So now we are home! The flight was uneventful , the four hour wait at Heathrow to get the first bus back to Exeter was endured. The drop in temperature from thirty two degrees C to minus two degrees C was a bit of a shock and we were forced to change out of shorts and t shirts at Heathrow.

Our bus journey back to Exeter was also unremarkable and our friends, Geoff and Mary were waiting for us at the bus station when we arrived. It was only in their car on the A30 that we realised that had left our duty free in the luggage rack in the coach.

Geoff pulled in and the tour director having made sure that I was duly told off, phoned the company to report our stupidity. They said they would look for the carrier bag once the bus had returned to its depot in Plymouth. I felt absolutely awful about it.

Geoff and Mary had prepared a wonderful lunch for us which we enjoyed and having finished that we rang the bus depot who told us that had our carrier bag safe and sound. We were more than grateful and arranged to pick it up the next day.

We eventually returned to our house at three thirty both of us glad to be home but at the same time sad that this adventure is over. I feel all homecomings like this contain a real mix of emotions and that feeling is really difficult to describe, there is a novelty about being back in your own house tempered with a degree of melancholy. Our family tour has allowed us to spend time with family members we would not normally see, let alone spend time with. We have returned with an abundance of memories, all of them comforting and all of them happy. Whilst we have our health we need to travel, we need to learn from other people and we need to widen our horizons so that we remain rounded individuals with our feet on the ground, happy with our blessings and the life we lead. To see poverty in Vietnam, which is absolute in cases, makes you realise how very lucky we are.

Thank you to the five thousand one hundred and sixty people who have bothered to read this. I will keep an eye on it in future, but until the tour director and I decide to travel again there will be no more entries.

Wednesday and we have now got ourselves into a leaving mind set. The morning was filled with the tour director taking charge of packing. My role is only to offer moral assistance and to provide carrier bags when asked. Neither of us want to be doing this and the atmosphere is somewhat charged. 

However, by midday the task is more or less finished and we can sit back somewhat glum in our approach to the afternoon. We headed off to Clarke Quay fro lunch to have food in the food court there, but before that we went to get a refund on our MRT cards which amounted to three dollars each. The tour director had told me this would be all we would get back but David and I were sure that we would also get back our seven dollar deposit. I had to admit that we were wrong.

We did have lunch in the food court where I made a slight mistake in adding fresh chilli to a dish of black pepper and ginger beef. It was incredibly hot.

As we returned to the flat the rains came down, in what was almost a proper monsoon. We took refuge in a bar and had a beer whilst we waited for the rain to abate. There was something rather depressing about watching th rain on our last day, at one point we couldn't even se clearly across the river.

In the late afternoon the tour director went for her last swim and then it was time for a shower and after that the cases had to be locked and we were ready to leave. 

David came home from work early and we head out for our last meal in Simgapore, a Mexican meal which was very good. Back to the flat the car turned up at eight thirty and the three of us headed off to the airport. The car couldn't find the address and so we had to move our cases out into the pavement and to flag him down as he drove by.

Airports are generally soulless places, there was no chance of an upgrade even though we had travelled right around the world with them, this is a little unfair as we were offers an upgrade to premium economy for the small sum of thre hundred pounds each. We didn't feel we could afford it.

Sad farewells were made and then we were through security and immigration to enjoy a gin and tonic in a bar whilst we waited for our flight.

We had been told to go to the gate at ten twent five so that is what we did, only to find our flight was boarding, the time we had been given was the latest we could turn up!!!

Before we knew it we were on the plane and heading back to Britain.

Tuesday, our penultimate day and it feels a little sad. We are not facing up to our departure with any great bravery, there is something about travelling which we really enjoy, and once you are on the road, you really want to stay on it.
One of things we had wanted to do was to visit Coney Island , a small islet on the river facing Malysia. We had read an article about it and it sounded like a pleasant day out. So back on the tube we made one of our longest  journeys to the end of the Northern line.
Having alighted we then had to find a bus which we managed with the minimum of fuss. The bus took us to the end of its run and there were deposited in a car park overlooking a major river.
We had to ask two women on bikes for directions and they helpfully pointed us in the right direction. Twenty minutes later we reached our destination and set off to walk around it. The beaches were wonderfully sandy but spoilt by a collection of rubbish floating on the beach and floating on the edge of the water.
We walked for about two hours and enjoyed the experience.the government has let the island revert to its natural state so it really is like Singapore was in the beginning. So our walk was basically through wooded jungle, however all the tracks were clear,ly marked and we walked about eight kilometres in total.
As we returned to the bus stop the heavens opened and luckily for us the bus arrived within two minutes. It returned uS to the bus station and we decided to have lunch in the shopping mall Waterpoint, which had only just opened. The food court was mainly Japanese and we had Ramen, a soup with slices of pork, noodles and bean sprouts in it. We thought it was delicious.
we returned to the flat and Rosemarie went to the pool for a swim.
As it as David's birthday we went to a Thai restaurant beside the river and enjoyed a meal there.
A great last day with a variety of activity.

