Vietnam - Epilogue

Today is our last day. We woke up on the train heading back to Saigon after a decentish sleep all things considered. They really didn't build these beds with Europeans in mind.

Once in Saigon, normallity resumed; the constant sound of motorcycle horns, the hot sticky weather and the constant pestering of street vendors. If there was a competition for who'd said "No thank you" the most, then we'd have won it this holiday.

Back at the hotel and the staff said that they'd missed us, apparently they'd forgotten we were away and got a little worried yesterday. It was good to see their smiling faces though :)

Today's mission is to get some legroom seats for the flight home, it's slightly longer than on the way out at a hefty 13 hours, and neither of us fancy that in economy.

We asked the hotel to call them up, but the airline said that we needed to visit the office, so we had a quick trip over there. After lots of keyboard tapping we were told that we couldn't reserve anything. We could buy another ticket for $850 though - I don't think so. So they just put a note against our names with our request and that we were tall and we'll try again at the airport.

One of the goals for this holiday that Sam gave us was to eat Pho. It's everywhere, and how Tim has avoided it this long is a miracle in itself. Sam informed us that it's pronouced "fur" so Tim ordered it and after repeating himself 3 times the woman corrected him that it's called Pho, I guess the clue is in the name. Anyway the Pho/Fur was good.

We've been trying to buy some keepsakes, but the city is oddly un-touristy. Sure you can buy sunglasses and a key ring, but that's about it. Oh unless you want a t-shirt with some cheesy phrase written on it. I think the Saigon tourist board need to get abroad more and tap into the market :)

We're just winding away the hours now, our flight isn't until midnight, and we're pretty much packed, so we're just finding things to do to pass the time.

Mark went for another massage, Tim couldn't face it as his ribs were still aching from his CIA operation.

We felt like an Indian for our last meal, Tim had seen a place called Ba Ba's which was also recommended, however, we couldn't find it again so went to some dodgy Indian instead where the woman had to borrow the menu to copy out our orders. The food was nice enough though.

We made it to the airport with all four wheels still on the taxi this time and managed to get good legroom seats again. Considering it was a 13½ hour flight, it wasn't too bad and we both managed to get some sleep. The same can't be said for our luggage though which apparently is still sat on the runway in Saigon as the crew forgot to put any of the planes cases on board!

Tim immediately checked the small print of his insurance for what compensation can be had, and got straight onto the internet to find his rights :)

Well that's it for this holiday, we had a great time and I hope you enjoyed reading. For those that we met on our travels and are reading this, thanks for making it special. Thanks for reading, see you next time.

Mark & Tim

Saying our goodbyes to the great staff at the hotel

Saying our goodbyes to the great staff at the hotel

Saying our goodbyes to the great staff at the hotel

Vietnam - Rain :(

It's raining. A lot. It's still warm, but even so, our plans of getting a motorbike and seeing the remaining sights in Ngu Trang are scuppered. We can't exactly go to the beach either and the other tours available to us re outside. So we're at a bit of a loss.

We checked out of the hotel as late as possible and went looking for 'dirt bike tours', it sounded fun and who cares if we get a bit muddy, right? Well Trip Adviser screwed up again, it's another place that is recommended by them and doesn't exist anymore. By this time, Mark's deck shoes were saturated and wary of foot rot setting in having not worn dry shoes for the second day, he binned them and invested in some fake Puma flip flops.

With no other option we went to The Sailing Club, grabbed a drink and occupied the pool table. After a few games a kid about 8 came over, we think he was Korean. He started telling us who was playing next and at the end of the game decided that he was playing next. Fair enough, we can let him have a go, although he couldn't even hold a cue let alone hit the ball. All he did was whack the balls with the side of the cue and throw them on the floor. Our patience was a little thin after about 15mins of this and our polite 'Good bye now' gestures didn't get through to him. So we did the only other option and hid from him until he went away.

At about 2:30 it was clearing up so we walked back to the hotel to book a bike. By the time we got to the hotel it was lashing it down again, and without a room we took over the lobby as the rain got heavier.

Several hours later we're still in the lobby, between us we've read every page on the internet! Soon we'll catch the night train and head back to Saigon. Mark is hoping that the mozzies that are feasting on him don't follow.

