished the last posting it was nearly midnight, so I missed the shops, which is probably a good thing. I wandered round the streets of Saigon watching the traffic streaming past, all going in different directions and weaving round each other. The traffic here is more insane than in Phnom Penh - it certainly goes faster and there's more of it. If you want to turn your moto onto the far side of a main road and there isn't a break in traffic letting you through, you can drive into heavy oncoming traffic at a slight angle so that you gradually get onto the other side (this was a rule that applied in Cambodia too), but if you want to turn into the near side, there is no space, and you can't be bothered to wait, it's perfectly acceptable to drive your moto along the pavement with pedestrians dodging out of the way, until you manage to get onto the road. If you find your route lengthened by the inconvenient positioning of a one-way street, you can get away with driving down it the wrong way, as long as you beep your horn in an exasperated manner that suggests that everyone else on the road is travelling down it the wrong way. Similarly if you reach a red light and don't feel like stopping (you'll find that 90% of people do at least), just drive through it. When you reach a roundabout, you never stop and give way, you just drive in, pray, dodge each other and beep indignantly all the time at everyone else. The one concession to road safety that I have noticed (if in a slightly bemused manner), is that all cars and trucks make noises when reversing, although I'd imagine the fact that they all play the Lambada (the forbidden dance) has probably caused more than one accident when westerners have stopped in the middle of the road in astonishment. The other day I saw a man driving a moto in rush hour with a seriously bulky air-con unit balanced on the back, strapped down with bungy cords, that he was holding steady with one hand, while steering with the other. I still think this is an improvement on the moto I saw driving down the road in Cambodia with three dead pigs on the back though. There are motos everywhere, it seems like there are thousands on the road at any one time, but in reality there are more clogging up the pavement, so that it would be virtually impossible to walk on the pavement if it weren't for the women selling fresh produce, jewellery and tourist tat, blocking up the few remaining square inches of space and making it completely impossible to weave a path on the pavement. You end up walking as close to the side of the road as possible with motos dodging round you and beeping at you. Often you find your path completely blocked by someone who has decided that because you're a tourist, you must want a moto or to buy an illegally photocopied book, a pineapple or drugs. Half of these people seem to be under the impression that everyone in England says "Lovely jubbly" all the time, or "Rodney you plonker", and inexplicably "Cool banana".

I was sad to say goodbye to the commercialised chaos of communist HCMC, but the following morning I did when I headed off to Cat Tien NP. The bus broke down half way there and I got chatting to a wonderfully friendly couple who were doing almost the same trip as me, but in reverse. We swapped stories and recommendations, and discussed our opinions of the countries that we had all been to. Oddly they had found the Cambodian people to be unfriendly, and preferred the Vietnamese - it's strange how much different people's experiences of the same places contrast.

Eventually the driver managed to bring the engine back to life, and I got on the bus having eaten more baguettes with cheese (aaah, bread, how I've missed you) and fresh pineapple than was healthy. I got dropped off opposite the start of the track that lead to Cat Tien NP and located a moto driver to take me the 30km to the park entrance for about 2 quid (I found out later that I had been overcharged). I took a boat across the river to the park headquarters, heaved my bags off the boat, saw an enormous black and blue butterfly on my bag, and then suddenly realised that there were butterflies everywhere - there were at least two dozen within ten metres of me. I stood there and stared with my mouth wide open (until I remembered what teachers had said to me as a child about flies and worried that I was going to catch a butterfly if I didn't raise my jaw from the ground). After about ten minutes of watching in a stupefied manner in the scorching midday sun I decided to get myself a room and sit in the shade with a drink for a while. Sadly the NP staff all seemed to be on a break at once. After about half an hour I managed to find someone to show me the ridiculously overpriced rooms (they had no single rooms and made no allowance for my solo status). Once I had rehydrated myself I located my camera in my luggage and went for a wander to butterfly spot. I had originally come to Cat Tien to see some of the 326 species of bird that can be found here, but the birds kept hiding in the treetops - I could hear their wonderfully varied songs, but couldn't see them. The 457 species of butterfly, however, were a different story. I don't think I made it more than 400m down the path from my room as I kept seeing butterflies everywhere, and stopping to try to get a decent photo (they don't stay still for long as it turns out). When the sun started to set and it became too dark to get a photo of anything better than a brightly coloured blur I headed back to the headquarters, got some dinner with freshly squeezed orange juice, and headed to bed with a book (I'd finished "Notes on a Scandal" and was onto my next book "First they killed my Father...". The title probably should have given away that this was not going to be a pleasant read).

I decided that if I wanted to progress further into the National Park the following day, I was going to have to hire a cycle (normally I wouldn't, but I felt safe considering the lack of traffic or, erm, lampposts) and not stop every few seconds when I see another butterfly. I made it about 50m when I came across a flutter of butterflies near a guard hut. My resolution to not stop went out of the window and my camera came straight out. When the guards saw how evidently I was enjoying this, they got a hosepipe and poured a bit of water on the ground. It was a hot day, and I can only presume that the butterflies were thirsty because they suddenly came streaming from all directions and suddenly I was surrounded by several hundred butterflies. I was unsure whether to take hundreds of photos, or just stand there spinning around in fits of ecstasy with butterflies fluttering all around me. I compromised and did both alternately.

After about an hour (I think, I lost track of time somewhat), I got back on my bike and found myself cycling headlong into a stream of butterflies that were still swarming towards the water (it really, really was very hot). After a few kilometers I found the butterflies were no longer flying past me, but were flying alongside me and keeping pace, seemingly cavorting in my slipstream.