Monday and we are now heading towards the end of our trip. Both us realise this and and both us refuse to discuss it openly as we are both sad about it. We had decided to visit the gardens by the bay again to see the dahlia exhibition. Our trip there was uneventful we are now totally at home on the MRT system and know what we are doing.
The dahlia exhibition was good but not quite as good as the chrysanthemum display we had seen earlier in the trip. However, we were able to spend about two and half hours ther and felt we had got value for money.
Back into the heat of the day we headed to Marina Bay Sands for lunch which we enjoyed in the food court, having fresh pasta and dumplings.
We then headed back to David's flat so that the tour director could go for a swim and both us relaxed. In the evening we went to a Japanese restaurant for a Shabu Shabu meal. This is basically a soup fondue, a bowl of boiling stock is placed on a burner on the table and you are provided with very thin slices of pork and beef to boil in it. In addition you are also provided with thinly sliced vegetables to add to the stock which not only improves the flavour but also gives you a vegetable course later in the meal.
All in all a quiet day but one that we really enjoyed.

Sunday stated quietly with breakfast out in a restaurant by the river. After breakfast we headed off to the harbour and walked along the esplanade crossing the entrance to the harbour crossing the helix bridge, so called as it was built to reflect the make up of DNA?
We then decided to visit the museum of science and technology which is housed in a building that looks like a lotus flower. It really is an interesting building very reflective of modern Singaporean architecture.
We spent an hour touring an exhibition about the hadron collider at CERN and all of us came to the conclusion that we needed to go away and read something more about it. Our knowledge of nuclear physics is sadly wanting.
We walked back to the tube and made our way home stopping first to pick up a carrier bag that David had left in the restaurant the night before. As it contained his birthday present from his friends it was rather important.
David cooked us a wonderful meal in the evening and we retired to bed.

On Saturday night we went out with three of David's friends for a meal to celebrate his birthday. David had chosen a Mexican restaurant in an establishment called Chijmes, which is fronted on the road by the remains of a church and its cloisters which are all painted brilliant white and floodlit.
The Japanese had bombed it in the Second World War and the nunnery that had been there had moved. As they left a selection of bars and restaurants moved in.
Aside from the history, we had a a great evening and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.
Sunday seemed to come around too quickly and we were off out for breakfast before heading to the Esplanade where we walked along the harbour front to the Museum of  Science and Art which is housed in the Lotus building, so called because it looks like a lotus flower.
We paid to see an exhibition about the Hadron collider at CERN and soon became very clear that none of us had any idea about nuclear physics or the scale of the work at CERN, all of us came out determined to try and learn a little more.
The Lotus building was really interesting, another fine example of innovative Singaporean architecture, unfortunately although it is a fine looking building the petals are virtually useless, we found ourselves inside one which was basically a huge white curved space.
We returned to David's for our evening meal, and David cooked a Thai prawn dish that was excellent, this followed by the Manchester United game on television rounded off our day.
There has been a hint of sadness overhanging the weekend as we all know it is our last in Singapore, but the activities we have attempted, the things we have learnt and the enjoyment we have had made that sadness a little more bearable. Singapore really is an interesting city, it is certainly a place which deserves more than a day or two's stop when you are in transit. It is a city in flux, a space full of building sites, return in five years and it will be fundamentally altered. It is like no ther city in Asia we have visited run by a benevolent, right wing government which looks after the rich and the expats but is not overly concerned by the poor. However, it needs foreign labourers so on every building site you will find an army of Indian workers and most young expats have nannies or maids who are mainly foreign. So the government has in some ways to look after the foreigners it needs to fulfill the tasks its own citizens don't want to do.