So a pretty uneventful day, topped by the fact that the 'posh train' that we're on isn't quite as posh as the last one. Half way through the journey and the toilet is broken, there is no water in the sink, the beds are shorter and the mattresses are thinner than a flattened hedgehog!

Vietnam - Open Water

Tim woke up today not feeling very well, he's not sure if it's Black Death Malaria or Vietnamese Man Bird Flu. We'd booked on a scuba diving day trip, so it wasn't the best day for feeling a bit off, but he persevered on.

The islands all had names. We don't know any of them.

The bus to pick us up was bang on time according to the Vietnamese clock, which to anyone else is 40 mins late. It had rained heavily overnight and was still spitting a bit when we headed out, again, not great for a boat trip. We picked up the rest of the passengers, there were 11 including us and boarded the boat.

Our guide for the day was Tqeoiwrsoigjsphigj; luckily however he had a nickname of 'Happy Buddah', we'll call him HB for short.

Not long after we headed out a pair of Russians started taking pictures of everything, I mean everything, they even put Japanese tourists to shame. This started winding Tim up, so to prevent an international  incident we moved to the back of the boat.

On the journey there HB seemed to talk exclusively to us, news of our celebrity status must have gotten here from Saigon :)

He wanted us to teach him some English words which was difficult as his English was pretty good already. We taught him the English 2 finger salute, the words "bummer", "sweet" and "choppy" as well as the phrase "like a boss".

Soon it was time to do some  snorkeling and we jumped off the back of the boat and swam around a bit. Because of the rain, the water wasn't very clear and it was very choppy (see why we taught him that word now?).

We saw a few schools of fish of different types up to about a foot in length but nothing too exciting. Me and Tim went back to the boat for a bit of a rest, and then noticed that everyone else was following us back for some reason. Once everyone was on board HB was confused as to why everyone had returned as we still had ages left in the water.

Luckily however we had a solution to this, as we climbed to the upstairs of the boat and jumped off, this seemed to do the trick and people started diving again.

We then sailed to a different island and had some lunch. Well, I say that in the loosest possible terms as Tim was feeling ill again so went upstairs for a quiet lie down, and Mark didn't bring any bread so went without. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it though, so I'm sure it was very nice!

More diving followed, we led the way and HB came with us to show us the best spots. He caught a star fish and the proceeded to use it to scare Tim with. It was a little better at this island but still quite murky, so we cut things short and headed back to the mainland.

We have only had one height comparison today, first he compared head height, then waist height and then finally knee height. We're still tallest!

Back at the hotel Tim needed a sleep to try and beat his illness. He slept for hours just waking occasionally to mumble some words or start a conversation and then fall asleep half way through it. Mark thinks that the madness has taken him.

We did go out later, Tim wanted to take some arty shots with his camera, but this meant standing in the middle of the road. They did come out well though, check the the 'during' and 'after' pics.

Tim playing Frogger in the middle of the road

Cool lighting effects

We then went to a Texas Steak House for food, Tims illness overcame him again and he didn't eat anything. Mark thinks that his body may have been taken over by aliens.

We decided that the best way to fix Tim was beer. So we found a bar and watched some footy until the pool table became free. After a few frames we were challenged to a game of doubles. It took 12 days, and after losing to Mexicans, the Dutch, and the Irish, we finally beat someone... the English!

We decided to split before a rematch was suggested and headed to an ex-pats bar to watch Liverpool cheat their way to the next round against Mansfield Town. There was an Ozzie doing the rounds, talking to everyone in the bar and being a typical Ozzie; very arrogant  talked exclusively about sport and liked the sound of his own voice. We wanted him to come over so we could ask him about a recent sporting event that happens every few years where every sporting discipline is tested, but he gave us a wide birth and instead picked on the very drunk "models" (their words not mine) sat  behind us.

