We had breakfast and checked out and we took a taxi to the airport. Eight lanes of traffic (only three of them official) fought for space and about half of all the cars were taxis. More than three quarters of all the other vehicles were taxi bikes or tuk-tuks. We were there too early but there was no time to do much else. We had to pay departure tax, we walked up and down the duty free concourse, searched for camera films and Mikey bought me ENGLISH Cadbury's chocolate. I think I was suffering from mild side effects to the malaria tablets we'd started taking again, but nothing serious. We sat and read. The nice Lufthansa people were more or less on time and they gave us a sandwich on board. The flight was short, and most of it seemed to consist of the descent which lasted ages. We were told that it was forbidden to take pictures of Vietnam from the air and of the airport. I hadn't wanted to, now I had the urge. I restrained myself. A long line at immigration, a friendly man at customs and we were in Vietnam. I took a million dong out of an ATM! That's not a phrase you hear every day.

We took a taxi to the hotel we'd decided on. The steering wheel is on the left, something we hadn't seen since Tahiti in June. The cars, on the other hand, drive on any side of the road they want to, and the mopeds, which are by far the majority of the traffic, squeeze in between. They all wore flapping ponchos against the rain. I ignored my normal advice not to watch the drive and ended up holding my breath for most of it. It was a little disturbing.

Ho Chi Minh is a maze and it's tatty and old and mostly made of concrete boxes. I'm sure there must be some nicer areas. Our hotel was nice, we were dragged inside by an army of girls, fed water and bananas, offered copious amounts of food and then shown to a lovely clean room with a bathroom and airconditioning. They used a clever pulley system to get our bags up five flights of stairs. We went out to explore.

Other than the writing, which is our script but with a couple of extra letters and many more accents, the streets were much like Bangkok - badly-lit, full of food carts, busy roads, pushy cafe-owners and trecherous pavements. Back at the hotel we were given bowls of soup and some deep-fried sausage rolly things and then I spent a couple of hours writing diary entries. Oh, and we heard some of the Eagles singing Hotel California in a TV advert for their farewell Asia concert in October. No matter how we rearrange our itinerary, we're going to miss every single place they're playing. Which is a shame. Off to sleep now!