David suggested that we went to the Chinese Garden and showed us a photograph n his phone of two pagodas beside a lake that looked quite beautiful, so we concurred and off we set. We travelled on the tube for quite a long time, in fact further than we had ever travelled before , heading for Malaysia.
David informed us that we were only about ten kilometres from the border.
We arrived at the appropriately named Chinese Garden station and stepped straight off the train into a huge park, admittedly there were four step down from the station but it front of us was a huge expanse of green at least the size of Hyde Park.
A few hundred yards away stood a huge solitary pagoda, and off we walked in that direction. On finding a map of the park, as usual we had done no research at all, we found that there was a Chinese Garden, A Japanese Garden, a Turtle and Tortoise Museum, a tea room and a Bonzai garden in the park.
It is the tour dirctor's firm opinion that pagoda are there to be climbed so we made our way to the seventh floor where the views were interesting. All around the park were tall tower blocks of flat's housing workers for the growing city, but the park itself was an oasis of tranquility.
Having explored the first pagoda we made our way to the Japanese garden, at which point it started to rain. We decided to avoid the rain by paying to go into the tortoise and turtle museum, which apparently is in the Guiness book of Records for having the largest collection of such animals in one building.
The first room was full of models of turtles and tortoises, hundreds of them in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The second room contained aquaria which contained a variety of turtles, some of them very nasty looking things indeed. I particularly disliked the snake head turtle, with the alligator snapping title coming a close second. As we were in this room the rain abated and we were able to go into an outside enclosure where there were several more animals in cages and pools. Whilst I had not generally been in favour of entering, it proved to very interesting.
As the rain had cease we walked to the twin pagodas which rest beside a large lake and which were very scenic. Again we climbed to the top and admired the view.
We then made our way to China town where we had du lungs for lunch before asking through several streets to look at the decorations for the Chinese New Year which was going to be celebrated that evening. The red and gold decorations were amazing. The crowds were there in force and after a little while we walked back to David's flat.

Friday was slow to start partly because we had been late to bed the night before. It was two in the morning before we crawled into bed.
We decided though that we would go for a walk around McCritchie Reservoir, which the tour director had found in a magazine. The journey was one of the longest we have made on the tube and then we had to find a bus to drop us off at the entrance.
All of this was achieved without mishap. The walk into and around the nature trail was really interesting, although we only walked two kilometres on a path through the jungle and then back again on a board walk by the lake.
We saw colourful butterflies, monkeys, a giant lizard, a squirrel and a heron as well as several fish and a couple of Terrapins, so all in all a good nature trail which gave a good idea of what local vegetation was like before it was cleared away to make room for this very modern city.
We retraced our steps home and went vegetable shopping in a local supermarket and as we left there the heavens opened and we were caught in a tropical rain storm within three or four minutes we were both soaking wet and having got that wet the walk home could honestly be called a sodden one. A complete change of clothes was required.
Singapore has realised that it needs to protect both its green areas and its old buildings so that on a walk like today you can feel that you are not right in the middle of a sprawling metropolis and that you have found an oasis of calm. All in all we walked about five or six kilometres and we had a great time so who could ask for more?

Thursday morning was quiet as we seemed to have been rushing around quite a lot. Sometimes when you are travelling like this it is both a good and necessary thing to relax for a couple of hours. So Rosemarie went for a swim and I did some reading before preparing an early lunch.
After lunch, in the way of mad dogs we set off in the midday heat to walk to the Singapore Art Gallery. It really is no more than a mile form David's flat but in the heat that mile is probably the equivalent of two in England.
The Singapore National Art Gallery has the finest collection of South East Asian Art or so it says. We arrived and were directed to the ticket office in what turned out to be the most architecturally astounding building. The old City Hall and th Supreme Court have been turned into one block by adding a twenty first century atrium and several footbridges at different levels. The roof has been completely modernised and turned into a garden with a restaurant, bar and a pool. The pool is made of glass so that when you are in the building you can look up through it and when you are on the roof obviously you may look into the building. The tour director was a bit miffed as I had promised her a drink in the bar, but when we got to the roof it started to pour with rain, and the staff were covering tables and chairs.
The art was interesting and covered almost all of Asia we particularly liked the Chinese inspired art but we both struggle with modern abstractionism. We spent the whole afternoon wandering around the buildings, the Supreme Court section has the most wonderful rotunda which is now under a new roof, so rather like the National Museum they have enclosed an old building within a new one. This doesn't sound like much until you go to floor five where you can now walk around the top of the old building and look through the windows downwards.
After the gallery we made our way home via Raffles City Mall, which gave the tour director a chance to look at a few works of art that are called shoes.
In the evening we went to a road in Singapore which is closed every night to allow hawkers to sell Satay, skewered of meat or prawns cooked over charcoal barbecues. There was something magical about eating out in the open surrounded by the high rises of the Central Business District with their lights on.
Daivid then took us to a high level bar in a sky scraper where you could enjoy a drink outside marvelling at the views, there was a pleasant breeze and the lights twinkled. We watched the nightly light show from Marina Bay Sands and met some other ex pats, one from Germany and one from Norway. Soon one drink had turned into four and before we knew it it was one' o'clock in the morning.