I was quite happily cycling along at a decent clip when I suddenly heard a huge crash from the forest to my left, followed by a loud grunting, snorting noise that sounded like a cross between a horse and a moose. I was sure from the volume of the crash that this must be the rare Javan Rhino (of which there are approximately seven living in the wild in Cat Tien NP, and another colony on Java), but given our relative sizes, I thought it best to restrict my investigations to peering through the trees from the path, rather than going into the forest and invading it's territory. Sadly I couldn't see anything, and when I had heard no noise for a while I continued cycling, stopped at a river for a break, was surrounded by more butterflies as I guzzled water, and then rode back again. I spoke to the park guards and immitated the noise I heard as best I could and the guards laughed, said that no that wasn't a rhino, but that I'd just done an excellent impression of a macaque. I left feeling disappointed and cheered myself up by taking more pictures of butterflies and spinning round with butterflies flying everywhere again.

I managed to drag myself away from the butterflies eventually, got on the boat back across the river, arranged a lift to the bus station with a girl selling water at a stall, thought I was getting a great deal for 20p, until she stopped the bike 200m down the road at the bus station. I could have carried my bags that far easily. The rip-off merchant-girl told me that there would be a bus in about half an hour to Dalat and that it should cost about 50 000 dong (nearly 2 pounds). I sat around waiting with a group of local Vietnamese guys who were eating snails, drinking rice wine and laughing uproariously in a manner that suggested they were alarmingly drunk for 1pm. They offered me snails, which obviously I didn't want. They didn't understand me saying that I was vegetarian, and as one guy was repeatedly sticking snails in front of my mouth for me to eat, I launched into my usual array of farmyard animal impressions, followed by slitting throat mimes and violent shaking of my head and waving of my arms to say no. Amazingly enough they seemed to understand this and one of them produced a mango, while someone else located an extra glass for the rice wine. Thankfully the bus came along before I had caught up, I threw my bags in the back, collapsed in a seat, and then checked the price with the ticket guy when it had already left. At first he tried to not answer and imply through mime that we would sort it out later, but I'd already had that trick played on me, so I persisted. He eventually said 100 000 dong and I repeatedly said 50 000 dong. He repeatedly said no, followed by his original price, and then eventually stopped listening to me, and just ignored me. I started saying I wanted to get off the bus, which he responded to by continuing to ignore me, so I got my bags, opened the door and glared at him until he stopped the bus. When I was off the bus and in a better position to bargain I repeated what I'd been told was a fair price, but he just laughed and drove off.

I looked around and realised that I was in the arse end of nowhere. I started to worry that I'd just cut off my nose to spite my face, when I saw a house nearby. I went over thinking that they might point me in the right direction, and was greeted by a crowd of excited kids who went to fetch their family. The entire extended family came out, and then rushed around to fetch me a stool, some water, some tea and a fan that the granny of the family proceeded to fan me with (this seemed very wrong, so I tried to reverse the situation, but granny wasn't having any of it). The gorgeous kids giggled constantly at my attempts to make myself understood, and at my attempts to pronounce Vietnamese words that they tried to teach me. Eventually a guy turned up that spoke some English. After establishing that I needed a lift back to the highway, he sat down to join in the a-white-person-has-just-appeared-festivities, apparently in no hurry to sort me out a lift, but I was having fun, so I wasn't in a hurry either. He asked "Are you vegenie/virginie?". I wasn't sure if word had spread about the strange white person who didn't eat cows, pigs, chickens, horses, dogs, cats or snails, or whether he was asking a rather impertinent question that highlighted his naivety and his lack of dealings with English girls. For once I felt that using mime to clarify the situation was probably a bad idea. From the way the entire female side of the family was giggling into their hands though, I suspected the latter. After taking pictures of the entire family and showing the kids that I could zoom in and see up their nostrils (they seemed to think that this was as great as I do), I got a lift back to the highway for 50 000 dong, and sat around while a bunch of locals took it upon themselves to flag me down a bus while I sat in the shade enjoying an Orangina. I eventually got on a minibus filled with locals to Dalat, the guy tried to charge me 150 000, but when I started laughing, he dropped it to the normal tourist price (which is undoubtedly more than the locals pay) of 50 000 dong, meaning I ended up paying the same for the moto and minibus combined as I'd refused to pay for the first bus, but I didn't feel like I was being held hostage for it, it had been an adventure, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed myself.

After a short while the minibus stopped at a service station, and I went off to find the toilets. Unfortunately there were no handy pictures on the wall next to the toilets to establish which was female and there was no-one else around to ask so I went with my guess that nam was man spelt backwards, and went into the stall marked nu. There was a girl nearby when I came out, and I established (with the aid of mimes that she obviously found hilarious) that I had gone into the correct one.

I got back on the minibus, discovered that someone had loaded bags and bags of flowers onto the back, and that the bag nearest me was Jasmine, inhaled deeply, found out the Vietnamese word for Jasmine (which sadly I've forgotten now), and was given a handful of Jasmine flowers by someone sitting near me (I can only assume they were his to give). I attached them to my hair as best I could, located my mp3 player (which I had finally managed to charge), and listened on one earphone while I lent the other to the bus conductor and various Vietnamese people on the bus, in an attempt to corrupt the comrades by exposing them to Massive Attack, Zero 7, Amy Winehouse, Royksopp, Karine Polwart, the Killers, KD Tunstall and Elvis. The music seemed to go down well (I think Massive Attack proved most popular).

Eventually I arrived in Dalat, got a moto driver to take me round town until I found a hotel that wasn't full, went out for dinner and then discovered that my room had cable TV and spent the evening in front of it lapping up the crap on Star Movies.

