I am finally getting the feel of Hoi An and the noisier, busy-nes of (?southern) Vietnam - so different from the Manyana attitude and 'drive around the dog' attitude of Laos. I will be sorry to leave, especially this lovely friendly hotel.

Dinner at a local restaurant last night was a treat, and good fun with a couple of Western Australian's on each side - including a pair of nice young blokes who prepared their meal as part of a cooking class (for a reasonable USD $8 per person). It looked so good as they ground and chopped their ingredients that we opted for one of the same dishes, a standout Grilled Fish in Banana leaves with 'saffron' and spices. The 'saffron' is not the more-expensive than gold crocus stamen, but a turmeric coloured ground root, something like galangal. It was a knock-out to eat though!

With it, we had 'fried won ton', not the usual Bob & Carolyne sort of food, but a local specialty, and it consisted of crisp fried won ton papers, four filled with a pungent mixture of ?pork. On our last meal in Hoi An, we had to try this restaurant's version of Cau Lao for comparison . . . it was also very good. Stir fried 'Kang Kong' - green thinned stemmed vegetable with ample garlic provided our vegetables for the day. It was a great meal, washed down by copious amounts of fresh draught beer by Bob (at 3,000 dong a glass - about 25c - and with no preservatives it is his drink of choice), and a large bottle of water and vietnamese green tea for me. The total bill (including no less than 6 beers) was 110,000 dong a bit less than $10 Australian.

The meal was the end of a day which started at 6:00am with a trip to My Son, a group of ancient temples about an hour away from Hoi An. We had booked a car with Phouc, the guy who delivered us to Hoi An from Da Nang train station, and it arrived with his younger brother (?) on time. We went around the block to collect a Dutch couple we had met on our first day in Ayutthaya at the start of the trip who had joined us on a twilight boat tour around the rivers and canals of the city on that first night. We had run into them once more in the streets of Luang Prabang, and then again the previous day in a pagoda in Hoi An. We had booked the car and arranged for them to join us in this early trip which would get there long before the bulk of the tourist buses.

My Son was good, but fell short of expectations; there was little information or description and without this, despite the dramatic ruins (some bombed in the American War after being there for 14 Centuries) in a spectacular setting, we could not get the full value from the site. We had been spoilt by the similar temples at Vat Phou in Laos, which were still the site of active worship and were more interesting and in context having spent an hour in the Japanese funded exhibition hall first.

As the ex- US Marine Corp jeep ferried us back to the 'staging post' where buses and cars parked, bus loads started to arrive without a break. We were back in Hoi An at around 10:00am and had a good breakfast in the garden of the hotel, me practicing my Vietnamese and having a language lesson.

It was something of a lazy rest of the day, although the garmin indicated over 10km of walking. I headed off on my own and wandered through the local neighbourhood streets, where one did not have to fear the cry of "hello" as a ploy to sell you a motorbike taxi/clothes/water/ anything we will sell you anything! It was great to talk to people and say Xin chao! (hello) and wave without fear. The response was wonderful, and I spent half an hour or so with a wonderful, betal nut chewing woman of 52 (she looked older to me), as she insisted I sit next to her on the bamboo matting and 'chat'. As she did not speak a word of English (even the telephone answering Hello) it was at times frustrating, but nevertheless very interesting and warm. She was far more philosophical that at 41 I hadn't had children than all those we had met in Laos and Thailand who were deeply troubled and saddened by this. She had seven children, the eldest 31 and many grandchildren. (I am trying to show off at how much my Vietnamese communication has improved here by the way!). A young grandson was with her, very unsure of me, and as she filled my palm with chilli flavoured prawn crackers, and compared the colour of the skin on our arms, he remained unsure.

Bob is cycling a couple of kilometres to the Beach while I write this, and then we have engaged Phouc's services once again to take us to the train station at Da Nang for our marathon journey to Ha Noi. We will be sharing a carriage with 4 others, and are due to arrive at 4:00am. We have arranged with the hotel to check in then, and will stay at the Camillia 2 (where Bob stayed on 3 occasions during his cycling trip last July) until we leave on Anzac Day.

I'm looking forward to Ha Noi, where hopefully staying in the one place will enable me to run a a little more; early starts and checking out (not to mention all nighters on the bus) are certainly making it difficult at times. Bob's calf/achilles injury was better yesterday, after being so bad on Monday that we could only eat at the most local of restaurants we found a couple of doors down he was limping so much. It turned out OK, the food was very good, more fish and Cao Lao, and maybe a bit too much Xika Vodka back in the room later.