We were a little late up, probably catching up a little on our sleep, so we decided to go to Little Indai for another look around, which is the tour director's way of saying" I want to look at fabric. "
We made our way there and in the second shop we visited Rosemarie bought a six metre length piece of fabric for seven pounds.
At this point it became clear to me that she had done some research, because she came out with the name of a centre which apparently had a wealth of fabrics and saris. Having found said centre, we were then committed to a full on shopping experience. The end result was that Rosemarie bought two tops, a pair of leggings and two pairs of shoes. Not a single piece of fabric was seen.
All the clothes as far as I could tell were imported from India and there were the most wonderful saris on offer, heavily embroidered and often laced with diamanté if not jewels. As a colourful spectacle it assaulted the eyes.
The tour director saw several things she liked but unfortunately all too often the stall holders did not have them in her size. However, she was extremely pleased with her purchases and that is all that counts.
We had lunch in a food court beneath the market, both of us opting for a chicken and rice dish which was extremely cheap and very tasteful. There was so much food on our plates that neither of us could finish.
We made our way back to David's where Rosemarie went for a swim and I had a nap before we headed out again to the Singapore Flyer, a huge sightseeing wheel down on the harbour front. We found it easily enough and it was not crowded, our aim had been to go up at dusk, but we were perhaps fifteen minutes too early. That did not however, detract from the experience oF seeing the city in a new way. The trip took about thirty minutes and was well worth it, although I am not sure I would want to queue for hours in Singaporean heat. As it was we arrived , purchased our tickets and walked straight on, we noticed as we departed that there were several more people waiting to get on, to see the night lights, so perhaps we had just chosen a good time to visit.
Just beneath the Flyer is a food court so we had our dinner there, barbecued pawns and Chicken rice, the latter being a speciality of Singapore. We both found it a little bland, we enjoyed sitting out and had a couple of beers before heading for home.

We decided to return to the Gardens by the Bay on our first day back in Singapore mainly because the last time we went we had only had time to visit one of the domes. A trip on the underground got us there and we found a much quicker route from the station. We thoroughly enjoyed the cloud forest exhibit, which contains one of the largest man made waterfalls I have ever seen.
We took a lift to the top of the mountain and then followed a path down trough the various flora you would see in such a rain forest. The experience was spectacular and we spent a good three hours in the dome.
After the dome we walked to the skyway and enjoyed walking thirty metres up between the tall artificial trees they have created. The walkway offers wonderful views across the gardens and to Singapore in the distance. Lunch was a little late but we enjoyed a snack in a cafe in the gardens before heading for home.
We both felt that the gardens were better than those at the Eden Project, which is not itself a criticism of Eden, as the two experiences are very different. Singapore, has clearly been influenced by Eden and has turned the garden experience into something of its own, the planting is spectacular, the artificial trees are both fun and utilitarian, in that they capture water and sunlight to use in the gardens, and the waterfall inside the dome is truly something to behold, it must be at least a hundred and fifty feet tall.
On the way home we picked up some supplies from the local supermarket and walked back to David's alongside the river.
The evening was quiet and once again we retired to bed relatively early.

We were up at five thirty, as we had a car booked to take us to the airport at seven thirty. By seven fifteen we had showered, breakfasted and cleared our room and we sat like two lost individuals in reception waiting for our car.
The car was pretty much on time and just before we left the receptionist gave us a gift of some Vietnamese coffee, which was a huge suprise. The drive to the airport was again like something out of Fast and Furious, our driver had no English but he had a sense that his car ruled the road and all others should not get in his way. Waiting to turn left at some lights, he saw the lights change and immediately pulled out to the right overtaking the four cars in front and then turned left overtaking another car on the corner. It took as over an hour to get from the airport to Hanoi, it took forty five minutes to get us back to the airport from the hotel.
The flight was eventless and we arrived in Singapore pretty much on time, catching a taxi back to David's and then unpacking and washing our laundry. All those tasks which are full of drudgery when you are travelling.
In the evening we went across the road to a restaurant for a meal and then retired early to bed. There is a sense of calm when you return from travelling to somewhere you know, which is hard to explain, Sngapore is not home but it is somewhere we are now familiar with and therefore you can relax a little because overall it feels safer.