The following day I woke up feeling like crap (I attributed it to the change in climate since my arrival in the central highlands, and considered this further proof that I am not built for cold weather). I eventually dragged myself out of bed and set off for Lang Bian mountain, bringing plenty of water with me. At a height of 2 167m with a climb of 700m, this sounded easier than it was. The last few hundred metres were insanely steep, it was exhausting work, and I was feeling more and more shit by the minute. The panoramic views from the top were nothing short of spectacular, especially in the direction of the massive storm front with the rain gradually obscuring the mountains in the distance. I took some quick pictures and then hurried back down before the rain made the precipitously steep part of the way down perilously slippery. It started spitting before I felt safe, so I went back to my old trick of going down on all fives (hands, feet and bum) - I made slow progress. By the time the path returned to a gradient that I felt was do-able without climbing equipment the sun was starting to set, so I hurried down the path, racing the sun. About 2/3 of the way down I suddenly happened upon a herd of wild horses grazing in the forest. I forgot about the rush in an instant and stalked the horses as quietly and as unobtrusively as possible for the next ten minutes until I spotted the sunset in one of my photos, swore quietly, and raced off.

I made it back to the base of the mountain in twilight, returned to Dalat by bus, gobbled some food and returned to my bed and Star movies.

The following morning I dragged myself out of bed, still feeling like crap and located an overpriced moto driver for the day. Everyone I'd spoken to who'd already been to Dalat recommended the "Easy Riders" - a group of moto drivers who speak good English, but take you to non-touristy spots around Dalat that aren't in the lonely planet. I think it was one of those things where everyone raves on about something so much that the reality doesn't live up to your expectations. The guy was nice enough, but all the places where people worked that he took me to (silk farms, flowers gardens, silk factories and blacksmiths) clearly saw a lot of tourists, even if they weren't there when I went, as the people barely glanced up when I walked in, giving me the impression that this happened a lot. I'd rather hop on a bus and end up in some unexpected place than do a contrived "Off the Beaten Track" tour that everyone else goes on. The scenery was pleasant and everything, but where the price was concerned I just felt like I'd been taken for a ride.

I collapsed in bed again that evening and watched yet more shite on the TV.

It was only the following morning when I was packing to go to Mui Ne that I started to wonder if I had a temperature. I decided to wait until I got to Mui Ne to see how I felt then before I did anything about it. The long and dull bus journey was broken up when I changed buses at the half way point near some ancient Cham towers. Thankfully my mp3 plyer still had juice and I had a nice Israeli couple sitting next to me to chat to. By the time I arrived at Mui Ne I felt like death warmed up, and while everyone else on the bus had the sense to wander around to find the best hotel, or the cheapest one, I just fell onto the bed of the first room I was shown by the owners of the hotel that the bus dropped us at. The next few hours were largely spent with me lying on my bed trying to convince myself to get up and fetch a freshly squeezed orange juice from the restaurant 5m from my room, or go to the internet cafe 30m away, or eventually to fetch my lonely planet and check out the hospital situation in the area as I blatantly had quite a temperature and have always been told in these situations to get your arse to the nearest hospital and get yourself checked for malaria. Unfortunately the nearest half-way decent hospital that was licensed to treat foreigners was back in HCMC, so I arranged for a bus to take me there in the middle of the night. Just before I was intending to go back to bed (again) to catch a few hours sleep before the bus, I went for another orange juice and ran into the Israeli couple (apparently it turned out that this hotel was the best deal in town). We played cards and I moaned about feeling like shit (I must have been excellent company), and as it happened, they were travelling with quite an impressive medical kit, including a thermometer. I had a temperature of 39.6 degrees. Oddly enough I found this reassuring, I had been wondering if I was just being my daft hypochondriac self in rushing back to HCMC over a little fever, and I felt vindicated. It's like banging your leg, it being sore for a while, and waking up in the morning to find a big purple bruise there to show off.

I managed a couple of hours sleep before getting up to pack my stuff up, have one last shower and wait for the bus. I went to sit outside where I'd been told the bus would come, and then a member of the hotel staff came out, looked at my ticket, and told me that I must go to the Sinh Cafe down the road, where the bus would be arriving. I carried my extensive luggage several hundred metres down the road and was on the verge of collapsing when I got there, only to be told that my bus went from my hotel, which it said quite clearly on my ticket. I tried to stomp back to the hotel in a huff, but ended up walking back very slowly, huffing and puffing all the way. I would have shouted at the stupid man, had I had the energy, but instead I stole the hammock he had been lying in previously (I felt I was entitled) and pointed at my ticket wordlessly. I lay there for quite some time, idly wondering why I had dragged myself out of bed for a 1:30am bus that still wasn't there at 3am. Eventually at 3:30am the bus turned up, I boarded it and passed out.

At about 9am I arrived in HCMC, found a hotel that was willing to look after my bags for a few hours, and then found a moto to one of the better hospitals in HCMC. For the grand total of 5 pounds the doctor and the nurse scurried around, giving me a quick check up, took some blood, and sent it to the lab for a malaria test. I found a nearby internet cafe for four hours, and then came back to be told that I probably just had some virus, and that it wasn't malaria. Thank fuck.