Mark was very disappointed in Tim. Some other people at the bar ordered some J-bombs and the barman 'pre-bombed' them, at this point Tim said that it's been so long since he's had a Jaeger bomb that he couldn't remember how to do them. 2 minutes later we had a round of J-bombs in front of us and we insisted that they were done properly. They didn't learn though, 20 mins later they were still serving them pre-bombed…

After a good night out we headed back to the hotel, but Tim spied a place that sold hot dogs. He hadn't eaten since breakfast to be fair, so he had a bratwurst to sort himself out. It's fair to say that beer and junk food have fixed Tim's illness :)

Vietnam - Mud, glorious mud

The night train wasn't bad, we both slept a bit and we weren't too crunched up. Mark's alarm went off at 5:30 and we both got up with 8 mins to spare before the train was due in. I really hope the other person in our cabin wasn't meant to get off at our stop as they slept through, and the train had another 24 hours to go until it's final destination!

We went straight to the hotel and Tim had haxored it so that our rooms were ready. It's a nice hotel, more more spacious, but then we are paying nearly double our £14 rate that we pay in Saigon.

Mark fought a tiger while trying to find fuel

We went for a look around town, the beach looks really nice, and the place is much less chaotic than what we're used to in other parts of Vietnam. We stopped for some breakfast and the locals were not so accommodating, they must be used to tourists!

Back to the hotel to make plans, Mark couldn't keep his eyes open and had to have an hours kip while Tim sorted out the bookings. We decided to get a bike between us to get around town on today and see a few things that were outside of walking distance. The first of these was the Bo Ha Waterfalls, the receptionist at our hotel gave us directions as "it wasn't on Google Maps", hmm, right. She also told us to tank up before we headed off.

Tim decided that we had 1/3 tank of fuel and that was enough so we laughed in her face and headed off to the waterfalls. After a few clicks, the gas tank was getting low and we couldn't find a petrol station. We asked for directions, following instructions like "Look for a yellow hotel and then find some shitty little shops". Somehow we did this and in the shop they sell little tubs of petrol in recycled water bottles. We brought one of these, although we're not convinced it's exactly Shell Optimax.

It was enough to get us to the waterfalls which involved driving down an untarmaced pot hole strewn road. Now, we're both on a crap little bike and we're quite big so the shock absorber didn't do much good as the suspension bottomed out time after time and you'd hear us both yelping as we hit a bump.

Once at the waterfalls we had to walk about 800m to where the falls actually were, why they wouldn't just let us drive that way we don't know. Both of our entrance fees plus parking it cost a little under 90p so we shouldn't complain.

At the base of the waterfall, there  were about 100m of rocks to negotiate. To make it easier there were red arrows painted on the rocks to show you the best way to go, even though it looked pretty obvious. However, that wasn't enough, someone insisted on showing us the way, for a small fee of about $1 obviously, so off we went on the most obvious adventure ever.

The waterfalls weren't that tall, but there was a pool at the bottom you could swim in so Tim jumped off some pretty impressive rocks and swam around a bit, he didn't find any lost treasure or secret caves behind the waterfall like in the films so our adventure ended there so we headed back (following the guide obviously).

On the way back Tim mentioned that we were getting low on fuel, apparently the cooking fat that we'd purchased from the old codger wasn't giving us the economy that we'd expected. Formula 1 teams take note, don't buy your fuel from a shanty town in Vietnam. So we decided to stop for fuel. Mark spotted a petrol station but the brakes were so bad on the bike we had (the speedo didn't work either), that Tim couldn't stop in time. About a mile up the road we ran out of fuel. Uh oh. However, by some blind luck we were only about 100 meters from a gas station so Tim pushed it there and filled it up. When it came to paying the girl who worked there, Tim got his wad of cash out which was a mix of dollars and Dongs, we paid her and she asked what the dollars were so we gave her a $1 note and it was like her happiest day ever. We're so generous :)

From there we grabbed something to eat back in the town, it was at an ex-pats bar so we felt a little bit more at home, there are lots of similar bars here, so we may end up speaking some proper English later rather than broken/louder english.

Hiding from Predators...

To try something different we headed to the mud baths, here you'd soak in soothing mud that is meant to extract toxins from your skin and stuff. We thought we'd give it a go and followed the road signs. For some reason we didn't decide to take a map or phone but it was ok, the signs got us there ok. We paid for the cheapest option, mud baths only and then proceeded to flap around in the mud like a pair of hippos. It was really warm and buoyant, so we floated around for a bit and relaxed.

