Not wanting mango in Nha Trang, Drinking weasel poo in Dalat, Massive tanning effort in Mui Ne, Sipping 18p beer in Saigon, Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville and Koh Rong (but it's Koh Right) - sorry I'm getting lazy with these titles

Hello all. I can barely remember all that I have done since I last blogged, but I will attempt to tell you about some of it... So after Hoi An Alice and I made our way to Nha Trang where we headed almost immediately to the beach for some more tanning time. This would have been a pleasant and relaxing experience if it weren't for all the women walking by trying to sell you things: 'You want mango?' 'Banana banana?' 'Massage for you?' One woman actually screamed WHY?! when we said we didn't want any mango for what must have been the tenth time. Still, we struggled on and managed to brown ourselves despite all of the challenges we faced. The next day we decided to venture out to Vinpearl waterpark/amusement park, which you had to get a cable car across the sea to. When we got there it was like a ghost town, with weird music blaring out as you walked past the shops, and huge plastic clowns (it turned out these were showers) dotted around the place. We tried out some of the water slides - some were fun and others were dangerous and a little bit painful - and then decided to dry off and head to the amusement park area, where we were fortunate enough to get there in time to catch the monkey show... This involved a group of monkeys dressed in brightly coloured shiny outfits cycling round in a circle on tiny monkey-sized bicycles. One monkey was riding a tiny rickshaw, whilst a smaller monkey sat inside holding a parasol. It was most surreal, although all the locals seemed to absolutely love it and were clapping their hands with glee. We left shortly after that. We went out in the evening and bumped into a couple of girls we'd met on the bus, so ended up having a wild old time drinking cocktails and playing connect 4 with the barman, before rounding the night off with a boogy in the very swanky Sailing Club.

After Nha Trang we made our way to Dalat for a bit of mountain scenery. The town centre wasn't anything too special to look at, but as we were walking around on day one contemplating getting a post dinner pastry we bumped into Emma, a girl we'd met in Halong Bay, which was very nice indeed, so we ended up spending the day with her. We wandered around Dalat's enormous market, buying strawberry sweets and coffee, and looking at (but not buying) the table of raw eyeballs that we came across. After that we went to have a look at The Crazy House, which is a weird Gaudi-esque house/hotel, built by a local lady with some zany ideas. Apparently when it was built a lot of the locals wrote to the architect, outlining their intention to tear the house down. Walking around the house was bizarre, and at times incredibly dangerous (there were some very high, very low-walled bridges, some of which led to unfinished bits of the building where there were just pieces of wood with nails sticking out). For a mere 30 dollars you could sleep in this house, but it didn't seem like anyone had opted for that, judging by the empty rooms and the general smell of damp and mustiness. On our second day in Dalat we went on an 'easy rider' motorbike tour with Mr Lee and Ocean, who were very nice and very entertaining. They took us away from the town centre, where we got to see some amazing mountain scenery, strawberry farms, coffee plantations etc. They stopped off at a nice waterfall which was again absolutely treacherous - I was only wearing flip flops and it was raining and we had to scramble over slippery rocks to get to the waterfall. They also took us to see silk being made, which was interesting but really quite disgusting as the whole factory was filled with boiled up silk worm carcasses, and also took us to sample some special 'weasel poo coffee' - this special treat is made from the coffee beans that are eaten and then pooed out by weasels. It was quite sour. After a long day of riding on the back of motorbikes we were very happy to go back and make use of our hotel's free hot tub on the roof.