Now that I didn't have to stay near decent medical facilities I booked myself an overnight bus ticket to Nha Trang to meet up with Dave again (meaning I'd spent over 24 hours on four different buses in the last 48 hours, but it was worth it, I'd been missing him), and as I had no energy to see the sights, I found a beauty salon and had myself pampered for a few hours. Thankfully they offered to let me have a shower before my treatments (to be honest, given that I'd had a temperature of 39.6 in a country where the air temperature must have been similar, and that I'd been on a bus overnight and hadn't had a shower yet that day, they probably would have insisted), and then I just slobbed and enjoyed being pampered before rushing off to get the bus (which was obviously over an hour late). I then spent the entire bus journey battling for my leg space with a middle aged Vietnamese man who was no taller than me, and whom developed an annoying propensity to stroke my leg accidentally-on-purpose when he moved. At one point he put his hands behind his head, with no regard for the noxious fumes he was inflicting on me. Suddenly I remembered my temperature and the fact that I had been wearing the same clothes for the last two days. This was one battle that I WOULD win. I stretched, put my hands behind my head too and unleashed the full power of my olefactory might onto the poor bastard. For the next few hours my armpits served as the trump card, whenever his leg invaded my space, or his hand looked like it was about to go somewhere it shouldn't. Unfortunately at about 4am we stopped at a service station type place, and he managed to find somewhere to buy a SARS mask which he impregnated with tiger balm (deja vu) to ward off my stench, and then he carried on pissing me off.

I arrived in Nha Trang exhausted, smelly and thoroughly fed up. I couldn't find an internet cafe that was open yet to check where Dave was staying, or even if he had received my e-mail the previous day, so I made for the beach, marvelled at the number of Vietnamese people up and on the beach swimming and playing badminton at 6am, dumped my bags near a sun lounger and went for a swim in the sea in my underwear close to my bags. As I didn't want to get salt water all over my bags and I hadn't thought to get my sarong out in advance, I just lay there drying in the sun, before dragging my bags off to a restaurant for breakfast (which I gobbled down - I had barely looked at food for the last 3 days and was now ravenous), and then locating an internet cafe and subsequently Dave in a hotel just around the corner. The rest of the day was a bit of a write off as we spent most of it in bed (erm, I was tired and in recovery...) before searching for a restaurant that served pasta in the evening. The following day followed a similar pattern, with lots of sleep, lots of fruit shakes being brought to me by Dave, lots of card games (Dave mercilessly kicked my arse at San Juan repeatedly, started keeping track of the relative numbers of games we had won and crowed over this repeatedly, making no concession for my ill health) and lots of TV.

We had expected Nha Trang to be a typical backpackers party town on the beach (not that I was up to that), and maybe it is most of the time, but around Vietnamese independence day the town fills up with Vietnamese tourists, all celebrating with their families - it sadly wasn't one of those holidays where the festivities spill out onto the street that's easy to gatecrash as a backpacker, so our days in Vietnam's beach party town on Vienamese independence day was a bit of a let down in that there was very little to do in the evenings, supposing I had managed to find the energy from somewhere to join in.

On the third day we decided it was aboout bloody time we left the hotel properly and spent the day at the beach before we were due to board a bus that evening to Hoi An. The waves were vicious that morning, and within seconds I had been knocked over and came up for air, gasping for breath and laughing my arse off (a difficult combination). Dave saw enormous potential for pissing about in this and we then spent a happy half hour with Dave diving and doing somersaults into the waves and me taking photos of him, eventually interrupted by some bastard sneaking up behind me and snatching Dave's bag from under my nose. I screamed something highly ineffectual like "Oi, give that fucking bag back" and pelted after him in a manner most unbecoming of someone in a bikini. Unfortunately his friend already had the motorbike engine running, so he hopped on the back of it and they sped off. I turned around to see Dave running up to me from the water, having worked out what had happened. He ran after his bag for a minute, then came back and confirmed that the bag had contained his passport, his money, his cashcards, his camera, and frustratingly, his cigarettes (he wants me to make it clear that he would never normally be foolish enough to put all of those things in one place, but we had checked out of our room, and he didn't want to leave any valuables lying around the hotel lobby). After a long hug, and several apologies from me for not launching myself bodily at the bastard on the bike, knocking him and his friend to the ground and taking them both on (Dave seemed to think that, not only was this not something I should apologise for, this was also an amusing image. Hmmmph), we headed to the internet cafe to find out card cancellation numbers, to e-mail Dave's dad, and to find out how to go about getting a new passport from the British Embassy.

Unfortunately the later seemed to involve going to the police station (I forgot about my plan to go to a police station in every country I visited - I had no contact with the constabulary in either NZ or Oz - how remiss of me), so we went along, explained the situation, and that we needed a police report in order to get a temporary passport, and the policeman explained to us why he wouldn't give us a police report (apparently the police chief wasn't in today). He assured us (after lengthy negotiations with Dave remaining surprisingly calm while I got a tad frustrated) that if we wrote down what happened, got the staff at our hotel to translate it into Vietnamese, and sent it back to the station, he would get a report written and have it sent to our next hotel in Hoi An, where we were heading that evening (I don't want to spoil the surprise here, but have a wild guess as to whether he actually bothered).

Once we'd done everything we needed to do immediately we found a restaurant and gobbled down pasta, and then returned to our hotel to wait for an hour for the bus. The bus eventually turned up, picked us up, and then stopped outside the travel agency where we'd bought our tickets, for another hour. The travel agency was about 50m from our hotel.

When we had given up all hope of making it to Hoi An before my flight home in July, the bus finally set off, and we had a deeply uncomfortable journey through the night to Hoi An, where we found a nice hotel with cable TV, a fridge and a bath (a bath, haaaaaaaaallleeeellujah).

After a lengthy and heavenly soak (despite the tiny size of the bathtub - in SE Asia I finally understand how much of a pain in the arse it can be being tall) and some sleep, we headed into town just to wander round, soak up the atmosphere, and look at clothes. Hoi An is a shopping Mecca - not only can you buy the usual array of jewellery, handbags and silk lanterns, but you can have beautiful clothes tailor-made for peasly amounts of money. I had a budget of 100 pounds to buy work clothes for next year (my students' frequent offers to "Trinny and Susanna me" were not as ignored as I had pretended at the time). I decided to get a pair of trousers made initially as a test run for a shop that had particularly well-cut, mainly stylish clothes on display, drew a picture of what I wanted, picked out a fabric, had my measurements taken, and was told to come back the following morning for a fitting.