Having just paid for the basic package we were then meant to leave, but they didn't know that so we went into the water fountains, the hot pool, the waterfall area and then the shower ovens. As mentioned before, Tim likes a good scam :)

When we came to leave it was dark, and here we found a problem, having just paid for a normal bike rather than one with headlights, brakes, suspension and a speedo, we had to drive down around at a disadvantage. It was ok though as no one else has lights either, they must be environmentally conscious or something.

This is where the lack of map/phone/GPS scuppered us, we had no idea where to go, but guessed a lot and seemed to find a magic shortcut home which amazed us a lot. So much so, that we decided to go out and celebrate.

We had some noms and then a few beers before settling to watch the Southampton vs Chelsea game. After the first half, the lack of sleep was taking it's toll on Tim so we called it a night. We do have an early start tomorrow again after all so it's probably a good move.

Commando Tim

During our time in 'nam, Tim was recruited by the CIA for some black ops work.

Vietnam - Night Train

Today we were going to the beach at Phan Thiet, one of the few places everyone agreed it was safe for us to go to by bike. We went downstairs about 9 to find that the bikes weren't there and they'd been cancelled because we was still in bed at 8 so they didn't think we'd want them. Great, thanks.

It's just as well though as the same people who had been recommending Phan Thiet have now decided that it's rubbish and don't understand why we don't take the night train to Nha Trang. Well for a start we've been asking about trains every day and no one has mentioned them before plus everyone says that Phan Thiet was too far which is only about 1/3 of the distance of Nha Trang!

We're happy to go to Nha Trang though, it's meant to be pretty good there, great beaches, lots to do, etc. So we've booked the overnight train, we just have to hope that we can fit into the Vietnamese sized beds!

Once that was started we went for a fat bastard special at the Spotted Cow down the road, man that was a good breakfast; steak, sausage, bacon, bread, chips, eggs, and grilled tomato.

Suitably stuffed we went for a stroll to the park to relax and grab a cool drink. The man that would not take no for an answer pleaded to clean Mark's shoes. Short of kicking him in the face, he wouldn't leave to we decided to move on instead.

We thought it would be a good time to demonstrate the techniques for crossing the road, so take a look at the video here to see how it's done.

We then did some research (well Tim did, Mark played on his phone) on the hotel in Nha Trang and got that all sorted, so we packed and got ready for the trip.

We'd arranged to meet our tour guide from yesterday for some food as we'd spent most of the day winding her up. After several coded messages we finally found the cafe she was in. We had a laugh and went for some traditional Vietnamese food in a small place down an alley.

Tim had five courses of gorgeous seafood while Mark had some reformed beef thing that resembled mud mixed with mince. It only cost £2 though so it was value for money. It was a nice evening that we had to cut short to catch the night train, so we hot footed it across town to the station.

It was the sleeper train, so we had a bed each, although it wasn't exactly spacious it was better than we thought. The train left at 11pm and was due in at 5:30am, so we were keen to get some sleep although there were another 18 people in our cabin at one point. We both got a few hours before arriving in Nha Trang just as the sun was rising.

Vietnam - Tim gets legless

After a few days of DIY tours we decided to go on an organised one to Monkey Island. This meant a coach trip for a few hours and several stop offs at local "attractions".

"Yummy" sea food

The first of these was a fish market which was Marks version of he'll, live fish, crabs and octopuses. Tim picked one up and nearly dropped it but juggled with it instead. We also went to the beach, now we've been to some beautiful beaches in our time; St. Lucia, Surfers Paradise, Mauritius etc. Well this one wasn't all that... in fact I'd even rate Blackpool above it. With it's subtle mix of mud and sand, and a sprinkle of pollution, it made us happy that the brown water was miles away.

A pair of monkeys

Back on the coach, out next stop was at a holiday resort. What it really was, was a dilapidated hotel with no guests. We had lunch there, well Tim had lunch there, Mark had some bread. We then looked around the place that doubled as the set from Mad Max and enjoyed our free time. What they expected us to do in our free time escapes us!