After Dalat we got a bus to Mui Ne, for some more beach time. It turned out we weren't getting a bus, just a mini bus which was so full of people that one guy had to sit on a tiny stool in the aisle by the door for the whole four hour trip. To make things worse, the roads were quite windy, and I had one woman sat next to me puking into a plastic bag for a lot of the journey. To her credit, she managed to vomit very discretely. We spent a few days in Mui Ne doing little more than lying on the beach working on our tans and watching the kite surfers. We spent all of our beach time at Coco Beach resort, where the sun loungers were the most expensive of my life ($6), but for our money we did have a whole host of beach boys ready to run over to assist us if we needed our loungers repositioning, or if the water bottle was just a touch too far from our hands to reach it...We could probably have gone on lounging around like that for days, but Alice's flight home was fast approaching and we still had Ho Chi Minh City to see, so we booked ourselves on to a bus with the ticket we'd bought in Hanoi at the beginning of the trip. When we arrived at the bus stop the next day, however, we were told that our ticket wasn't valid and we would have to pay an extra $4 each. The woman in the office mumbled something about someone having called her to say we couldn't use our tickets, and just said that the guy who'd confirmed our bus reservation the night before 'didn't know'. We were very angry about this indeed and made a huge fuss, adamant that we absolutely would not pay anymore. However, when the bus was ready to leave the driver and his pal were of a different opinion and wouldn't let us on the bus. Furious, we watched it drive off and then stomped our way up the street where we found a different bus also going to Ho Chi Minh, so we paid $6 and got on that one...

Arriving in Saigon (it's too much effort to keep writing Ho Chi Minh City) were pleasantly surprised to find that we quite liked the city, and it felt like there was a lot more space to move than in Hanoi, where all the narrow roads and pavements were clogged with motorbikes. To be fair, the roads here were also clogged with motorbikes, but they were wider roads so it felt more spacious. It turned out Alison, who I'd first met in Vientiane was also in Saigon, so we went out that evening for drinks with her and her friends, rounding off the night by drinking buckets in deck chairs on the street. A few of the girls we were drinking with had warned us to be careful as drive by bag snatchings are very common in Saigon, especially late at night, so when it was time to leave we practically ran back to the hotel firmly clutching our bags to us. We made it back unscathed and unmugged, thankfully. The next day we went off to explore the sights of Saigon - wandered around the park, had a look at Saigon's Notre Dame cathedral, strolled by the reunification palace and visited the War Remnants Musuem, which was incredibly depressing as it featured a lot of pictures of Agent Orange victims. Still feeling a bit hungover after we left the museum we had to revive ourselves with an iced coffee and a doughnut at a nearby German bakery,  before going off to explore the market. Shopping at the market was quite an amusing experience. We didn't come across any more eyeballs, but you couldn't walk past a stall without someone springing up from behind it shouting 'Hello lady you buy something? Looking please! How many you want? Good price for yooouu'. The next day was Alice's last day, and we got up early to go and visit the Cu Chi tunnels, which were used for fighting/hiding during the war. This was very interesting, although crawling around inside them was quite claustrophobic and not at all pleasant. We somehow resisted the temptation to fire a gun at lunchtime, although a lot of people were very keen which was obvious from the deafening sound of gun shots which made talking over lunch impossible. Alice left that evening which was very sad indeed, so to dull the pain of loneliness I met up with Alison and her friend Dominic, and went for a few drinks in a bar, rounding off the night with an 18p fresh beer which we drank on tiny plastic stools on the side of the road. We attracted the attention of a Vietnamese man keen to practise his English, and he took a particular shine to Alison, subtly making his intentions known by asking about the meaning of a word he had written on his hand, which turned out to be 'pubic'. I woke up the next morning with the beginnings of a flu, although managed to drag myself out of bed to go for lunch with Alison and Dominic, at a very posh restaurant somewhere away from the main backpacker district, and then for some expensive mocktails at a nice restaurant overlooking the river. When I got back, however, fever had set in again so I spent the rest of the night shivering in bed.

