Bangkok - time

Up early as promised, flight to Bangkok, leave my bags at the airport and head into town. I'm starving as it's lunchtime but I had no breakfast, and after a few false starts (one restaurant tells me the chef is out at the supermarket. At quarter to one in the afternoon. I guess catering to the lunch crowd isn't their thing) I have a very tasty Thai curry.

I walk around some of the local sights, but I'm not really in the mood. I consider the museum but it closes in an hour so instead I just wander round the royal field. I have hours and hours to kill, but luckily I have just the right amount of cash to buy a book, two pints of strong lager and some noodle soup, which passes the time nicely.

Once at the airport to catch my Heathrow flight it seems like I might not get on the plane - there are very few seats remaining. My luck holds for today though and just after midnight I'm taking off and returning home.

In Club.

Hanoi - an amuseuming day

Up nice and early to go and visit Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. I'm quoted "5" by the moto driver, which I take to mean 5,000 dong, which is actually completely reasonable. I am therefore suspicious as I have never met a reasonable moto driver. I'm fairly sure he will ask me for 50,000 dong once we stop.

This is exactly what he does. Screw him, I've had enough of being ripped off. I give him 10,000 only because I don't have 5,000 (and in any case I consider 10 a fair price). I only wish I had a 500 note to take the piss with. He's not happy but I employ the "contemptuous dismissive arm" gesture and don't look back. As long as he doesn't get some moto friends together and mug me tonight, everything is fine.

I see a corpse for the first time today (or the first I remember anyway) - Ho Chi Minh is embalmed and lying in a glass sided coffin. He looks pale. I spend the next few hours exploring the mausoleum complex which has a few preserved buildings and museums.

I walk to the Army museum and see some more materiel from both the Vietnamese and the Americans. I moto to the History museum but it's closed for lunch, so I head back to the hostel to kill an hour or two, hunt for some books, eat lunch and walk back. This makes three museums in a day which is making me feel overloaded - I head out to the cinema as an antidote. I watch Terminator Salvation - fun, and ruined by an overly cheesy ending.

For my last night I meet the Irish girls again, but just don't have it in me to have a massive party time. I need to be up before six tomorrow to get my flight, so after a pint or two I leave and settle down for my last night in Asia.

Hanoi - Unconvincing

Get on the bus to Hanoi, which takes us to the west of the island where we get on a small, slow, very cramped and extremely hot and humid boat to Haiphong. Once there we get another bus to Hanoi.

I'm offered about a million moto rides, which I decline until I have time to work out where I am, where I want to be, and how much I'm willing to pay to turn one into the other. I'm offered one more moto ride at an extortionate price, and decide to try a new way of haggling, something I'm going to call the "laugh in his face" method. It works, he more than halves his price, and I'm on my way to the old quarter.

Sadly Hanoi seems as much of a dump here as it did the other day when I passed through - the tourist zone is full of rip-off merchants and it's not exactly the most beautiful part of Vietnam. Still, it would be pretty dumb of me not to at least try and see the place, so I go for a walk round the lake, meeting a couple of Brit backpackers in the process.

In the evening I visit the Water Puppetry theatre which is bizarre, but very entertaining. The puppets are manipulated behind a screen, and they move around in 2 or 3 feet of water. It's unlike anything I've ever seen. After this I find a hostel with a decent bar, and get talking to two Irish girls who are just starting their trip. I arrange to meet them again tomorrow and head back to the hostel, preparing myself for my last proper day travelling.

Cat Ba - Ups and downs. And downs.

I explore the island today.

I get up much later than I've been doing for the last couple of weeks - about 9am. I rent a motorbike for the day, leaving my drivers license as security. There's a little confrontation when it comes to how much petrol I get (what I was told and what I was given appear to show mild discrepancy) but it adds up to about a pound so for the easy life I let it slide.

I haven't been on the bike for too long when I realise it is a clapped-out Chinese piece of shit. Still, I'm committed now, for better or worse. [SPOILER: It turns out worse]. The gears are hard to change, the speedo and fuel guage don't work, and the mirrors won't adjust. I manage to put a crack in one trying to move it into a position where I can actually see the road behind me. I decide to worry about that later.

I find the harbour and rent a kayak for a few hours. I paddle around the Halong Bay, stopping off at first a populated beach, and later a completely deserted one. I need to take frequent breaks -I haven't kayaked for years, and I'm moving reasonably respectable distances. Once on the empty beach I do what I think any sane person would do in such a situation - strip down to my boxers (well, my clothes are drenched in sea and sweat), write I WAS HERE in huge letters in the sand, then stand a rock and scream as loud as I can, just to see how loud that is (I was satisfied, especially as the curved rock formation behind me added an echo).

