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Two days at home by myself, two days of sheer laziness! A little browsing on the net, a little wandering around Oakleigh and surrounds. A whole lot of nothing very much.

This morning I walked off down the rail line to Huntingdale — a real run-down collection of tiny little shops. Very cheap fruit and vegetables, a couple of dusty travel agents, then lost myself in one of the second-hand goods stores. Floor to ceiling junk, I could barely turn around in the aisles. Old 486 PCs, 45s, 78s, old pianola rolls, floppy disks by the fist full, every kind of storage media you've ever seen, all covered in dust and all slung in a box or on a shelf.

Back to Oakleigh for lunch, bruschetta and beer and the same crowd of old Greek men smoking and young Greek lads hanging about. Neither lot ever seems to buy anything, they just sit and talk. Old men talking quietly and earnestly, young men talking loudly and assertively. Somewhere around them three or four other customers arrive, drink, eat, pay and leave!

New Years' Eve. The end of a good year. Last bike ride of the year. A seven a.m. start from somewhere in Fairfield, six of us headed out on a two hour ride out around Heidelburg, Doreen, various hilly parts to the north east of the city, then back again. The last few months have seen me only riding to and from work, laziness, house-moving, holidays, it all hit hard as I could barely keep up and had to be almost carried back the last stretch to Mill Park! The coffee at Tom's house aftewards was a life-saver.

Off to the Rosstown this evening for the New Years' gig. Dave Graney & the Lurid Yellow Mist — a fantastic band name, but a fairly dull and lacklustre show. I'm not sure who the intended audience was, maybe we were too young, it just didn't quite seem to gell with the crowd, the band, the brightly lit room and the music. Trains there and back were packed, nearly requiring a shoe-horn to get on at Oakleigh, I feel sorry for anyone trying to head for the city and get on at Caulfield or further in! Back out it was slightly better, we could stand without being stood on, and its only a couple of stops from Carnegie to Oakleigh and home.

Seymour, 12°C, cold, grey, drizzling rain! By the time we'd got to Melbourne you could forget all about the warm weather of the past four days!

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The long drive up the Hume highway. I keep my eye on the temperature gauge but it doesn't move. We stop in at North Gundagai for some dinner, but everything is shut — even the shop with the sign that proudly proclaims “YES, we ARE Open.” No, you are not! Can't I sue them or something? The one redeeming feature is the sunset and the colours of the sky over the statue of the famous Dog on the Tuckerbox, and by half-kneeling at its feet I manage to take a photograph without the presence of the buildings.

Back in the car and sure enough, as soon as it starts with a hot engine the dashboard idiot light comes on — then stays on the entire hair-raising hour to Yass. The temperature goes up when we go up hill, drops as we go down, never quite getting above three quarters, never entering the red, but never getting down to the mark where it ought to sit... I guess this means that Garry and Warren Smiths “repairs” were sheer guess-work.

A forecast high of 34°C and a long list of jobs to be done, the Christmas present wrapping seems to take forever! Across to Oakleigh shops for supplies and the heat hits me, cool again once I'm inside the little mall. Absolute mayhem inside, everyone going crazy with their last-minute shopping. An old lady walks off with another old lady's trolley, a tug-of-war starts, shouting and arm waving... Suddenly they realise what happens and everyone bursts into laughter and apologises.

Groceries, treats, presents and beer, then an unusual sight as I cross the road heading home. Vaguely familiar wedge-shaped sports car, very low, very shiny, glinting in the sun. DMC across the bonnet, “88MPG” as the number plate — I laugh as I realise, a Queensland registered DeLorean. My camera is buried under an entire bag of groceries, I'm too hot to dig it out, no photos, just a memory.

Ten o'clock at night and it was still thirty degrees as we drove in to Richmond, people everywhere in various states of pre-Christmas revelry. A quick espresso at Grandma Funks to try and liven things up — too much dinner sitting too heavily on the inside — then down to the Corner for the annual Mick Thomas show.

We arrived just as the support act was finishing giving us half an hour to get accustomed to the heat and the noise before Mick and the Sure Thing took the stage, spot on 11 o'clock. Found myself standing further back than ever before — oh my god, am I getting old? More likely too much too eat for dinner, neither Jo nor I felt liking pushing further through the crowd. At least this year we weren't next to any obnoxious mobile phone users.

Surprise of the night was when the band left at the end, then after the applause and shouting Mick returned with... hang on, isn't that? Jo, being a shorty, can't see the guest as easily, then she does, and being more of a fan than me is better at recognition. Yep, I guess it is Billy Bragg! Mick and Billy, two guitars, two distinctive voices, an interesting couple of songs.

Then the band encore, a rousing rendition of a number of favourites, then they're leaving the stage again. Time to go? Not quite, the house lights don't come on. Back again for one final song, what seems to be the closing number now, Stone Roses' Made of Stone.

Quarter past one, time to go home. Still thirty degrees in Richmond. How many more years will Mick keep the shows going? Some years they seem to be an imposition, other times, like tonight, he and the band appear to be having a whale of a time. I guess we'll find out next year, and the one after that....

  Sunrise 5:58am (EST), sunset 8:38pm (EST) at Melbourne, VIC, AU

The second last work day of the year, time passes at a crawl. Walking down to the Nott. for lunch the cicadas were singing in the trees, the sun beating down on my head, the new native flower beds all in bloom around the gate. Definitely a good time to be anywhere except at work.

There are too many half-finished pages on this site. Too many place holders, too many cases of “I'll fill that in later.” One of the half-baked pages just got three-quarters baked though. The “where” of where I've been is a little more automatic, a little less of a hack now.

Down alongside the house wasn't really a good place for the motorbike, too hard to get at, too much work to extract it out onto the street. As a result it had sat half-under the eaves for two and half months collecting rain and dust and losing battery magic. Last night I shuffled it back down the narrow path and out onto the front porch, jump-started it, blew an almighty great cloud of black smoke, and charged the battery....