I got up the next day feeling a bit better which was lucky as it was the last day before my Vietnam visa expired so I had to get a bus to Cambodia. The six hour journey was pretty uneventful, although a bit confusing at the border as I was the only Westerner on the bus and no one else seemed to need to faff around with getting a visa. Arrived in Phnom Penh in the evening, and met up with Lilach, a friend I made in Vientiane, who took me off to a club to meet her friends and where we danced the night away. Despite only drinking about 5 drinks I woke up the next day with an absolutely awful hangover, and all I could do until midday when Lilach knocked on my door was lie in bed moaning watching Junior Masterchef Australia. Lilach dragged me out of bed though, and we went for lunch, lay on some grass in the middle of a busy street, and then found a delightful bakery which sold delicious ice cream, and which had comfy beds to lie on in an air conditioned room where they brought you minty fresh ice cold towels to put on your face. We stayed there for a while once we found it. I then went back to my hotel, thinking that I would finally undo my braids as they had become beyond disgusting. Considering how many plaits fallen out in the three months that they'd been in, I didn't think the process would take too long. 7 hours later, at midnight, weak from hunger and covered in sweat (no air con in the room) I finished doing my hair. Exhausted, I limped outside planning to go in search of food, and spied some of the guys I'd been out with the night before drinking on their balcony. I abandoned the dinner plan and went dancing with them instead, although I did have to leave fairly early to go and get some street food on the way home. I hadn't managed to see much of Phnom Penh the day before, so the next day I headed out to see the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng prison, and learn a bit about the Khmer Rouge regime. I did feel quite informed by the time I left, although also extremely depressed. I got chatting to a tuk tuk driver when I was eating lunch afterwards, and he told me a bit about his experiences. He was 5 when the Khmer Rouge came to power, and he lost his brother and sister, although when it all ended and he went back to his old house he was delighted to find that his cow was still there and recognised him. The tuk tuk driver told me about a nearby orphanage, and basically cajoled me into going to visit it and giving them some money to buy rice, which I did. The kids were very cute and the staff were very sweet. The next morning I went to visit the Royal Palace which was very beautiful but pretty expensive to visit and difficult to walk around in the absolutely blazing heat. After that I hot footed it to the bus station for my bus to Sihanoukville.

I arrived in Sihanoukville in the evening, and found the guys I went out with in Phnom Penh. I went out that night and there were absolutely hundreds of US navy guys in town.One actually sent over drinks to our table and then presented me with a rose, which I didn't think actually happened in real life... Unfortunately I was immune to his charms. The next day I lazed around on the beach and got assaulted by all manner of people trying to make me bracelets, do my nails, give me massages and thread my legs. Went out again in the evening and met a very lovely and very funny Irish couple on their honeymoon, so danced the night away with them. The next day I decided to go and visit one of Cambodia's islands, so got a boat over to Koh Rong, and it turned out Gill and Gerry (the honeymooners) were going too and staying at the same resort so I ended up spending most of my time with them. Koh Rong was amazing. Absolutely beautiful, and really quiet - there were just three resorts on the island and there didn't seem to be too many people around. I stayed at Paradise resort, run by an old German guy called Rudy who walked around smoking a spliff pretty much the whole time. His resort was really nice though, and the accommodation was just little wooden bungalows. I had dinner and many gin and tonics with Gill and Gerry, and we rounded the night off lying on the beach watching the lightning light up the sky. I got up the next day and went to explore the beach, a lot of which was completely covered in water, and the few bits of available sand was terrifyingly soft quick sand. I spent the morning swimming and clambering around on rocks looking at crabs and the afternoon reading and sunbathing before meeting up with the honeymooners again in the evening for cocktails and pizza. Unfortunately the otherwise wonderful experience was ruined slightly when I went to check out this morning, and Rudy was very angry with me for not having told him the day before that I was going to be leaving, as it meant he didn't have anyone to take my room. I apologised and said that I hadn't decided what my plans were before, and seeing as there wasn't much I could do about it I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but when I got up to pay for my breakfast he started going on about it again as if I was a naughty child. In the end I told him I didn't appreciate being spoken to like that and made a swift exit. I'm back in Sihanoukville today and achieved nothing more than having a lovely massage on the beach this afternoon. Off to Kampot tomorrow to continue my adventures.

And that concludes this epic blog, which I hope people are still reading since it takes me so long to write. Do let me know, by sending me all the latest gossip.