Paddling back to harbour and picking my bike up, I start motoring North. I stop at a cave which used to house a hospital during the war. There are three storeys inside, meeting rooms, wards and even a cinema room and a swimming pool. Continuing North I stop for lunch. The Pho (noodle soup) is fantastic, and as I'm in a fairly remote spot, I'm hopeful it won't cost the earth. Not a chance - they see Touristy McTourist come a mile off and double the price. I have no choice as I've already eaten. Bastards.

At the most northern point some onlookers are quick to point out my bike's flat front tyre. I have no idea how long that had been there. They ask for a few dollars to fix it - not seeing an alternative I stump up. To their credit the onlookers do, I think, about the best job they can. They nip off to the village and are back with a repair kit nice and quckly. However, the flat tyre is caused by a hole between the valve and the body of the inner tube, which is too complicated for a quick fix. Compounding matters is the fact I have no money left.

A bit of back-and-forth results in me paying for a lift back to the town where the ATM is, before hopping into the rent shop to moan at the bike's owner. I am envisioning all kinds of problems here - him blaming me, refusing to return my license and so on. I feel I have two cards up my sleeve. The first is the guy who gave me a lift back, who can explain in Vietnamese what the problem is. I kept him sweet by paying over the odds for the journey. The second is that I have the bike keys on me as a hostage, if necessary.

Luckily it doesn't come to that. I get back my license and even a token refund. It's a shame - up until the tyre business, and despite the general shoddyness of the bike itself, it was still very fun to take the mountainous roads over the island. Still, I've had enough of this place now, so buy my onward ticket and head out for my last island night. I talk to a Vietnamese woman who is here with her two kids. Her young boy misbehaves constantly. My immunities to the so-called "charms" of children receive their booster shot.

Cat Ba - Ripped off

Next thing I know I'm in Hanoi. Sleeping pills that work are amazing - the flight back will hopefully be a doddle.



I'm approaced by the bus company and asked where I'm headed, and they quote me a silly price to get me there. Despite my freshly-woken state I have the wit to haggle the silly price down a bit. Because of my freshly-woken state (well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it) I don't actually haggle it down to a sensible price.



For breakfast I am ripped off.



After getting to Halong City I hop on a boat which goes through Halong Bay. The boat seems a slight rip off, and I don't get lunch which I thought I was getting. Luckily it seems like my easy-going manner appeals to the crew and they invite me to join them for their lunch. I teach a Vietnamese boy who speaks no English how to play snap.



Once on Cat Ba Island I need to cross to the south to hit the habitated town. My motorbike driver probably doesn't rip me off too badly, but I'm seeing patterns where there aren't any by now.



My hotel tries to rip me off, I feel. The receptionist gets angry at me for trying to negotiate a discount. It's a good thing for her my bag is already in the room or I would have found somewhere else. I tell her off for getting pissy and get a slight discount.



I find a small bar and have a pint of local brew for 33p, hoping the curse is broken.

Highway 1 - Bitten by the Bug

Today I took a motorbike tour of the countryside near Hue. My driver, Thinh, was my cyclo driver from yesterday (not another shocking coincidence, I liked him so I booked it after I was done being cycled). I see tombs and ruins and pagodas, and Thinh takes me to his old Pagoda where he was a monk for 11 years and I see how a working monastary runs here.

I also ask to drive the bike, and apart from one or two hairy moments (stalling approaching a crossroads) I feel pretty good about it. Thinh calls me a safe driver, which I'm pleased by. I'm getting smoother gear changes and feel in control pretty much all the time.

I mean to kill some time in Hue before my bus to Hanoi but it is so unbearably hot and humid that I'm forced to sit inside and drink cheap fruit smoothies. When my bus does arrive it's a sleeper bus - the seats all fold back significantly. I am too big for the seats though, and they are playing music very, very loudly. Thank god for both the earplugs I invested in a while ago, and the 10mg of Diazepam (Valium) I optained, legally, a few hours ago. I take two and am just feeling heavy and thinking about placebo effects when

Hue - tonnes of temples

I get to Hue just after lunch and immediately start wandering around the Citadel. I take a cyclo ride for the first time (imagine a three wheeled bicycle, where you sit in a comfy seat at the front and get pedalled around by your driver) and then amble throught the huge Citadel complex itself, which used to be the Royal residence. Inside are dozens of temples, pagodas and assorted funky buildings.

At the hotel I get talking to Gabby, who is running her own NGO here to help disabled Vietnamese people. We go out for dinner and I bump into Sin, who was the guy with Andreas when I bumped into them in Nha Trang.

Someone is almost certainly stalking someone.