This morning I rode to work, not an easy task! Seems the choke cable has jammed and the choke is stuck on. Idle speed crept up to around 4,000rpm, lots of noise, lots of smoke and a great deal of difficulty in changing gears! Definitely needs a little TLC.

Two months since my birthday! Amazing, time passes so quickly. I must be getting thoroughly old!

My current paper notebook is falling apart, its all held together with a rubber band, one of the worst paper books I've had since I started using them. I still haven't finished writing up the NSW Bike ride from back in March, let alone the trip to Vietnam.... Work has blocked my ssh access to external sites, but only when I dial in from home, I can access them fine when at work! So I can waste time at work, but not from home? That broadband home connection is looking more and more attractive....

Ho hum, a smelly candle. Very unimaginative lot my cow-orkers, three bottles of wine, two tins of biscuits, a calendar and a cook book. There was one interesting present, one that invoked much amusement and howls of laughter, but that would be telling...

Riding home I finally managed to stop and take a photo of the great mass of mysterious yellow railway equipment that's been sitting on the tracks these last two weeks. They fire up at around nine thirty at night and head out with much flashing lights, their nefarious deeds to perform, then come clanking and thumping back to roost at around 04:30 in the morning.

Not just shopping, but Christmas shopping. Christmas shopping in a crowded mall. Maybe my tolerance to crowds has increased after the exposure in Vietnam! Maybe I'm just getting old... Mindless hordes and soporific muzak, glazed-over eyes and screaming babies, Chadstone at night. Oh well, it had to be done, for in this society it is imperative that at this time of year you must buy more stuff.

A sense of humour was maintained, some gifts were aquired. I even resisted the impulse to either correct the nonsense that the Tandy staff was spouting regarding firewalls, or to simply punch him in the nose. I did feel sorry for the customer, glazed over eyes and $150 poorer by the end of it.

Some squinty-eyed rummaging found me a copy of The Triffid's In the Pines, and Treeless Plain in the bargain bin in JB Hi Fi. I even managed to buy them once the staff decided to stop chatting to each other and deign to serve a customer.

Almost exactly a year after first thinking of it, finally got around to trying to fit the tandem into the car (a Holden Astra). Well what do you know! Both wheels off, rear seat off, bit of wire to tie the rear derailleur up out of the way, handlebars almost poking the driver in the back of the neck; and it fits! No more excuses not to take it places and ride it....

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What would have to be the quote of the day, on one of the myriad mailing lists I'm on, concerning Miss Paris Hilton:

...I imagine it would be like having sex with a silk pillowcase full of coat hangers...

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Woohoo, that was fast. Eight days after ordering, a shiny new iPod photo turned up this morning. Now comes the fun part — making it work with the PCs that I have. Laptop runs Windows XP, has a copy of all my photos, is almost running out of disk space, and only has a USB 1.1 connector. The desktop PC has a copy of all my photos, has heaps of disk space, has a USB 2 connector, but is running Linux. Initially installed iTunes on the laptop, and told it to save its music library on the Linux machine. No go, the USB 1.1 interface won't work, not in any sort of reasonable time. Rebooting the desktop PC into XP, reinstalled all the iTunes and iPod software, danced the configuration dance, and it all seems to work. Now the desktop Windows PC imports photos from a share on the laptop and uploads them to the iPod, that is, when Windows XP doesn't keep popping up itty-bitty messages telling me that my USB 2 port is a USB 2 port, and that a new device is or is not attached. Yuck. Its all too ugly.

Does anyone else feel that they need reading glasses to see the serial number on the back of these things? Talk about tiny letters and numbers, engraved into a mirror-like surface! Is that a 5 or an S?

Lunch time barbecue today to celebrate the decommissioning of the staff NetWare 4 system... the email came out earlier in the morning: “The migration is completed all accounts have now been disabled ... except for blah, and blah...” Then a little later “and all the accounts for faculty blah have now been re-enabled....” So its nearly finished, real-soon-now, honest, it'll all be over by Christmas...

A quick detour this morning to the Oakleigh police to drop off the bicycle we'd picked up last night on the way home from dinner. At five thirty p.m. it was lying at the end of our street, it was still there at eight when we headed out for dinner, still there at eleven as we came home — a reasonable assumption then that it had been nicked and dumped. Police were their usual uninspiring selves when it came to reporting and recording stolen property “Brown Bicycle” was the limit of the documentation until I insisted that they put the serial number on the form! We can claim it back in three months, providing the real owner hasn't come forward and the police are able to find it again... don't hold your breath.

Shopping, cleaning, packing, preparing... a picnic lunch is required, but no metal cutlery allowed, no glass, no alcohol. No chance of terrorists hijacking the winery and flying it into a building, and plenty of opportunity for Rochfords to sell wine and beer to a captive audience.

An hour in the car to get to the Yarra valley, park in the paddock and walk endlessly up to the main gates. A superficial security check to ensure that we had no dangerous glass in our possession, then inside and up to the bar to buy glass bottles of beer! Security meet commercial opportunism.

The crowd was a miniature version of the “4WD height war” that takes place on the roads. Everyone wanted to be sitting on a fold-up chair so that they could be taller and see over everyone else who was sitting on a fold-up chair... those of us who chose to sit on a blanket on the ground had to pick our spots carefully! Even then we found that one individual decided to stand in the middle of the crowd for most of three hours, completely oblivious to those sitting around him.

Even got myself attacked by a roving pair of Telstra big pond models. Cute young girl and guy roving around with a camera, busy taking promotional shots to put on their website and try to convince you to join a BigPond broadband plan and pay $AU30 a month for 200MB and then 15c/MB if you go over the limit! No thanks Telstra!

Roaming around I managed to run into a friend I hadn't seen for almost ten years! Just after Jo and I joked who would be the first to see someone they knew. Neither of us had a pen or paper, so hiya Ainsley if you ever find this, I tried to look up your email address but couldn't find it, the almighty google failed me. Maybe I just can't remember how to spell your name...