We found a baguette stall for a quick and cheap dinner, and then spent the evening in an internet cafe so that I could finally get round to the thing that I'd been finding excuses to avoid for over a week - job applications (grrrrrrrrrrr).

The following day I dragged Dave round shop after shop, trying on my trousers, and getting an idea of what was available. I decided not to get everything made at one shop, to spread the money, and the risk, around a bit, and to order things in the shop that I see them, as I'd at least know that they'd made the garment well once before. Dave did look at a couple of jackets too. And, in my defense, Dave wasn't the only boyfriend being dragged around clothes shopping, trying to hide the losing-the-will-to-live expression behind a mask of increasingly fake enthusiasm.

That evening I made up for it by surprising Dave with a romantic evening of him killing time on the internet while I finished off my CV and application form from the day before. Dave sure is one lucky guy. We did manage to find a nice restaurant that did lovely chips with mayonnaise, pasta-to-die-for, and the most luscious mango juice EVER, as well as having a pool table (kicking my arse at pool a couple of times seemed to make Dave happy, and being respectable enough at pool now to not walk away from the table hanging my head anymore made me happy).

The following day I decided to give the tailors a chance to do their thing, while I went to see the World Heritage Site temples at Myson. Dave, having been travelling in asia for over a year now, is a tad templed out (so much so that I had to convince him that the temples at Angkor were worth seeing, and weren't just like all the rest), and elected not to come. I was the last person to be picked up on the bus route (meaning that I spent half an hour waiting for a bus while staring miserably at the most disgustingly unfluffy banana pancake I'd ever seen in my hotel restaurant), and as the company had overbooked, I ended up spending the hour-long journey on a primary school sized stool with no backrest in the aisle. Given that Dave and I had stayed up watching crap on Star Movies (possibly Charlie's Angels) the night before and I had to get up early to catch the bus, I did not appreciate the complete lack of anything to lean on while I failed to sleep on the bus.

We arrived at Myson, I hung back from the tour group and got deliberately left behind (the guide hadn't said anything interesting that I hadn't already read in my Lonely Planet for the first 10 minutes, and I didn't see that changing), meaning that I managed to get some decent photos of the temples without the crowds, and that I got to enjoy the place without the atmosphere being completely ruined. The temples were pretty stunning, and with the sun blazing down I thoroughly appreciated not being in an internet cafe or clothes shop for once.

I arrived back in Hoi An in the early afternoon, just in time for a round of fittings at various shops around town (Dave was thrilled and his "It looks lovely and your bum definitely doesn't look big in that"s certainly weren't starting to sound strained). Most of the clothes needed to be sent back for alterations (I elected not to tell Dave that this would mean trying them on all over again). Amazingly, it turned out to be a bloody good thing that Dave was there for the fittings, as he was commiserating with another bored boyfriend, and they got chatting. Dave mentioned that all of his stuff had been nicked in Nha Trang, the guy asked Dave his name, and then expressed astonishment because his friend had found Dave's passport and cards discarded on the beach in Nha Trang (he hadn't recognised him since the dreads and beard make him virtually unrecognisable from his passport photo). The cards were obviously of no use anymore, but having the passport would save a huge amount of hassle. He gave us the e-mail address of the friend who had found it all, and told us that he thought it had all been given to the immigration service. What a blind bit of luck!

The one more fitting turned into two more fitting the next day, when a couple of the clothing items fitted even worse the second time round, I made it very clear that we were leaving the next morning, and Dave developed a slight nervous tick. Dave avoided my clothes fittings as much as possible by having his own and sorting out bus tickets. He wisely chose to get tickets for the afternoon, so when I told the shops that they had a few more hours, I got hugs all round from stressed out tailors.

After trying and failing to meet up with Justin and Kate (friends of Steve's who are also travelling at the moment), Dave and I spent another evening playing pool and went to bed praying that the clothes would all be ready in time.

Miraculously they were. One or two things weren't quite right, and I had to leave wondering if I'd wear them, but the vast majority of things were exactly as I'd imagined them and fitted beautifully (except they were a bit too big, to allow for post-returning-to-England-pie-eating-weight-gains). Given that for my 100 quid I had a very stylish jacket (Dave was worried I would no longer talk to him while wearing it), an Ao Dai (Vietnamese traditional outfit), 6 tops, 3 skirts, a summer dress, a dressing gown and a pair of trousers, I think it was a success, despite the flaws in one or two things.

On the way back to the hotel to catch the bus, I insisted on doing some last minute present shopping. Dave's nervous tick (which had stopped when it looked like I had no more clothes to try on) made a return, while I assured him that in the entire time I had been travelling, no bus had ever been on time, and besides which, we'd be back at the hotel by two. We were. Sadly the bus had been and gone ten minutes ago (the first time a bus has ever been on time in recorded history in SE Asia, let alone early), so Dave and I had to catch motos to catch up with the bus at the travel agency. After a few slices of humble pie (which Dave seemed to enjoy a little too much) we located the bus, got on it and started the journey to Hue - another World Heritage town.

Oh, and incidentally, the police report never did appear (in case you hadn't already guessed).

We arrived in the early evening, found a cheap hotel with cable TV, a fridge, but sadly only a shower (it's amazing how much cheaper per person, and yet better the accomodation is when you travel in a pair). We wandered around, trying to find an open restaurant, eventually succeeded, and then crashed, after an exhausting day of clothes shopping and travelling.