Finally we got the bus to Monkey Island and the trip quickly got better. Hundreds of monkeys lining the path and coming over to say Hello. We were told not to bring any food or drink, so it was no surprise that the Korean woman who had been annoying us all day came strolling off the coach eating nuts and carrying some drinks. 2 seconds later she was mugged of both, how we laughed. We got to feed the monkeys who like food more than Tim.

A little way on and there were some shallow water crocs. You could feed these too, and they can't half move when they want to!

Speedboats next, we were hoping that they'd let us drive but they're not that crazy. It was 7 to a boat but the stupid Korean woman couldn't count so we switched boats to even them out and get away from her.

We then took the speedboat down a tight river, and encouraged the driver to do it at full throttle to which he obliged, although at the next blind bend a boat was coming the other way and we had a bit of a crash.

Tim was later taken captive as a POW

This took us to a Vietcon village from the war that more resembled an Ewok village. We explored this and commentated on the lack of health and safety as some of it looked a bit dodgy. A few seconds later, the floor gave way on Tim and his leg went through. Luckily Mark was there though else we may not have gotten a photo. After taking pictures with the camera, iPhone and little camera, Mark helped him out and the rest of the group caught us up to lend a hand. It's a good job this didn't happen earlier at the croc pen else Tim would now be known as Peggy. We think that it must have been a trap left by the Vietnamese to hurt the murderous Americans. Our tour guide was concerned and asked if he cried, and then told him to lose some weight, the sympathy was overbearing!

Our tourguide (smaller than us)

On the way back, despite being injured we tried to push the Korean woman in with the crocs but she managed to slip away. Tim now hates her more than Tom Daley which is saying something.

Our tour guide was amazed by how tall we were and had a photo of us. It turns out that we're still tallest. She was that amazed by our height that she had a photo taken with her phone by an Aussie who it appears has never used a phone since the 80s. She loved it so much she emailed us a copy.

On the night we had an easy one, some food at a place just down the road and then stuck to beers. No rocket fuel cocktails or 3 litres of Red Bull tonight. We chilled out and played some cards and then sauntered back to the hotel shortly after midnight stopping only for Tim to have some octopus grilled for him, for all we know, it could have been the same one that he was juggling earlier this morning...

Vietnam - Dossing on the Delta

An early start this morning as we're out on the bikes again to the Mekon Delta off of Apocalypse Now. At breakfast the girl from the hotel invited us to go shooting guns on Sunday, an offer we surely can't refuse. It does however mean changing our plans for the 18th time :)

Having a hissy fit

The bike ride was easy this time, we didn't get lost or run over and it only took a tad under 2 hours. Once we were in the vicinity of the river our plan was to park up and find a boat. What we didn't expect was to be chased by tour touts on motorbikes. We succumbed to this tactic and got taken to the dodgiest dock ever. Pirates walk better planks than the one we had to. That took us to a wall we had to walk along (no rail, 10 foot high and water both sides. From here it was down a ladder and onto the boat.

As true celebs, we had the boat to ourselves as we headed off on our 3 hour tour down the delta. We found it odd that in the middle of the delta, on a boat in the arse end of Nam, we had a brilliant phone signal, yet from my office in Brummy, rubbish! The first island that we stopped at provided us with honey tea which was oddly nice, they then gave us banana wine which was the most repulsive thing to pass our lips since the cheese croissant incident of 1998.

Oxford vs Cambridge vs Connops

We then found the bees that make the honey tea and tried to do a runner with them but saw a python and grabbed that instead.

We then boarded a rowing boat and showed what a great sea faring nation we are by ramming everyone else off the river. The Olympic rowing team could learn a trick or two from us.

On to the next island where we faced crocs (or alligators, we're not going to pretend to know the difference). We also had a choice of snake on the menu as well as dinosaur eggs, we're not entirely sure that's legit but hey what do we know.

We then got back on the boat which took us back to our bikes after just 2 of our 3 hour tour. When we queried this, the tour guide suddenly forgot English.

We biked it back safely, we got split up once in Saigon but managed to find each other again somehow. We then thought that it would be good while it was quite to make a video from the bike. So Tim jumped on the back of Mark's bike and we did a quick trip around the block, see the results here.