A brief performance by Mick Thomas, a long and thorougly enjoyable set from Steven Cummings, non-descript singings from Fuel-oil, or Diesel, or whatever his name is, then a great show from the man and the band we'd all come to see, Elvis Costello and the Imposters. Greeting the Yarra Valley crowd as “Yabbadabba doo people” and launching into songs from his new album, the set included realms of older material, probably essential considering the apparent age of the audience!

I've done it now, become one with the iPoddies... W51320679.

It sure seems quite back here in Australia! Only a few cars in the distance, a couple of birds in the trees, one or two lawnmowers in the nearby gardens.

Walking over to the shops this morning I was struck by just how empty it all felt, the streets felt deserted, the aisles of the supermarkets all looked wrong after two weeks of tiny Vietnamese shops. Very disturbing, it must be incredible to live there, grow up there, then come to Australia.

I slept pretty poorly on the flight home from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne, my earplugs and eye-covers were stupidly lost in my luggage. Together with two hours lost to time travel made for two tired travellers when we arrived in Tullamarine.

Magnificent sunrise from up at 37,000 feet though, the sky was blakc with a single patch of rainbow colours, gradually lightening to a salmon reflection off the wings and engines of the 747. I think it made for one of my better photographs! Early morning over South Australia and the Spencer gulf, the land just looked so flat and dry and brown after Vietnam!

Busy in Tullamarine, an Air China 777 had just landed, almost 400 chinese holiday-makers queueing at Immigration and Customs, all looking just as lost and language-challenged as we had at Ho Chi Minh airport. We finally escaped, but not before having to open all five lacquered photo albums to prove we weren't importing naughty wood products.

Arriving home, first on the agenda was a cup of tea, then a shower, then a couple of hours of sleep! In the afternoon I started the seemingly endless amount of washing and sorting of photos.

Damn, damn, damn! Sorting the photos was when I discovered that something had gone wrong in Hue in the rain last Thursday when the camera got wet and started behaving oddly. At the time it had showed me all the photos, but refused to take any more, but after “uploading” the memory card to the X-drive (and subsequently erasing the card), it appears that only some of the photos were transferred. 211-1198...211-1200 exist, 212-1201...212-1228 vanished, and from 212-1229 onwards, everything is alright again. Aarrggh! All the photos of Hué citadel and the palaces gone.

Its hard when there's only half a day left somewhere before you leave. You don't want to waste it, but in the back of your mind you don't want to be late for the bus, or the train, or the plane...

One last big walk around district one, stopped to chat with a man who liked my hat. There's that big half-constructed concrete monstrosity in the middle of the multi-lane road, turns out its a major new shopping centre, supposedly opening in early 2004... I guess it didn't make that deadline! It appears that they've just abandoned construction and walked away.

Back to the café for a last beer. A last attempt by the booksellers and shoe-shiners to get our custom. Watch as a crew from the local telephone company untangle enormous lengths of phone cabling from above the street, draping it over and around a myriad of motorbikes, a mix of aluminium ladders and bamboo poles.

Finally time for the taxi, a last look through Saigon's streets as we head out to the airport, then all the queueing and stamping and examining of papers — including a surprise departure tax that can be paid only in cash, and after you've passed through all the other security checks and the only auto-teller machine!

Finally out into the aircraft, a last look across the airport at the old military buildings, the blast walls still in place for fighters, the construction work for the new airport terminal, then we're on our way — homeward bound.

The rain cleared for a couple of hours again this morning, after breakfast at Thu's we could get out for almost two hours of walking without getting rained on! Down along the Perfume river, viewing the sad-looking tacky cruise boats, then back around through a local market and past the Vietnamese Olympic swimming pool. I didn't know that Vietnam had ever hosted the Olympics, but there was the building, plastered with the Olympic rings...

Back to the café to read our books for another hour or so, then pack the bags and wait for the airport bus. Leaving Hué all I can is that I'd love to visit again, but I'll make real sure I try and get here in drier weather! We stepped into the airport and the temperature dropped five degrees, into the departure lounge and it felt like another five, onto the plane and down it went again, we were sitting shivering by the time the plane started moving. The BBC announcer voice of the pilot caught us completely by surprise, totally unexpected to hear it here!

22°C in Hué and raining, one hour in the plane, then 32°C and sunny in Saigon! Back out through the crowds in the forecourt we felt as though we'd done this a hundred times before, maybe arriving on an internal flight meant that the touts weren't quite so aggressive, guessing that passengers would have a slightly better understanding of local prices.... Heading for the same hotel we'd stayed in last Wednesday, the driver got stalled by three fire engines blocking the street. Rather than stay and wait — they were already starting to leave — he chose to back out and squeeze down a back alley. By the time we got to the far end of the blockage and could look back up the street, the fire engines were long gone and the street empty!

Luxuriating in the dry weather, we strolled around the block, indulged in a few Saigon beers, then meandered around looking for more of the lacquerwork photo albums we had seen last week. It seems that once you decide on a specific souvenir, from then on every shop in the country takes them off display and hides them under the counter!

Sometime this morning the rain actually stopped for a while! We even thought the sky was clearing up. Then it started back up again and settled in for the day! We sat in the Khuyen Trang restaurant having banana pancakes for breakfast and decided that there was nothing for it — we'd just have to go out and get wet! The cyclo riders were all hanging around inside the cafés smoking, there are no fares to be made in weather like this.

Across the river to the citadel, this time we had the money to get in! A fascinating place, seemingly ancient, some of the old wooden palaces were only built in the last hundred years. Along the way the rain got into my camera and it started behaving strangely, the zoom would shoot in and out and eventually I couldn't convince it to take any more photos — a shame since there were some magnificent carvings, gardens and buildings, and all very empty since few other tourists were as eager to brave the rain as we were!