Our last day in Vietnam started with a taxi ride from the hotel to the West lake where we toured a pagoda. This is obviously a site of great religious significance and we watched hundreds of Buddhists make their devotion. As a gawking tourist I always feel a little uncomfortable as I traipse around great religious sites and therefore I try to refrain from using my camera. Having spent a little time on the islet the pagoda was on we walked off along a causeway to find one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Hanoi, which again was well worth the effort.
After that we walked back to our hotel enjoying the sights and sounds of Hanoi on a Sunday. In the afternoon we went on a material hunt coupled with a shoe search. The hotel directed us to a certain street for fabric, Silk Street, but when we got there it was full of ready made clothes and scarves. This did not deter the tour director from purchasing a dress. From there we walked to shoe street, but unfortunately all the shoes the tour director tried on were too small, result, one highly disappointed person. We returned to the hotel and enquired again about fabric, they kindly asked Mr Google, and sent us off through an alley to another street, but again there was adverts of fabric. I was now faced with a an irate and sceptical tour director who in her heart of hearts knew that there was fabric around, it was if she could smell it on the breeze.
I suggested we walked back to a covered market we had seen earlier in the day and lo and behold the place was full of bales of fabric, unfortunately as it was now late in the day it was also in the process of closing. However, we did spend some time looking at the huge columns of fabric, although the tour director was disappointed in the quality and didn't purchase a single metre.
In the evening , the tour director did some packing before we went out to a restaurant for a meal, followed by a stroll back to our hotel through the night market. The night market is a phenomenon in its own right, at six the authorities shut the road and by seven stalls have been erected and the market is in full swing.

Being incredibly simple minded we had booked for another trip, our thinking being that we would need to rest on Sunday as we had to be up very early on Monday to catch our flight back to Singapore.
So we were up early again and this time were not picked up until gone eight thirty being the penultimate passengers to be picked up. This meant we had to sit on the back seat of the coach.
The journey to the Hoa Lu temple took two and a half hours and the Japanese woman sitting next to me made a very concerted effort to fall asleep on my shoulder, much to the amusement of the tour director.
The temple was the original capital of an independent Vietnam in the tenth century, before the King moved the capital to Hanoi, it filled a huge site surrounded by limestone karst and it was very impressive. We spent about an hour with our guide explaining to us the history of the site and the significance of the temples.
After the temple visit it was off for lunch at Tam Coc, the meal was the worst Vietnamese food we have been offered since we have been here, but we were hungry and it was edible. Lunch was shared with two Swiss boys who had just finished their A Level equivalents and were travelling for a little while before returning to Switzerland for compulsory military service. After lunch we were off in a sampan for an hour's trip down the Ngo Dong river. Our paddler, another woman, called the tour director, "Mummy" and off we went. The river went through three caves all of which were very low and this meant I had to bend down in the boat. However, the scenery was fantastic.
After a little while rowing with her hands our paddler like all the others used a cycling motion using her feet and legs to paddle our boat for what must have been three or four kilometres, it was amazing to watch.
Back to the wharf we picked up our bikes for a fifty minute bike ride along quiet country roads to Bich Dong. The tour director hadn't ridden a bike in twenty years but she soon picked it up and I rode shotgun just behind her to her right. The ride took us through paddy fields and small villages and it was interesting as well as being totally flat, we really enjoyed it. If cycling was that easy at home we would do it, there were no hills..
The cycling over it was back on the bus for the return journey to Hanoi after an excellent and interesting day. There is no such thing as health and safety here, we were not offered life jackets on the river trip and we were not offered helmets for the bike ride, but having said that we still enjoyed ourselves.

A day trip to Halom bay seemed like a good idea and bothe of us wanted to see this masterpiece of a landscape. We arranged a trip trough the hotel and we were up early as our pick up was at eight forty five. The bus arrived at eight fifty, we were the first on the bus  and we were invited to sit at the front.
We spent about half an our driving around various hotels picking up other travellers and then we were off. It was a four hour drive to Halom bay, made longer by a serious accident and so were half an hour late arriving.
We transferred from the bus to a cruiser and had lunch with an Australian couple, Rob and Catherine and an Austrian couple, Bernard and Kathryn. All very confusing, but they were good company. The lunch served on the boat was excellent and then it was time to go onto the upper deck and do some serious sight seeing. Huge karst filled the horizon, apparently there are over two thousand of them.
We motored to a small floating fishing village which  seemed to us to be more of a tourist trap, and we then transferred to a small bamboo boat, which took four passengers and was rowed around for about half an hour by a delightful woman, who insisted on taking our photographs and to being in a couple herself. Back to the cruiser and off we went to a cave on an island. A huge cave which was beautiful, after which it was back to the cruiser and then back to the harbour.
The drive home was another four hours and we didn't get in until nine pm. Our driver both there and back was interesting. He was obviously adept and passed vehicles both on the inside and outside. Double yellow lines meant nothing and at one point we formed a third lane on the other side of the road. All of us commented on it at lunch. When we questioned the legality of driving like this we were assured that it was all perfectly legal. I sat just behind the driver to his right, so I looked out straight through the windscreen, a bad move, I found myself holding my breath and muttering oaths on several occasions. Whilst the tour director was able to take a small nap I was transfixed by our driver's style.
We had dinner in our hotel and then after dinner walked around the night market that had filled the street outside of our hotel, before retiring to bed. The night market was full of young Hanoians buying trinkets, or phone covers or the like, but it had a very vibrant feel. Several stalls were very similar selling perfumes or belts or night lights, but there was a feeling that it maintained an old tradition and that the market would continue whatever!