In the morning we went to a restaurant close to our hotel, got into a particularly stupid argument (even by my usual standards), that started because we kept stealing each other's food and drinks. After a fairly awful PDA (sadly of the wrong kind - a public display of animosity), I stomped off, having made sure he had enough money for the day (no cashcards remember, he's not a kept man or anything). I stomped round the temples and tombs of Hue, trying to appreciate their beauty and to a certain extent managing it in an abstract way, but I couldn't get that morning's argument out of my head, and I kept looking around for Dave, hoping that he'd visit the temples in the same order as me. He was nowhere to be seen.

In the early afternoon I went to the citadel in Hue old town, and was just wandering out of a particularly tacky craft shop that someone at UNESCO didn't have the foresight to put a stop to, when I saw Dave leaning against the wall, his stance suggesting he was feeling as shit about that morning as I was. We both apologised and agreed it was six of one and half a dozen of the other.

We wandered slowly round the citadel holding hands and were generally a bit slushy, and then went off and did a bunch of boring, practical things like phoning the British Embassy in Hanoi to check on Dave's passport (it would be arriving in a few days, thank god) and stocking up on Oreos.

The following morning we went to the renowned Thu cafe (owned by Thu), where you can exchange books and write on the walls, as well as fulfil your dietary needs. We swapped "Notes on a Scandal" for "A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian" and I wrote something that was perhaps a tad schmaltzy on a tiny patch of wall that seemed to be going spare.

We managed to make our bus without lightning striking twice and the bus being early again, and made our way overnight to Ninh Binh, a fairly run down town in the middle of some unbelievably stunning karst scenery, with a climate that was noticably cooler than the south. We found a titchy but reasonably priced room (Dave was relieved when I decided it was too small to do the planned fashion show with my new tailored clothing, so that he could take photos to send to my family), caught up on the sleep we'd failed to get on the bus, had lunch from the hotel's rather limited but, as it turned out, delicious menu, and organised a moto to take us to Tam Coc, known as "Halong Bay on the rice paddies". This probably means nothing to anyone who hasn't backpacked around SE Asia, but it will when I tell you about Halong Bay in a few paragraphs.

We did the standard boat trip through the caves at Tam Coc, but deliberately timed it so that the many tourists would be on their way back to their hotels, and we would have the place almost to ourselves. We paid our entrance fees and got in a boat with two ladies in it (one rowing, and the other just sitting there), and watched the other boats returning to the entrance in astonishment as many of the owners rowed with their feet. Obviously my camera came out and stayed out for a while as Dave feigned patience. Gradually the limestone formations became bigger, or at least closer together, as viewing the sky above the dramatic, precipitous peaks involved craning your neck to an increasingly uncomfortable angle. We rowed through the caves and watched the world roll by in all it's glory for an hour or so, and then turned back. At this point I decided I wanted to have a go, and turned the boat round as I felt my back should be facing the direction of travel (too many years at Cambridge). The problem was that I couldn't seem to get it facing the right direction as every time I had it almost parallel to the river, I'd stop steering and start rowing, but the boat would carry on turning in the direction it had been going. As a result, I kept zigzagging back and forth across the river. Dave decided at this point to demonstrate how much better he was than me and took the oars. I didn't see any great difference in quality of rowing or speed of travel, but Dave still holds that he was better than me. I let him think this - it seems to make him happy.

Eventually the boat owner managed to get the oars back (she seemed relieved for some reason), and she started the journey back, while the other lady revealed the real reason that she was there, and it wasn't for the scenery. After telling her that we weren't remotely interested in buying an embroidered table cloth for the 6th time we discovered that ignoring her completely and kissing each other seemed to shut her up.

On the way back to Ninh Binh we stopped at a rather scenic pagoda with different temples going up the mountain. Unfortunately we didn't make it all the way up as it had been raining, and the path was perilously slippery.

We arrived back at the hotel in the early evening and had some more delicious food (after looking round for a restaurant with a greater variety of vegetarian food, and discovering that there wasn't one) with rice wine that the owner seemed very keen that we should try.

The following day we got out of bed far too late to go trekking in Cuc Phuong NP 70km away as planned, so we arranged a moto to take us part of the way to Kenh Ga floating village and some nearby caves, after lengthy haggling. After a stunning journey, where I made the moto driver stop several times so that I could take photos and so that Dave would have something to moan about, we arranged a boat to take us along the river, past several water buffalo (or some other similar looking member of the bovine family), past more karst formations, past a village that I hoped wasn't Kenh Ga, as "floating" would be a bit of an overstatement as an adjective to describe this place - there were a couple of boats moored next to houses. Eventually the boat stopped and we walked a km or two in the blazing sun until we came to the base of the hill below the entrance to the caves. We bought drinks to rehydrate before the climb, dragged ourselves upwards and then stepped inside a massive cavern filled with stalagmites and stalagtites. Dave quickly got bored of watching me trying to balance my camera on rocks in order to take pictures in low-light conditions without a flash. He did a circuit of the cave and came back 5 mins later to find me in the same place, taking pictures of the same stalagmite, at which point he expressed both his lack of interest in my photography and his wish to leave the cave in an expeditious manner. He did not seem to think that he'd be pleased with my excellent photos later, and repeatedly told me that I should get a good camera, and that he hoped I'd got a decent discount when I'd bought mine as it seemed to take 5 minutes to take a photo with the bloody thing.

When I had eventually finished taking photos we left the cave, agreeing that perhaps Dave should get a new camera as quickly as possible, and maybe bring a book and a torch on future cave trips.

We walked back to the boat, headed back and stopped at Kenh Ga terrestrial village, to find that someone had turned off the hot springs bath, and it would take ages to fill up again. We headed back to Ninh Binh, picked up our bags and headed to the train station (oh luxury of luxuries) for the journey to Hanoi. There were no more cheap seats and so we ended up having to spend the 2 1/2 hour journey in a sleeper for 6 people (during the early evening), for much more money. At least it was far more comfortable than a fucking bus.