It seems that the rain was more of a problem for my camera than I thought. Of course I didn't find out until after I got home, blissfully ignorant since I can't see inside the portable hard disk to see what photos it really does have. Nearly thirty photos, the camera numbered them 211-1198 to 211-1199, 211-1200, then 212-1201 to 212-1228. Somewhere between camera and hard disk, the rain managed to convince something that twenty eight of them didn't exist anymore, so all that remains of the Citadel and palaces is in my memories...

Another dark morning in the room with no windows. Sometime during the early morning it had poured with rain, somewhere up on the roof it sounded as though there was a possum running around. Was it a monkey? was it a very big rat? No idea, at least it was on the outside!

A bit of a hurry to pay the hotel bill and make it round the corner for the 8 o'clock bus, then a forty minute wait in the bus for some other passengers! Same bus, same driver, as yesterday.

Out of Hoi An and passing the marble mountains there were, strangely enough, a million and one monument carvers and headstone carvers. Strange, limestone-like hills sitting straight up out of the flat plains. Drizzly rain beat against the windows, a good day to be on a long bus trip!

Misty and foggy as we wound our way up to the 600m pass, glimpses of the 1100m peak off in the clouds. Thick vines and jungle all around us, the north-south rail line visible down at sea level snaking its way along the coast. We were supposed to stop for twenty minutes up at the top of the pass, I think the car-park was full, the driver slowed a little, gave only one quick toot on the horn, then continued on down the other side — a shame, I would have liked to get out and look around! It wasn't the first time that the written itinary turned out to be advisory only!

Lunch stop near Lang Co beach for an hour or so — I had to laugh, the itinery implies lunch on a beautiful world-famous beach, not a truck stop two kilometres inland! Bbus-trip lunch stops seem the same the world over, pull into what ever business has an “arrangement” with the company, disgorge the passengers into the queue, fill them up, empty their wallets, get back on the bus... Jo and I didn't eat or drink anything, just stood around and chatted with a young girl while the others ate. I think she was about 12, spoke excellent English, and apparently French and Japanese as well! A combination of school lessons and selling souvenirs to the tourists seven days a week. For once someone actually seemed interested in talking, not just “you buy...”, “you give me...”. She showed us an impressive collection of foreign coins and notes... maybe the kids all do collect coins, not just scam them off tourists!

Still drizzling lightly when we got to Hué, then increased to a very constant rain for the rest of the afternoon. After checking in to the hotel and a bite to eat at the end of the alleyway, we walked across to the citadel, accepting that there was nothing else to do but go there and get wet. A strange sight, we had to fend of cyclos left and right, very persistent in offering us the dubiously dry interiors of their vehicles. We chose instead to keep walking, buying cheap disposable plastic raincoats that made us feel we were walking around inside freezer-bags.

After a couple of photos at the eastern gate we made it around to the main gate, only to discover that in our hurry in the rain, we didn't have the 111.000d to get in! The rain was getting heavier, it was getting gloomier, so it didn't really need much to send us back over the river — the perfume river — towards the hotel and some dry clothes!

Dry again, nothing much to do except sit around and watch the rain for an hour or so, then back out for a beer and to find some air tickets back to Ho Chi Minh City — quicker and easier than the train or bus, and looking very attractive in this Melbourne-winteresque weather! The front desk of the hotel offered to get the tickets for $86 a head, which was a bit of surprise compared with the advertised price of $52 or $53 we'd seen in Hoi An! We walked around the corner to the first travel agent we found, $56 and we were happy.

Tickets found, must be dinner time — walking around in the rain, looking for somewhere to eat, its not really hard, its just that sometimes nothing seems to appeal. Along the way one lady stall holder launched automatically into her sales pitch; gesturing at the bottles and asking “You want water?” I laughed and waved my hands at the sky, “Lady, I've got plenty of water.” All three of us burst out laughing.

No windows in the hotel room, freezing cold air-conditioning. What time is it? No idea. Time to get up yet?

Round to the Camel Café, each of these tour companies seems to have its own chain of shop-fronts and cafés, in every town we get to. A quick breakfast and onto the bus, sitting next to a Spanish guy who was having great difficulty understanding the guide's accented English — not really surprising, with the accent and the quality of the PA system, I think everyone was having trouble with the accent.

An hour and a half up to My Son, then two hours or so walking around the ruins. The mini busses and jeeps seemed to be taking forever to ferry everyone up the last kilometre of the road, so Jo and I walked, along with a number of others. Magnificent ruins of temples, lush undergrowth, only the sheer number of people around was a problem. A reminder that you can't really seem to travel freely the country, everyone arives en-masse in a coach, and its hard to get away from the idea that although you're free to visit, you're free to spend, you're quite constrained on where to visit, and where to spend. It also makes it hard to take those magnificent “temple against the jungle” photos, when there are fifty to a hundred other people all trying to do the same thing!

The largest temple of them all was apparently still intact until the 1970's when the Americans first bombed it, then landed a team of sappers to blow it up. The Vietnamese make a big deal of telling you how the Americans destroyed this world heritage listed building — what they don't tell you is that the Viet Cong were using the temples as a base, precisely because they believed the Americans would not attack them! Magnificent pieces of stone sculpture lie around, some displayed in buildings, some outside with labels, mostly just lying where they last fell. Amusingly poor signs in English tell some of the story, or just ask that you “...not climb on the tempes”

Back in the bus for the first 20km, then half of us got out for the boat trip while the rest stayed on. After quarter an hour of waiting around our transport arrived, another river boat trip, tasty noodle lunch and a journey down stream taking us first to “the clay pot island”, then “the wood boat island”. On the first of these we quickly discovered where all the thousands of tonnes of red clay plant pots in the world seem to come from, I've no idea how much clay is left in the island, but at the rate they seem to be making pots, they'd better start thinking about what to do when they've dug their island away! The wood island seemed to be the source of much of the world's outdoor timber furniture, it looks almost laughable when you see so much of it in one place at a time. The men wander around the workshops barefoot with a cigarette hanging off one lip, buzzsaws and sawdust all around, the women man the tills, selling the produce. Four or five fishing boats lined a construction line, from a bare set of ribs and framework to an almost finished boat. The one thing I didn't find out was how they move them from one stage to the next down the production line and eventually into the river...