We decided to orientate ourselves by walking around the central lake. We visited a pagoda and walked around the lake shore, we marvelled at the large statue of the King and the French post office was fairly impressive. We strolled down to look at the opera house and then rejoined the lake returning after a couple of hours wandering back to the old quarter, where we had lunch.
In the afternoon we went off in search of the citadel, possibly a mile away from our hotel, although we were clearly arrived in the right area we couldn't find it.
Eventually we found the war museum which housed part of it, but in a Vietnamese way they refuse to put up a sign in English outside the entrance so at first we walked right by it. However, having rectified our mistake we were soon climbing the old flag tower. The tour director made it quite clear that she was not in favour of visiting another war museum and so we wandered around the perimeter. At the back of the museum we could see the citadel with tourists in it so we watched them to get an idea of where the entrance was.
We walked around the corner and found our way in to what was a very interesting old palace complex. The tour director,being by this point a little tired, was not enamoured at first but as the size and complexity of the site grew on is we both agreed it had been worth the one pound entry fee.
There followed a long walk back to the hotel and having refreshed ourselves we went out for a very good evening meal in a nearby restaurant.
Hanoi is older and has has more character in its buildings than Ho Chi Minh, but it is also slightly more anarchic, the traffic obeys no rules that one can define and it appears to be everyone for themselves.
The shops are full of western copies of famous brands and yet here they do not hassle you to buy, it is all just a little more civilised. You can't walk on the pavements because they are parking areas for motor bikes, people still sit on small chairs and eat at pop up food venues on street corners. The old quarter is in itself really interesting, streets still corresponding to the guild system, one street for silver, another for silk, a third fro haberdashery, including in one shop ready woven labels for Zara, and other well known brands. Commercialism is alive and well in Vietnam.

The sixth was a travelling day. We spent the morning quietly at our hotel, the tour director went for a swim and I read my book. We had lunch in the hotel and checked out before our car picked us up to take us to the airport. There was nothing of any consequence to report about that journey apart from our great sense of unease that Vietnam will or is in the process of becoming another tourist destination, built around large hotel complexes which are taking up miles of the beach. In another five years the is exactly what Da Nang will be, another holiday resort for those wealthy enough to be able to purchase a room.
At the airport there were no enormous problems, apart from that we went to the international departure gate, and after the official there had stamped our tickets and then realised we were bound for Hanoi, he told us that we had to retrace our steps and go through an adjoining door for internal flights.
The airport at Da Nang is large and modern and will no doubt be able to cope with the millions of tourists who will come flooding through, but in return Vietnam will lose, at least in this particular area, some of its rural charm.
The flight was good, at the last moment a large party got on and filled the business class seats and a criminal in handcuffs was escorted onto the plane. As soon as we arrived in Hanoi a fleet of Mercedes Benz pulled up to the plane and whisked all of the large party in business away, we can only surmise that they were government officials.
Our car driver was there complete with secret code he had to give us, all very MI6, and he drove us into the city centre right smack in the middle of the rush hour. It took about an hour to reach our hotel which is in the heart of the old quarter. We checked in and then went out to eat, enjoying a good meal in a local restaurant, recommended by the hotel.

As I had rather foolishly promised the tour manager and director a shopping expedition, I felt obliged to go ahead with it. The result was an absorbing day spent buying sandals and dresses, bargaining and enjoying some humour with local market traders. We came away from the main shopping streets into the market, where we found material shops, dress makers and shoe shops. Silk was purchased, along with a couple of dresses and two or possibly three pairs of shoes, after a while one loses count of the number of shoe shops you visit. We did manage a walk alongside the river for nearly a mile walking out of the town which was quite pleasant.
A shoemaker promised to make Rosemarie a pair of sandals to fit her , by late in the afternoon so after lunch and a swim we headed back to see her again. Unfortunately the shoes did not fit and we refused to buy them, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on behalf of the store owner and it took a considerable amount of courage to say no and to walk away. On the way out we stopped at anothe fabric store and bought two more metres of fabric. A small consolation for the tour director, but as the fabric was only three pounds a metre who could complain?
A quiet evening saying goodbye to Hoi An and an pleasant meal. We even managed to visit two more old houses on the way back to our hotel, so we fitted a little history into the day as well.