The narrow part of the Delta in the background

A much needed massage was needed, so we went to a different place which was both better but more brutal. At one point Tim had someone jumping up and down on his back which haven't done his already bruised ribs much good.

On the night we fancied an Indian, and as always our eyes were bigger than our bellies and we were stuffed.

On to the vodbulls for a wake up, and then some beers. Mark continued to sponsor the street peddlers and is now the proud owner of a laser pointer come torch come money checker. Simple things... 

Vietnam - Splash Damage

I'll be honest, not a lot has happened today apart from recovery. We have now remembered some more snippets from last night like how we started the crowd cheering excitedly at a balloon in the sky or when Tim decided his feet were dirty so washed them in a toilet. Then there was the beer haggling contest where the Vietnamese we were with tried to get us cheap beers and failed but Tim came up trumps.

Any way, on to today. We got up in the afternoon and went downstairs to find that all of the hotel staff were still hungover despite only having two glasses of wine.

We went to KFC for a cure which helped, but we were both sleepy so we decided to go to the water park to fix that.

We took a taxi there who rammed a motorcyclist on the way and started swearing later when there were some police in the distance. Still we made it in one piece.

Flaming Banana Crepes, sounds rubbish
but tastes amazing

The water park was busy with it being a national holiday but we still went on all the slides. They're all designed for small lightweight Vietnamese so when we had a go we set some new world records for speed and distance. On one slide we cleared the splash pool at the bottom and slammed into the wall on the far side!

Of course our celebrity status continued at the park with people crowding to see us on the slides and zip ropes as well as standing next to us to see how tall we were (we were still the tallest).

We headed back to the hotel after to plan our excursion for the 5th time, we found out loads last night but neither of us can remember what!

We went back to the American restaurant that we'd burned down a few nights ago as the food was good and was pleased to see that not for the first time, the Americans had pulled out of Nam as there were none in sight.

Based on our celebrity status we decided to start our own
beer called 'big man beer'

Walking back through town we found a massive food festival for the first time. Despite having just stuffed a massive steak down us we were both drooling at what was on offer. We were good though and just made a note of where it is for tomorrow night, Tim fancied the snail and octopus dish whereas Mark liked the look of the prawn crackers.

Football now, 10pm kick off, so we're in the cow bar watching four premiership games at the same time, why can everyone apart from England show live game??? We like the cow bar, it's always prostitute free though you can bring your own as part of their BYOP scheme. 

Vietnam - Brothers of Anarchy

Going for two weeks without getting on a bike was always going to be tough so we hired a moped each with the prospect of going to the beach in Vung Tau which is about 2 hours away according to the hotel staff. Well it turns out that it would take a little longer than that as I will explain.

First of all only one bike arrived as they thought we could both fit on one which would have been amusing for all involved apart from us, so we had them get a second bike.

Approximately 300 yards from leaving the hotel we'd gone the wrong way and we just got more lost trying to get out of the city. Mark had tried making an improvised satnav by strapping his phone to his arm but the locals said that it was a bad idea as it would be stolen. We eventually got back on track using good old paper maps and out of the chaos of the city.

We've mentioned before about the lawless roads, well it really is bad. No one stops for anything, and if that means going down the pavement or wrong way down a road then so be it.

We arrived at a river crossing where we had to take a ferry along with several hundred other bikes. It turned into a bit of a free for all and someone ran over Tim's foot in the process. During the crossing we continued with our celebrity status as the entire boat just stared at us for the entire time, apparently no one has seen a tourist on a moped before and especially none as freakishly tall.

Offroading it through people's gardens 

By taking the ferry we were essentially taking a shortcut which meant smaller roads and less and less people going our way. This soon got so that it was just the two of us on the road, which brought into question whether we were on the right road or not. To remedy this Tim would go past people shouting 'Vung Tau' and we'd hope they'd point in the direction that we were going.

We stopped at a local 'café' for a Pepsi, the woman that ran it spoke no English but got her whole family out to come and stand next to us to compare how tall we were to them, it turns out we're taller. We hastily got on our way after they showed us where we were on the map and before they tied us down to the floor with stakes Lilliput style.