We found a decent, reasonably priced hotel with the usual modcons that you find in Vietnam (fridge, cable TV, two enormous beds, bathroom, BATH!!! etc), which was quite a relief as we had been told that hotels in Hanoi are ridiculously expensive compared to other parts of the country. We went out for some food and crashed.

The next 3 days in Hanoi were probably the most boring and uneventful of the trip so far, as I spent most of the time in an internet cafe, deciding which of my photos to burn to cd, compressing them and uploading them, updating my blog and applying for yet more fucking jobs (must I get one?). When I wasn't sitting in front of a computer, I was usually to be found lying on top of the bed catatonic while Dave attempted conversation. The only excitement came the day after we arrived when the staff at the hotel asked for our passports, Dave explained that he'd be getting his back in a couple of days from the embassy, and I discovered that I'd left mine in Ninh Binh. We searched high and low for the piece of paper with our hotel's phone number on it (we found it 2 days later - the fan had blown it under the wardrobe), and when we failed to find it, Dave offered to make the 6hour round trip to fetch my passport, as I had an application form due in. Bless his cotton socks, he really is a gem. Oh, and Dave got his passport back too, so we are both British Citizens again. Dave is planning to resume his imperialist activities shortly, apparently.

After several days of extreme boredom I became aware that my visa was running out, so we quickly booked a half tour to Halong Bay - a bus to the port, a boat trip out to Cat Ba Island and a night on the boat, after which we would fend for ourselves.

Unfortunately it became clear very quickly after arriving in Halong Bay how much of an error of judgement we had made in not taking our time, doing our research and picking a good tour. Our first clue was that a French couple were left on the dock and told that they weren't on our boat (despite being on the same bus), and were given no indication of which of the hundreds of boats they were on (I tried to insist that we weren't going anywhere until he sorted them out, but the tour guide said that he would come back to help them - I now suspect that he didn't). We ended up clambering from one boat to another in order to get to our boat, moored seemingly miles out. When we finally were on the right boat, we sat down only to be told minutes later that there was no room for us on the boat that night. We weren't overly impressed by this and spent a long time arguing that we had paid for a night on the boat, and we were damn well going to get it, and we didn't care if it was someone at a travel agencies fault, not theirs. Eventually we got them to agree to a free night in a hotel, with food provided, and a free journey back two days later, and I stopped waving my arms and raising my voice. We then spent ages just sitting in the restaurant area, waiting for someone to bring out our lunch, or for the boat to leave, preferrably both. Eventually, after the Israeli group at the next table had been drumming on the table with their chopsticks for over half an hour, our food was brought out. They brought food for each table to share, but the only vegetarian food that they provided was rice, soy sauce and peanuts. After complaints from me and the other two people who didn't eat fish, the staff managed to bring out a rather bland dish of boiled spinach (no garlic, no cheese, no butter), just when the rice had become stone cold. After lunch, the boat started (we had been sitting there for over 2 hours), and then I heard a commotion behind me. Apparently a woman from New York had been asking for water throughout the meal, and now that we were leaving the harbour, she had been told that there was no water on board the boat, only ridiculously overpriced softdrinks. She insisted that the boat turn around to get water (as fizzy drinks rot your teeth), someone went to fetch a couple of bottles that she had to pay twice as much as usual for, and then we started to pull out of the harbour again. We made it about 30m before we reversed. Apparently there were still too many people on the boat, and they had to explain to the Norwegian couple opposite us that they would be in a hotel too that night. At this point the Israelis became furious as they had been waiting even longer than us to leave, and they felt that they were paying good money to sit in an ugly harbour and wait while every other boat had left.

After every single person except Dave had raised their voice to our arsehole of a tour leader, we set off for Cat Ba island, stopping at an enormous cave, absolutely filled with tourists in order to shuffle through it, past the multicoloured lighting effects on the stalagmites and stalagtites, and out the other side. Eventually we arrived on Cat Ba and were put on a minibus to an average hotel, we slobbed for a while, checked our e-mail and met an incredibly helpful traveller who had been kayaking that day, and had loads of helpful bits of advice on how to avoid doing it with a tour (the days events hadn't lessened my aversion to tours). We had our rather bland evening meal (at least there was a greater variety of tasteless food this time) and crashed, actually rather glad that we were no longer on the boat.

The following day we had a bit of a lie in, deliberated over whether or not to bring my camera (we didn't in the end, as we correctly assumed that there would be no waterproof bags) and then headed off to a nearby port that the helpful lady had recommended, and haggled over the price of a tandem kayak and a boat to tow us out to the middle of nowhere, so that we could kayak around the islands and not be anywhere near a tour group. Eventually we managed to arrange five hours of exactly what we wanted for about $5 each. We got the boat captain to drop us off in a beautiful spot and kayaked off into a little bay, past pearl farms and dinky fishing boats, and through a narrow and very shallow channel at the end to a stunning isolated (we thought) spot where we indulged in a spot of skinny dipping when the sun finally came out. When we spotted a Vietnamese woman in the distance, presumably looking for pearls, we swam back to the other side of a big rock, where we had left our clothes, thankfully out of view from the lady.

We got back in our kayak and took another route back to the spot where we had been dropped off, admiring the breathtaking scenery and the enormous birds of prey soaring above along the way. We eventually found the right spot (karst islands can look remarkably similar as it turns out), and were towed back to Cat Ba by the boat, sad to leave such a serene spot (and incidentally another UNESCO World Heritage Area too). We found a nice, moderately priced restaurant, pigged out, went pearl shopping (which, as I'm sure you can imagine, Dave loved), were shrieked at by teenage girls who felt that buying their pearls wasn't enough, and that we should buy them ice-cream too, and then headed back to the hotel.