I have written this type of post before and make no apology for doing so again. Yesterday this blog had its five thousandth view, which seems amazing to me. It is looked at in Russia, the Ukraine, France, and generally around the world. It seems amazing to me that so many people seem to take an interest in what for us is little more than a string of long post cards about our travels.
What is equally surprising is that so very few people seem to comment about anything. The tour director tells me she has tried to comment and has found it impossible, which is probably quite a good thing.
So, thank you for reading the blog, I hope you continue to enjoy it and if you feel like it, it would be great to see a comment or two.

We had arranged a day trip to see the remains of the ancient Champ kingdom, and this started at eight so we had an early start. Our guide Lua was right on time but unfortunately arrived at the moment the tour director was negotiating a room change as our shower had flooded the previous night and had done so a brain this morning. The hotel was very accommodating and agreed that when we returned from our trip our room would be changed.
Lua and her driver took us in a car the fifty or so kilometres to My Son, through fairly large villages surrounded by paddy fields in which large numbers of people laboured to plant the next rice harvest.
We arrived at My Son and walked for about ten minutes along a newly laid road to coach an electric bus up to the ruins. These ruins are older than Angor Wat, but they are built in the same style with much of the same iconography. Dancing girls, fearsome faces, Indian legends intermixed with Buddist symbols. There are several groups of buildings but in total it is much smaller than Angor, one group was destroyed by American bombing and the Vietnamese and German governments are working to restore it. We saw a group of musicians and dancers trying to recreate Cham customs and then it was back to the electric bus to return to the car.
The car took us to the river near Hoi An where caught a boat which cruised serenely along the river for a couple of hours before dropping us at a carpentry village, where Lua took us around a woodworking factory, which neither of us was really interested in as the main purpose was to sell us trinkets.
Back to boat we returned to Hoi An where were taken to a restaurant for lunch which was OK , but not great. As soon as we had finished lunch we were walked back to our hotel. All in all a n interesting day.
In the afternoon Rosemarie had a swim and I had a nap, who could ask for more?

Our first full day in Hoi An was spent exploring the old town and looking in shoe shops. This was the tour director's dream experience. I said later it was thirty per cent history and seventy per cent shopping but the director disagreed and produced figures which were entirely opposite to mine. Hoi An is a Unesco historical site an ancient settlement on the banks of a wide river, I.n which repose several islands. As this was once an important trading port there was a clash of cultures, the Japanese and the Chinese both viewed it as a centre of commerce and both have left their remains.
An ancient Japanese covered bridge spans one of the rivers and Chinese temples abound. The small houses cluster in narrow streets which during most of the day are reserved for pedestrians u til nine thirty at night when motor bikes are allowed. The lack of engine noise makes it a pleasant plan to walk around.
The idea is that as you enter the town you buy a sheet of tickets which allows you to enter the various monuments, which are worth seeing. However, because the town is extremely commercially orientated even in Chinese temples you are asked to stop and buy trinkets. Shops inveigle you to enter, "looking is free". Nothing in the shops is priced and therefore you are expected to haggle, something that neither the tour director nor myself is very good at. However once bitten twice shy, the tour director decided to buy a top, a calculator is produced with a figure on it, we smile and enter our figure, the shop keeper laughs out loud at us and says "happy you happy me" and comes up with a lower figure until we agree a price, in the end we are quibbling about less than a pound.
These people are truly trained salespeople, attempt to leave and they will find three other things you might like.

The second was a travelling day as we were off to Hoi An. We were up early as David left at seven and then we took our time until we were picked up at ten thirty to be taken to the airport. There is always something pleasant about being taken door to door. The flight was uneventful and when we arrived there was no sign of our driver. Rosemarie went off to purchase a SIM card for her phone and as we stood waiting wondering what to do a little man came scampering across the waiting area holding Rosemarie's name.
He whisked off in his car past the beach at Da Nang, which is being rapidly filled with five star hotels almost all owned by large western hotel chains.
For some reason he thought Rosemarie and I would like to look around a marble workshop on the way and so we trudged around a showroom making it clearly evident that we weren't interested in buying any marble souvenirs. The tour director was not amused.
After forty five minutes we arrived at our hotel which was much larger than we had been led to believe but which seemed very pleasant.
Registration ceremonies were duly completed and we settled into our room before strolling off into the old town. It was very quickly obvious that this is a tourist town, full of dress shops, scarves, restaurants and woe is woe shoe shops that spread to infinity.
We walked back to our hotel and then in the evening went in search of a traditional Vietnamese restaurant, which we discovered and enjoyed.

