It's been a while... first of all, I'm still alive! Secondly, I'm in a town called Hoi An, which is in Central Vietnam. And finally, I'm still having an amazing time! So last time I wrote was when I was originally meant to be home and now I've just past the half way mark!

I ended up living in Nha Trang for 14 weeks and a day, and loved (almost, only apart from when I was ill) (oh, and also apart from the annoying motorbike drivers - "motorbike, you, you, hey man, motorbike" - the annoying children - "you buy pooostcard" - and the annoying old ladies - "buy cigarette?") every minute of it. There were a lot of lazy days, Nha Trang can be a lazy place in the day... mostly resulting from the nights before! Especially towards the end where I went out every night for I think 5 weeks straight :-D me and my friend Sean were the only ones who went out every night, the others were either working, diving the next morning, or just not as hardcore as us. I watched a fair few movies in my time there, inlcuding several comedies which were so unfunny (eg - Benchwarmers, Eurotrip). But there were also days where we did exciting things, went on day trips, etc. Also times, normally for someones leaving party when we went out in a big group of 20-30 people for dinner which always results in an amazing night. I will soon do a picture update with explanations to try and cover Nha Trang as it will be impossible to write everything that happened there in the last month or two. I'll get pictures of the most exciting stuff and my good friends there.

When I did finally leave it was really hard. I spent my last day packing which took ages more than normal, I'd collected so much stuff (inlcuding 5 free t-shirts on my last day), and running around like crazy saying goodbye to everyone trying not to miss anyone out. Then when I got on the bus I was really sad to be going, it's definately my second home and I've told everyone there I'll go back ASAP. But now I'm back on the travelling scene, and excited about it...

I'd forgotten how crap the bus journeys can be and was soon reminded. The seats were actually fairly comfy and the air clean and a good temperature... but everything else can still go wrong right? And it did. There's the TV at the front, which from 8pm to 12am has a DVD playing on repeat. The DVD shows people dancing inside a nightclub and hence projects luminous beams throughout the bus and plays hardcore trance music at full volume. The old bloke next to me manages somehow to sleep through this, pushing his bag under my feet and resting his head on my shoulder. Then at 1am the bus broke down and people wander around for ages, coming back with rocks, logs and finally a machete in hope of fixing it. None of the above helped, but we did gte moving again an hour and a half later. Finally arrived here in Hoi An, a fairly small town with 750,000 people, very picturesque and beautiful.

3 friends from Nha Trang also came here by train and met me here on the same day I arrived, so we're staying next door to each other. We've spent our days here wandering around, taking in the sights, taking some pictures, etc. I got a bit ill on the first two days though, really bad headache, ear ache and not really able to eat because I had too sore a throat, but luckily all feels better today. I've just got a call from them saying they're drinking some Bia Hoi (10p a glass here) so gonna go and join them now...

Welcome back!