Once back on dry land again it was beer time on the Hoi An waterfront, before heading off for another walk around through the markets to explore a different set of streets. Pure chance lead us to a great colonial-style hotel — annoyingly, I forget its name. Amazingly too, the Ramones were playing on their CD player. Definitely a sign to stop and have another beer — then some spring rolls. Very bizarre to be sitting in a tropical courtyard, sipping beer and listening to Ramones.

More walking, more shopping. Somewhere along the way I got completely disoriented and came back out of shop and turned left instead of right, starting to head back the way I'd come. Jo realised, I didn't, much confusion. Is it the northern hemisphere playing tricks on my sense of direction, or is it the beer? Some silk pencil cases and silk purses (no sow's ears) for presents, and Jo found a beautiful lacquerwork photo album for 95.000dong — we'd seen some others, but can't seem to find the right combination of size, colour, and price!

Pizza for dinner! A tasty passable pizza too at the Treats Café, lots of hustle and bustle, lots of travellers, a pair of German girls complaining about the size of their servings, then complaining when they were charged extra for larger serves. Is it the Germans always complaining, or do I just notice complaining Germans? Two other unlikely looking travellers were sitting at the next table, both meat-packers from Bordertown in South Australia, they'd just spent five weeks in India, which they said was very hard work but memorable, and were relaxing in Vietnam taking things easy.

Another night on the train, again I slept badly. I think it was not knowing when we were supposed to get to Da Nang, I should have checked yesterday but didn't, as a result, I kept waking each time the train rumbled and wondering "I this it? Are we there yet?"

From dawn onwards I lay in my bed and watched out the window, the farms along the track gradually coming alive. Water buffalo everywhere in the fields. Different countryside again to further south. At one point we had to sit and wait for quarter of an hour for the south-bound train to pass, there only being double track along some stretches.

Finally got to Da Nang at 08:30 and caught up with some other backpackers all on their way to Hoi An — the four of us hired a taxi for the 25km trip. $17 for the trip, the driver seemed quite maniacal, I think he was trying to "prove" something to the English couple. Their comments about not being able to stand the traffic or the driving just seemed to egg him on.

As with every other driver you meet, he seemed to have a hotel in mind, either friends, relatives, or just a good back-hand source of money. Too new for the guide books, especially the Lonely Planet, which sadly seems to be a kind of self-fulfilling bible. If its in the bible, the backpackers go there and it survives, if it isn't, nobody goes there and it fails. “Is not in your book”, a quote heard too many times, one that was starting to make us cringe. The hotel was only eight months old, a five minute walk to the old part of town, big three-star rooms for $10, $12 and $15 a night.

Shower, shave, and off into town for brunch. Omelettes in an upstairs café overlooking part of the "old town". Ho An is a very touristy town — all crafts and souvenirs, silks and paintings, completely different from the brash hotels and resorts of Nha Trang, more like the old walled towns of Europe.

Then it was off to walk around, looking at innumerable ceramic souvenirs, shoes, shirts, clothes. We tried to step onto the historic Japanese covered bridge, but discovered that you need to but a ticket from the tourist office; somewhere back down the road in town. Similarly all the historic buildings and shops require tickets in American dollars. It was pleasant enough just to walk around, the bridge looking far better from outside than inside anyway!

A tiny little old lady in traditional costume kept trying to get people to take photos of her — for cash. A young girl asking for your countries' coins "for her collection". As soon as she found out we were from Australia she very quickly asked for $AU1 and $AU2.

The markets by the river were chocked with the standard Vietnamese tourist tee-shirts. This time we actually bought a few, four for $5, unlike the German tourist who stomped in ahead of me, asked how much, and paid $4 for one shirt without batting an eyelid. I seemed to get a good price on a Chinese compass — I really wasn't interested in taking it, so when the price wouldn't fall enough I really did just give up and walk off. It must have looked sincere, the lady accepted my price and then wouldn't give me any change, kept on trying to fill up the difference with other bits of tat from her stall. I patiently stood there saying, "no, no, no...." until finally I got my change, a free gift, and a laugh. I think she enjoyed the whole performance.

A pleasant change from all the “no prostitutes” signs in the hotel rooms, here we were only exhorted to:

  Don't bring weapon, inflammable, pets,
  foul things into the hotel.

Seven a.m. and chainsaws started up directly outside our window — even more surprising considering we are on the fourth floor! The trees next door in the grounds of the large yellow utilitarian Vietnamese government building are all coming down. Some young kids have got up onto the roof and are running around hiding from each other, strangely at odds with the guard-post on the road and the military look of the rest of the building and grounds.

An early morning start, down to the tour office to wait for the bus to the boat. The staff from last night walked straight up to me and asked for their extra $10 change back. Happy to overcharge, but no chance of getting any accidental change out of them!

Down to the docks to find the right boat, the boats are everywhere, standard tour goes to a mix of the standard places. Busloads going out for a day of islands, swimming, drinking and partying.

Nowhere near as hot and sunny as yesterday, probably a good thing or we'd all be sunburnt badly! Swimming around in the sea, wonderfully warm, but nothing very interesting to see — despite goggles and snorkel, there were only a few small fish in the water, and the water was murky. Every piece of interesting coral and shellfish has been taken and sold to the tourists.

Remember; Do not use the toilet when the boat is not moving. Someone forgot, or didn't care. Vietnamese tour boats' toilets drop straight into the South China Sea, as a result, large turds can suddenly appear drifting through the frolicking tourists as they swim back towards the boat. Not pleasant if you're in the water, kind of hilarious if you're in the boat.

Enough of the swimming, stage two of the trip was to cruise to another island, drop anchor and have a huge lunch. The seats all fold up and become one huge table, masses of fruit and seafood appear, and everyone tucks into a magnificent feast. Then its time for music, dancing and foolishness. The crew are determined that its a party boat and you will party!