Just a little further down the road, we came across a road block due to road works, you couldn't get through at all, and in traditionally Vietnamese style there were no signs or detours available, hell we hadn't even seen another road to take for  some miles. So we improvised by going down some alleys between the houses and driving across people's back gardens, getting lost as we did so. The paths here were not much wider than the bike and not designed for small moped wheels but we persevered and came across another road. We followed this for some time and came across the café we'd stopped at just 20 mins earlier!

KFC do takeaway over here

We sorted ourselves out though and made it to the motorway going in the correct direction and everything and we soon stopped for some noms at a restaurant. We parked the bikes and a man ran out to give us a ticket so that we could find our bikes again when we came to leave. This is despite them being the only two bikes there and we were sat around 2 meters away from them, still everyone needs a job and we wasn't going to stop him doing his. We had no idea what anything was on the menu so Tim ordered using pictures of food . We're not entirely what animal we ate, although the dog that was sniffing around a few minutes earlier suspiciously vanished. It was good though, even Mark managed to eat something. We hopped back on the bikes only for the man to check our tickets to make sure we had the right ones and continued on our way.

Not long after we were in Vung Tau, the journey had taken four hours and time was tight as we had to be back for our New Years Eve party that night. We were not allowed to park our bikes anywhere, so we got as close to the beach as possible only to discover that there wasn't a beach at all as the tide was in and the waves were about 12 foot high crashing into a wall. It was like a cross between the surf at the end of Point Break and sea in The Perfect Storm. We decided it wasn't a good idea to go for a dip and headed home instead.

The journey home wasn't so much fun, it was getting to be rush hour and the motorway was very busy. So the Vietnamese road rules came into play again. Apparently it's ok to drive the wrong way down the middle lane of the motorway. It's also ok to reverse an arctic lorry out of a side road onto the motorway completely blocking it with no warning. Oh and the busses… many a time they fly past you in the fast lane only to cut across all 3 lanes, and pull sideways into the bike lane to let someone on or off, at least twice Tim had to do an emergency stop because of this, but it's ok, they bloke had put his hand out of the window so it's all fine.

We didn't get lost coming home but it did still take us 3 hours because of the traffic. We pulled up at the hotel at 6pm, with the party due to start at 6:30. Tired and filthy we rushed to get ready and joined the other guests and the hotel staff for a free BBQ and lots of free wine.

It was quite nice actually, the hotel staff are very friendly and try to help with everything as much as possible. The food was good too, but it became apparent that body size is directly proportion to how much alcohol you can consume as several of them got very drunk after a couple of glasses. We also met some other guests like Pervert Jim from Holland who basically told us all of the best places to get prostitutes from around the world, how much to pay, what to expect and so on. I think he's talking to the meer cat people about getting a comparison site setup!

The party finished about 9:30 so that everyone had time to get to their real NYE bashes, we went to a few bars and found a new way of getting free beers. No one believes that we're brothers, so we bet them free drinks if we can prove it (which being brothers we can!). Tim loves a good scam so I think this ploy will be used a fair bit over the next few days.

Pervert Jim has invited us to go out with him and his sex ring of friends, we declined this and went to meet the hotel staff who were taking us to the fireworks. On the way back to the hotel Mark's "wife" from a few days ago charged across the street and demanded to know why he hadn't called. Not taking the hint, her and her mute sister followed us into the next bar opposite the hotel and continued with her visa application. Tim came up with a plan and nipped outside for some fresh air. 2 minutes later Mark's phone rang so he had to conveniently go outside to answer it. Tim had tipped off the hotel staff opposite, so Mark dashed across the street and we all made a run for it out the back of the hotel.

We had to high5 every one of these people!

We made our way to the fireworks where about a million people were gathered and there was a big crush as the crowd surged, Tim was in his element here as it meant he could legitimately push people around. The countdown began and everyone cheered as per the tradition and the fireworks went off. We then had to high five every person there  as per our celebrity status!

We headed back to our hotel for a few more beers, it was quite surreal sitting on 8 inch high chairs in the middle of the road drinking beer while people brought us random bits of food to try while trying to explain to one particular local why Leicester City probably wasn't the best Premier League Football team to pick to support. At 5am we gave it up and finally went to bed, it had been a very strange day worthy of any good sitcom!

Happy New Year people!