We need not have worried. Hanoi exceeded all our expectations, it's a wonderful place. It just doesn't feel like a capital city. It's architecture is mostly low-rise colonial French villas, which amazingly escaped damage from the vast tonnage of US bombs dropped during the 'American' war. We stayed at one such villa, now a marvellous hotel with cavernous wood panelled rooms. The city streets are buzzing with silent swarms of cyclists, and noisy swarms of mopeds, market traders and shops.

Each street seems to have its speciality, one for hats, one for grave stones(!), one for bicycle repairs, another for sunglasses (this one does a brisk trade with the police force who all wear dark glasses). One of the must-see sights in Hanoi is the Army Museum, which chronicles the various grisly wars throughout Vietnam's history, and there have been many. As you might guess, the bulk of the space is devoted to the recent conflicts with first the French (1945-1954) and then the Americans (1965-1973). Being so recent, there is no shortage of material on display; wreckage from US aeroplanes that were shot down, thousands of photographs, films, and memorabilia, (such as dog tags of captured US servicemen). The museum obviously presents a somewhat one-sided view, but you can't help but admire the resolve of these people in the face of a technologically superior enemy and cringe at the enormous human cost of this superpower game that was played out on their soil. Despite all this, most Vietnamese seem to have put the war behind them and I can honestly say they are amongst the friendliest most genuine people we have encountered on our travels. This is particularly the case if you can manage to get off the beaten (tourist) trail.

Hue is just south of the 17th parallel, the old demarcation between North and South Vietnam. It's Vietnam's third city and was the centre of imperial power in the time when Vietnam was ruled by emperors. Unfortunately, being so close to the border, it was almost completely destroyed in the Tet offensive of 1968 and subsequent counter-attack by the Americans. Very little of its rich heritage remains, so there ain't much to see. Quirkily, the war that destroyed the old city has created its main tourist attraction today. Every day, bus loads of foreigners travel north to the DMZ (dee-em-zee), the heavily mined frontier area and location of numerous US firebases which saw some of the most ferocious fighting in the 'American' war. We joined in this ghoulish tour, not realy sure what we were expecting to see - body parts hanging from barbed wire perhaps, burned out tanks, a moonscape scene lifeless and full of bomb craters? However, like most battlefields around the world, from Marston Moor to the Somme, it just looked like a bunch of fields with a few peasants, continuing a bucolic existance. Our pretty Vietnamese guide tried her best to spice things up "American planes dropped over 70,000 tonnes of defoliant on Vietnam, and that is why to this date you see few trees in this area". Oh really, how interesting. "Khe San is where the Americans had a large runway and lots of artillery positions that were besieged for 77 days, but there's nothing left now. Local people have gathered all the scrap up and sold it to the Taiwanese". Great. Some enterprising locals equipped with sophisticated metal detectors were trying to flog various war remnants, including some old US army dog tags. Whether fake or not, it was pretty macabre.

As we pulled in to Hoi An, we were held up by a sizeable procession of buddhist monks follwed by a man on a float type thing who looked remarkably like the Dalai Lama. I wonder if it was him.

In Hoi An we had quite a job finding a hotel with rooms available. Hoi An is a nice place with nice old buildings, a nice market and nice river trips - and therefore too many bloody tourists. Just as we were about to imolate ourselves in the main street in desperation, we came across the Phu Thinh guesthouse which had two rooms left, one of which was a 'suite' on the first floor a vast cavern of a room, probably a former indoor football pitch. It was great value at $12 a night, but had one fatal flaw, the curtains aren't as opaque from the outside as they appear from within, a fact we learned when we heard our neighbours sniggering outside one night.

"Er excuse me, but isn't that the My Lai turning?" I said. "My Lai, yes yes." said the driver, and carried on driving south. "Er I don't think you understand, I told you at the start of the trip, we want to go to My Lai." I said. "My Lai, yes yes." said the driver, and carried on driving south. I thought naybe I was mistaken, so I checked the guidebook to find that yes, we had indeed passed the turning. "Look, will you take us to My Lai, we paid for a private taxi so that we could go where we wanted, and we want to go to My Lai. Now." The driver looked perplexed. "This minibus not stop at My Lai" he said, and carried on driving. I had to bite my tongue to avoid an explosion of rage. "This minibus does stop at My Lai. Look, stop the bus here, now! Stop!" Several minutes of heated discussion foollowed, before the driver finally relented and took us where we wanted to go, in moody silence.

Dalat's boom period was the 1930s when the French build a huge number of lavish villas so they could escape the heat of Saigon in summer. Unfortunately, the 1930s was not a golden age for outstanding architecture, and the whole place is a bit of a disappointment, rather like Crawley in Sussex; drab, wet and slightly hilly with run of the mill art-deco 30s houses. We hired a motorbike to get around the sights (which doesn't take long). We saw the old governor's summer villa - looked like a bomb shelter, and the last Vietnamese emperor's summer villa, which looked like a cheap Blackpool hotel that has seen better days. We rode out of town to the "Valley of Love", an area of parkland with a large lake in the middle. There are souvenir stalls by the dozen selling tourist tat and a number of artificial and totally kitch 'photo' spots for lovers to have their photo's taken against. We decided to walk round the lake which is deceptively big. The muddy path petered out into thinly wooded slopes with long grass. We'd got about halfway round, when I stopped dead in my tracks. Not four feet in front of us was the biggest blackest meanest looking snake I'd ever seen in outside the safety of a TV screen. It was easily 8ft long, no joke. I was transfixed in horror as it slithered away, my imagination running riot at the consequences had we not seen it and accidentally trodden on it. Suddenly the Valley of Love had become the Valley of Death. We beat a very careful retreat back to the path and civilisation.

A reminder of French Colonial Times

Old Citroen in Saigon

Chinese temple, Saigon