Off to another island, this one is a government-run resort. An enforced stay of two hours. You can windsurf — if you pay. You can lie on a deck chair — if you pay. You can have a pedicure — if you pay. You can jet-ski — if you pay. You can go kite-surfing — if you pay. You can just sit and drink beer — if you pay. If you don't want to pay, there isn't very much to do — and you have to pay to get on the island!

The last island of the day is almost cultural by comparison. There's a chance to be paddled around in one of the round woven boats, even to paddle one yourself. Two ladies seem to effortlessly make the boats move across the bay with a load of tourists, when the tourists paddle, the boat merely bobs up and down or spins in a circle.

Towards the end of the day the loud French Canadians gradully became louder, obnoxious, drunk, French Canadians. The rest of us were just waiting for them to fall off the boat, or start punching each other. Eventually one of them tried to be smart, smacking his mate in the face as he climbed in over the side of the boat. Back he went into the water, skull barely missing the edge of the dock. The Party Boys manning the boat seemed to get real serious real quick, the drunkard was lifted back on board and the young boy of the crew donned snorkel and goggles to dive back and forth looking for a missing pair of glasses. Amazingly, the glasses were recovered, then we were all on our way back towards Nha Trang.

Last night I had trouble getting to sleep in the train, partly due to the novelty, but primarily worried about waking at the right time and not missing our stop! I needn't have worried, the conductor made quite a show of opening the compartment door and letting me know that Nha Trang was the next stop.

Hustle and bustle at the station, even at 5:40am, we stepped outside and had to run the gauntlet of cyclos, taxi drivers and motorcycle riders, all busy touting themselves or their hotel — even though it is only ten minute's walk from the station to just about anywhere. We sat ourselves down and had a coffee and very patiently tried to out-wait a tenacious motorcyclist who finally left only after I had profusely thanked him, taken his name, pocketed his hotel's card and started to make our way on foot!

En route to the hotel we missed a corner and became hijacked by two other motorcycle riders who were determined to take us to their hotel. Nothing we did would convince them to leave us alone and they doggedly followed us at a walking pace back around the block, guiding us towards the hotel we were looking for, but then nearly confusing us and leading us into the one next door!

One hotel or the other, it really didn't matter. They're all much the same price, all offer much the same facilities. The only problem was that we felt slightly guilty, having promised the first pair of motorcyclists that we would visit their hotel.

A cold lemon juice, a shower, feeling much cleaner and refreshed. Off for a walk to the beach. There it is, the South China Sea, what a romantic story-book sounding name! The beach was almost deserted, a bicycle standing up in the sand as its owner swam about in the surf. Checking the time we found that it was hardly surprising that the beach was deserted — it was still only around nine in the morning, but already becoming quite hot on the beach in the sun!

Time to escape from the sun and head for the markets, then breakfast on a delicious bowl of wonton soup noodle soup. Into the markets and once again we were hijacked, this time by a woman who gave us the royal tour before dragging us off two streets away to her shop to try and sell us tailor-made clothes — I wasn't interested but Jo was, a fatal display of interest that resulted in a great deal of perusing of catalogues and fabrics, many measurements with the tape measure, detailed instructions being recorded in a tiny notebook, and a promise that the suit would be delivered at five o'clock this evening. We left exhausted, not sure if the price eventually arrived at was reasonable, arbitrary, or if the goods would turn up at all...

Off from their on foot towards the Po Nagar Cham towers — about 2km away, with no real idea of where they were or what they looked like. By now it was very hot, walking along the main road in the dust and the noise past all the motorbike shops and fish-net repairers. Stepped neatly over a bad fake US $100 note, just blowing along the footpath. Nearly picked it up but decided not to in case it was some sort of scam — the picture on it was laughable though!

As we crossed one of the bridges, suddenly we realised that the enormous great buildings sticking up out of the trees on the island in front of us was the towers. It was a case of “Oh, those towers...”. Very striking, suddenly appearing up out of the mass of modern concrete. Cool and dark inside them too, a pleasant break from the sun!

Leaving the towers, we wanted to visit the Long Son Pagoda, unfortunately all the way back across town and just across the road from the train station where we'd started! It seemed even hotter, our pace even slower, and interrupted by a couple of pauses for cool drinks and to sit in the shade.

The entrance to the pagoda grounds is the stomping ground of a horde of postcard-selling girls from the Buddhist school — collectively trying to flog off bundles of ten cards, at first for 50,000 dong, gradually working their way downwards. Incredibly persistent, and nearly impossible to get rid of. Only a few steps past them and we were met by a “monk who almost grabbed us in his zeal to escort us up the stairs in his snaggle-toothed way up to the 18m reclining buddha, the 152kg ceremonial bell, up to the big buddha — Kim Phan Phat To — at the top. All this performed with almost indecent haste and a minimal sentence or two at each point. He quickly shuffled us off down an alley of commemorative plaques, then pointed to a dinghy gap between the bricks and explained that it was the “donation box. I nearly laughed, despite thinking we were being set up for a mugging, pointed back at the buddha and the real donation box, and told him which donation box I'd be using! He hovered around us for a few more minutes before finally demanding 20,000 dong per head for his tour, then snearing at the smaller donation Jo offered, made a big show and tell of “monk must eat, plaintive looks, hand-eating motions, then stalked off back down the hill to look for more visitors.

Free at last, we had time for a more leisurely exploration on the way back down, past the beggars and stepping over and around the syringes and ampoules littering the ground.

Back at the base of the hill we discovered that the pagoda had opened after lunch, so ducked inside, saw a real monk who did not hassle us for money or donations, and had a good look around.

Five o'clock came and went as we sat around wanting to head out for dinner, but couln't because the suit hadn't arrived. Three quarters of an hour passed and I amused myself reading brochures for nearby tourist attractions, including the following for some mud baths:

  Soaking hot mineral water feels so cool even it is hotly!!!?
  Indeed, benefits of mineral materials in the spring and mud
  will be out the pore, excreting body's sweat activated, and
  reducing temperature of skin surface afterward. You feel so
  freshly even it is hotly.