On the first day of the New Year we decided to go for a walk along the Saigon river walking towards a building in the distance which had intrigued us. The walk was hot albeit interesting and when we arrived at our destination it turned out to be a museum m to Ho Chi Minh. We paid to go in and the discovered that it comprised mainly of photocopies of documents which had been laminated and stuck on the wall. That and a couple of his jackets, a pair of spectacles and a typewriter made up what was very clearly a shrine to the great man.
At eleven thirty we were unceremoniously thrown out as the museum shut for lunch and we made our way to the tallest building in the city where went up in the lift to the fifty second floor to what was basically an ice cream bar. The views were great despite a pale fog across the city and Saigon spread out as far as the eye could see. We had lunch in a Pho bar and then had a quiet afternoon, the tour director and I walking along a French styled boulevard looking at the Western shops that are encroaching the city, Chanel, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Rolex etc.
David went to the gym and we all met for an early evening drink before heading back to the restaurant we had been to before for another meal. Before heading off we noticed from the hotel bar that the police had shut the boulevard just around the corner from the hotel. This caused major concern for thousands of motor bikes who wanted to use the road. They discovered that they could drive through a garden and circumnavigate the police barrier. As a result the police closed the garden, at which point the enterprising Vietnamese motor cyclists drove to the other side of the road which was still open and turning right into the traffic flow created a right hand lane which brought them back into the shut road behind the barrier. This was eventually resolved when the police shut the other side of the road, but it made for a great spectator sport. We walked to the restaurant along the boulevard which had been turned into a pedestrian park for the evening and which was being enjoyed by young and old alike. A great way to celebrate the New Year.

We were up early for our trip to the Mekong Delta, having heard so much about it and read so much I was really looking forward to it. We were on the coach for an hour and a half  crawling through slow moving holiday traffic to reach a port city on the river. We embarked onto boat and then were taken across the river to a bee farm where surprisingly they made honey products. We were then walked to a fruit farm where we had fresh fruit and a musical interlude, including a one string mono harp, which was really interesting. The note of the harp was oscillated by bending a twig at one end.
After the fruit farm we had to walk for about ten minutes until we reached areas where pines and carts picked our group up for a two kilometre trip.
Leaving the horse and cart we were then transferred to sampans which took us two kilometres back along a canal to a coconut candy factory where we were invited to try the wares. Back onto the boat we were taken to a landing stage where we transferred to a smaller boat before being taken deep into the delta for lunch. The meal was in farm restaurant in the middle of an island and proved to be good.
We were then taken back to our larger boat and shuttled across the river to the port where our coach was waiting to take us back to Ho Chi Minh City.
In the evening we had booked a New Year celebration in our hotel which proved to be very interesting. The first act was a children's' marching band , which had no room to march. They were followed by a group of well rehearsed hotel staff who did a dance routine, then a Cuban band, followed by a juggling bar tender, an acoustic band and a dance troupe. At ten to midnight we were encouraged to toast the new year and ten the manager of the hotel gave a rather boring but thankfully short speech.The meal was good and the fireworks at midnight right across the river from us were fantastic going on for about fifteen minutes. All in all a great day.

The 30th December 2015
In the morning the tour director and I went to the cathedral and this time we were allowed in, unfortunately we were only allowed into the space between the start of the nave and the door. It is a very austere brick cathedral in a provincial French style but interesting never the less. On the way back to the hotel we wandered around a couple of shopping malls and enjoyed the delights of a supermarket.  David had declined the visit to the  cathedral and gone in search of a hat. We met in the hotel for lunch and in the afternoon went on a trip to the Chu Chi tunnels.
Our driver was clearly in a hurry throwing our small coach into the traffic, using his horn continually and threatening all who got in his way.
The Chu Chi tunnels were extremely interesting, a base for the Vietcong built underground as an example of what people can do if they are put under inexorable pressure. We were shown the tunnel system and the man traps the Vietcong laid before being invited into the tunnels ourselves. Several of our group went down with David in the lead, after about twenty yards he shouted to us that he didn't think his Mum and I would make it, which was a little disconcerting as there was no way back, the person behind me was on my heels and there was no room to turn. Rosemarie squeezed through a small gap and I followed. At this point I could not stand up and was hampered by my rucksack which I had been instructed to wear on my front. I realised I would have to crawl and took the rucksack off and started moving it along the tunnel in front of me crawling along behind it. Our guide came back and took the rucksack which made progress a little quicker and fairly soon I was out of the tunnel. These sections of the tunnel have been widened and deepened for Westerners but I was exhausted after just ten minutes in the tunnel. You had to have respect for the people who lived and fought a war in such conditions.
We all felt we were let down by our guide who seemed genuinely disinterested in the whole thing and he seemed intent on getting us through it as quickly as possible.
In the evening we went to a Vietnamese restaurant run by a charity who placed street children in the catering trade and trained them. The staff were wonderful and we had a great meal.