We got up at the crack of dawn to be taken to the boat the next day, and ran into James (a friend from the boat) and his girlfriend (whose name I've forgotten despite the number of times we chatted, and the fact that I saw her less than 24 hours ago). They were two of several people who had refused to sleep on the boat the previous night as the situation with the wanker tour guide had deteriorated further. Apparently they had demanded to be taken to the hotel, the guide had said that it was full and had refused to bring their bags too. When they had arrived at the hotel and discovered that there were 20 rooms free still, James had insisted on being taken back to the boat to fetch their bags. When they had arrived back in the bay and the boat was no longer there, James was more than a little a little put out. The guide had told him he would have to leave his girlfriend at the hotel with no luggage and stay on the boat on his own. When James refused the guide found a local policeman and told him in Vietnamese that James was threatening him (the policeman told him later on), and then deserted James 20km from the hotel, in the middle of nowhere with the boat nowhere in sight. He ended up arranging a moto back to the hotel and they were now understandably livid.

When we got back to the pier, we waited for over an hour for the boat, and then Dave and I were told we had to travel on a different one to our friends. I was in the middle of writing an abridged guide to the Scottish Highlands for the New York lady, so I refused. The guide tried to grab me when I stepped onto the boat and I turned around and screamed a mouthful of abuse at him, so he let us get on the boat.

Eventually we left, arrived back on the mainland, were taken to a restaurant where the vegetarian options consisted of spinach soup, spinach noodle soup and rice with spinach (at least I'm fairly certain that I'm not anaemic). We were eventually taken back to Hanoi (after watching every other group leave before us). On the way back we stopped at a centre for disabled children - a shop selling dramatically overpriced goods, purportedly for the benefit and employment of child victims of Agent Orange. The only problem was that the women that you could see weaving were exactly that, women, not children, and they had no visible disability. We were told that they were deaf, but there is no way of knowing if that's true without looking like a complete dickhead. Don't get me wrong, I've been to a million of these tourist targetted businesses with a conscience before, particularly in Cambodia, but I'm automatically suspicious of the ethics of any business that employs business strategies such as hiking up the prices of goods by a factor of 10 (trust me, I've done enough shopping here to know), enticing the tour buses by paying commission (every tourist bus stopped there, so I strongly suspect that they do) and putting up signs by the entrance saying "If you leave this compound we cannot guarantee or be responsible for your safety" to scare people out of buying food from the far cheaper vendors on the perfectly safe street outside. I could be wrong about whether or not the money goes to handicapped children, but either way, I'm not paying those prices.

We arrived back, found our hotel and I went back to the internet cafe for a scintillating evening of job applications and blogging (I used to enjoy writing my blog, but the application forms have made me dread the internet cafe, and I twitch and fidget while I'm here now). In fact much of the last two days have been spent in the internet cafe (Dave has thankfully decided that he should make the most of his time here by seeing the sights, even if I don't, which means I don't feel so guilty for ruining his day too). The exceptions were a visit to the post office to get rid of some of my heavier purchases (sadly they wouldn't let me post my pirate DVD box sets home - something to do with the law apparently) and evenings spent in restaurants eating delicious food (when I was too preoccupied with application forms, Dave would go to the cheap street food stalls and eat local delicacies like dog, and I'd refuse to go near him until he'd brushed his teth).

At one point we were walking down the street (on the way to the internet cafe) when we ran into James and his girlfriend. They told us the latest installment in the tour fiasco. They had arrived back at their hotel (from where they had booked the tour), to find that their room booking had been cancelled. At this point they became quite cross, demanding some money back for the way they had been treated, or at least for the moto that James had paid for when he was stranded by the tour guide. When the hotel refused, they told another couple who were in the process of booking a tour that they would be far better off going elsewhere. The hotel owners were furious and followed them when they left the hotel. The following morning when they left their new hotel for the day, one of the staff was waiting and hit one of the girls in the group, and chased them on his moto, cutting them off and getting right up close on his bike. They were terrified and went to the police, who phoned the hotel. The owner turned up and pretended that he had no idea what had happened and that it was nothing to do with his hotel. The police clearly didn't give a damn, so they gave up, vowed to go to the embassy the following day and found a pub to sit in and calm their nerves with a few beers.

The moral of this story is: Don't go on tours. If you must,do your research beforehand, ask around, and only go on one that you've heard good things about from fellow travellers.

That evening (after further blogging and trying and failing to get hold of my family) Dave and I finally succeeded in meeting up with Justin and Kate (friends of Steve's that I've failed to meet several times in Vietnam and Cambodia). We went out for a delicious meal followed by a few pints and had a really nice evening telling Steve stories, catching up on each other's travel stories and introducing them to Dave (Justin and Dave seemed to get on really well and chatted animatedly). It was a lovely evening - it seemed a real shame that we only managed to meet yesterday when I am due to leave for Laos this evening, and they are heading off to S Korea in a few days.

Anyway, I am due to leave Hanoi in 72 minutes, I haven't eaten for 7 hours, or packed my bags yet, let alone spent any proper time with Dave, who I won't see for a week until he follows me to Laos.

Please keep the e-mails coming, I may actually manage to reply to them soon as I have vowed not to fill in another application form for a few days at least (the forms have dominated my last wek in Vietnam, and I've had to miss out on Sapa and Ba Be NP - two of the places that I had ben looking forward to the most). Excuse the appalling abuse of the English language contained in this posting - the keyboard is crap - the keys keep sticking, half of the letters are no longer visible and I have no time to edit.

Bye...