Finally a motorbike rode up, the suit was delivered and it was fairly obvious that the pants were simply taken straight off the rack, being nothing like the earlier description, style, or measurements! At least the jacket was what was intended. Another quarter of an hour sitting around while the woman went back to her shop to get — perhaps to make — the right ones.

Then off to book tmorrow's boat trip and a train onwards to Da Nang — a stroke of luck for once, after first being charged $US20 for “hard sleeper” bunks and only getting them reduced to $US18, I got an extra $US10 in change back — a pleasant change from being gouged and short-changed by everyone we meet!

Down along the beach to the Sailing Club — but only for a beer. Picture postcard perfect scenery — almost a cliché with its romantic ambience. Sunset, palmtrees, waves on the beach, South China sea. Food and drink prices were as high as Melbourne, so it was off on foot around the block, there we found the Cyclo Café and had a really tasty cheap meal of cuttle-fish (Mue) and fish (ca). Then stroll back to the hotel, dodging the prostitutes, touts and myriad of motorbikes.

An early start to the day, breakfast was at a little French café across the road from the hotel, of a tiny petite pain and café americain. Back across the road to Happy Tours for the 8 o'clock bus. Omar the tour guide quite a character — English translator in the war — once he found out we were “Aussies” he started spouting forth all his very aussie sayings, all tonally perfect, straight from the 1970s.

Three-quarters of an hour trip out to the tunnels, an interesting mix of history and tourism. Karl, a large German lad had a bit of trouble fitting in some of the places, as did Gemma. Karl was not impressed by Omar's continued use of “Heil Hitler” once he was found to be German.

One interesting aspect was the resident guide/guard at the tunnels. He never spoke a word of English, or smiled, just lead us around very seriously in his military uniform, or quietly gave Omar an instruction. Omar, for all his loud bluster and shiny teeth, quite quickly did precisely what he was told.

Our silent guide demonstrated how the real tunnel covers were concealed, how they were lifted, how the tunnels were entered. Volunteers were called for, one Australian guy just managed to squeeze in, then Jo had a go, the skinny girl fit easily, prompting laughter from the two Vietnamese — although finding the timber cover was heavy and hard to lift.

After the tunnels came the opportunity for some target practice, for $1 a round you can fire pretty much anything you want — a pistol to an M30 or M60 machine gun! Vietnamese “officers” gave quick firearm safety lessons, then stood alongside as tourists in earmuffs blasted away in the general direction of the targets. Of course the Vietnamese who stand there all day, do not wear any hearing protection.

Back in the bus and back to Ho Chi Minh City, some reading showed that the tunnels we were visiting were all built after the war as replicas, demonstrating what real tunnels were like for the tourists!

The afternoon was spent on a tour of Chinatown with “Mr Dalat” and “Mr Hue”, who we'd met this morning on our walk around the block and promised to take a tour with. All smiles and example notes from his “references book this morning — these guys must have enormous supplies of handwritten notes! A little under three hours, I think we were overcharged in the end, probably because we offered dong rather than dollars, still trying to get the hang of how the currencies work. An enjoyable trip though, very relaxing to sit in the cyclo and be ferried around, and to walk around in the temples.

Pre-dinner beers out on the street watching the day-time traffic subside and the evening trade come out. Red-faced ex-patriots sat and talked loudly at the table nearby, a half-drunk dutchman wanted to know what I was writing so I said I was writing that I'd just been asked by a half-drunk dutchman what I was writing.... A burnt-out looking Canadian sat and drank a glass of water, a sweaty fat Australian man sat with his unhappy-looking Viet wife. Cards on the tables warned us to beware of the shoe-shine boys as they would steal our bags and tear our shoes. Two or three came and offered shoe-shine, warnings true or not, we chose not to employ them — especially since we were both wearing sandals!

Dinner upstairs on the second floor of Café 333, up off the street, safe from the booksellers and shoe polishers! Yet again, great food, and yet again we ran into some of the other travellers from the tunnel trip.

There was torrential all night, I guess the rainy season hasn't quite ended yet! At 06:30 there was a hammering on the door, telling us to get up in the dark and get ready, otherwise we'd be late. Breakfast out on the balcony watching the rain fall along with Gemma and Jacquie, then race across the courtyard to get in the bus, trying to minimize the amount of rain exposure.

Down to the river for a boat trip out to a fish-farm, luckily the rain stopped as we arrived. The fish farms are large floating sheds on pontoons, the cages underneath holding thousands of river fish. All day long the owners boil up the fish feed, a porridge-like mass made from rice-husks, vegetable matter and left-over fish. The fish feed is shovelled into sacks, left to cool for a while, then fed to the waiting hordes below. On the boat that tourists visit, one lucky “volunteer” is selected from the audience and gets to feed the fish. Our guide to one look at our group and selected me — a brief instruction to mush the feed up in a bucket so it cools down, then throw it in a handful at a time. Like something out of a bad piranha documentary the water exploded, catfish threshing wildly as they gorged themselves. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the rest of the group step further and further back from the fountaining river water as they all laught, I just tried hard not to swallow too much while laughing and being soaked.

From the fish-farm we visited one of the ethnic minority villages where silk clothes are woven — and sold to tourists. Very polite people, the one elderly man insisted that I, being the only male in the group, sit and drank tea with him while all the women try on various pieces of silk clothing.

Boat back to the docks and into the bus, then a detour into the town to find two passengers who should have been with us that morning. They were waiting at their hotel, having managed to get lost earlier in the morning, then soaked in the rain, and had decided to go back and get changed rather than meet us on the dock.

Back on the road we had ten or fifteen minutes to visit a market, our guide was extremely annoyed, partly by the two German girls who had managed to get lost, miss the boat, delay everyone, and then insist that we stop so that they could go to the toilet now, and partly because of the political turn of some of the conversation. A few of the people in the bus were asking about the school hours, where-ever we went there seemed to be kids around, Chin had insisted that all the children all went to school and that it was all paid for by the government, but also said that schools were expensive and cost different amounts and many parents couldn'y afford to send their children to school. The conversation went around and around with us in the bus getting confused, and him getting more and more defensive — a reminder that for all the wild free-market economy in Vietnam, it is very much a socialist state in some ways and people did not like any political topics being brought up.

From lunch in Can Tho back to Ho Chi Minh city Chin sat in a sullen silence, we all thought that the visit to the incense factory had been abandoned, but out of the blue the bus pulled up at the road side where we got out to see a colourful array of incense sticks, and a family business turning raw cane and sacks of yellow goo into dried and packaged incense bundles.

A road-side stop at the café nearing Ho Chi Minh city almost turned into disaster, the other mini-bus hadn't stopped at the incense factory and there was a great deal of argument about who'se fault it was. Our guide seemed to be calling the other driver names, but the other guide was claiming we'd never told them to stop. It finally blew up with the driver smashing his glass on the ground, leaping to his feet and waving a steel bar around, Chin running off, then storming off into the gardens shouting over his shoulder.

Back in Ho Chi Minh City we walked out onto the street from the where the bus dropped us off, turned right, walked three doors up the street and decided that this hotel would do. Right in the centre of the backpacker district, cheap, friendly, comfortable. Changed and took stock of our finances, then back out onto the evening streets for food.

??

Bus, boat, boat, boat, another boat, big boat, little boat, tiny boat, back on the big boat, then back on the bus to the ferry boat.

The Mekong delta has a lot of boats! Over the course of the day I think we must have travelled on at least one of every type.

A comical start to the day, a mini-bus picked us up from the agent where we'd booked the tickets, then spent ten to fifteen minutes winding around the block to the real travel agent where everyone had to get off the mini-bus and onto the real coach! I think the second agent was actually closer to where we'd been staying.

An hour or so in the bus and we got to My Tho, out of the bus to wander around the fruit and fish market for half an hour before getting on the first of many boats for a cruise across to Turtle island for lunch in a fruit plantation. Hot and humid — what a surprise!

Another boat to another island to see coconut candy being made, sweet sticky lumps of it ending up in rice-paper wrappers for the tourists to buy. Then there was banana wine to try — a corrosive home-brew vaguely resembling sake. Some entertainment from a three piece band, then a trip back down the minor canals in the smallest of today's boats. Four passengers in single file, with a paddler at either end — the two young girls in our boat looked as though this was their first trip at carrying passengers, while the other boats headed off in a straight line down the canal, ours zig-zagged slowly from bank to bank, almost ramming a bridge pylon as the girl at the front tried to head around it to the left while the girl at the rear tried to go right. They didn't tip us out though, so we made it back to the bigger boat for the trip back to rejoin the bus, then by road to Can Tho (even though I think our itinary says we should go by boat to Can Tho).

Staying in a two-star hotel in Can Tho in a window-less brick room. Mosquitoes abound. Most of the group went out to dinner together at a café facing the river, more correctly, facing the enormous statue of Uncle Ho in the park that faces the river. After dinner Jo and I walked along the river bank looking at the lights reflecting in the water and the enormous paddle-wheeler bringing five-star tourists to the hotel complex on the waterfront.

Spent the morning walking around and around the backpacker area down near the river in district one, breakfast in an alley-side café. Breakfast seemed a long time coming, banana pancakes shouldn't take long to cook... we found out why when a girl on a scooter came flying up the alley and handed over the bag of bananas to the cook! Nobody seems to have anything at hand, they just run out and buy it from someone who does.

Into the war material markets; old stuff, new stuff, hardware, nails, screws, hats, clothes, gas-masks, instruments from 1970's aircraft, you name it! Then outside and into Saigon's equivalent of Elizabeth street, scooter repairers and scooter shops for miles and miles.

Hopped on a cyclo for a trip up to the Reunification palace, Jo sitting on my knee, the two of us in awe at the driver's legs! I guess our combined weight is still less than half what some of the other loads weigh. With impeccable timing we arrived just as the palace closed for lunch, so walked on around the block to the War Museum, arriving half an hour later as they too closed for lunch. Nothing for it but to sit in the park for half an hour, then follow the pricking of our thumbs to a café, Café Tao Ban, for a very tasty “point and nod” lunch.

Lunch over, back around the block to the Reunification palace for the official tour with a very helpful and knowledgable young guide. The whole building is a time-capsule of the 1970's officialdom, furntiture, drapes, light-fittings, decorations and gifts from other countries. Even the basements are full of the communications equipment of that era, looking suspiciously as if it could be switched back on and into service if needed! The tour started on the ground floor, wound up through the official chambers to tbe rooftop ballroom (with adjoining helipad), even the famous secret door to the stairs to tbe basement was mentioned — previously hidden behind a wall, now revealed in all its glory. At the conclusion of the tour we were free to leave, or to stay and watch a rather heavy-handed propoganda video of the history of the building and the country. We chose to stay, the video was interesting enough, but mostly because the room was airconditioned!

Outside and a quick poke around tanks numbers 390 and 843, the two that first broke down the gates and liberated the palace in 1975, then walk back around the block to visit the War Remnants Museum.

The War Remnants Musuem, previously known as the Museum of American and Chinese Imperialist War Crimes. A very sobering place. A new museum is under construction, the current one is a collection of small halls around the grounds, artillery and aircraft spread around between them. It was definitely easier to focus on the huge amounts of American military hardware and spent ammunition, than to dwell on the photographs and descriptions of the victims of the war, the American War as the Vietnamese call it. 540,000 US soldiers, hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs, huge numbers of birth defects. Even 30 years later, continuing health problems for large parts of the country and unexploded munitions in many places. Bush, Blair, Howard, shut up, come here and read the words, see the pictures.

A quiet and reflective beer afterwards. Images stuck in my head.