I don't like cricket..

Vietnam was geting intense, and very flooded - The perfume river in Hue certainly didn't smell of perfume. We tried to get to a pagoda in Hue on mopeds, but were stopped by flooding - this revealed some interesting rats and snakes though.

I couldn't get on the Internet Hue or Hoi An, probably due to flooding or bad networking in the internet cafes. In Hue we saw boats moving on the roads. When we arrived in Hoi An, two streets were not accessible, but by the time we left the water had receded.

This didn't stop trade in clothes and shoes though, which Hoi An is famous for. Lou spent some time bartering for tailor made clothes in Hoi An without me impeding her. We both got new shoes, and hopefully I can upload a picture. I had to pay an extra dollar due to the size of my feet - and the tape measure he used to measure them has probably had to be burnt now. Still new shoes made to measure for less than five quid - we'll have to go back there one day. This left us to watch the dismal England match later and then bump into all the people we met travelling around Ha Long Bay.

We took a bus north to Dong Ha. There we were accosted by a man called Hoa who wanted to show us around the DMZ. This tour was for a price we had trouble arguing with, due to the distance we were dropped from town. Before 1972 Dong Ha was the last town in South Vietnam before the border and was full of American/South Vietnamese troops. We also went north and round the Vinh Moc tunnels, where NVA soldiers and villagers lived for several years under aerial bombardment - some bomb craters were still in evidence. We had negotiated a free lunch and breakfast with the tour, but the cost was that we booked out tickets to Laos with the tour guide - which was never going to make our onward trip straightforward. Also the selected Hotel in Dong Ha had beds which were probably designed to educate us about the suffering endured during the war. We also ate in a restaurant offering a full selection of meat including Beef Uterus - but this is not unusual. In Dong Ha westerners are not too common, so had good fun buying things in the market for very fair prices.

The next day at 5am we left for the Lao border in a minibus paid off by Hoa, who also turned up to see us off. This minibus sped us to the border at sick-making speed over a good mountain road. WE were at Lao Bao border post in an hour flat and were impressed. After several queues for border formalities and a $1 charge to the Loa authorties for 'working on a Sunday' we were through. No bus appeared, and it dawned on us that there was little we could do if Hoa had sold us down the river.

A woman appeared and ushered us to walk 1km down the road to get the bus. 1 km Down the road an ailing soviet bus sat surrounded by goods and a red shirted man shouted 'Savann Savann' at us. He asked for payment and wasn't convined by Hoa's reciept or my Vietnamese Dong. After a long conversation and some money changing a woman turned up with a bundle of cash and paid for us. I stopped swearing about Hoa.

The Soviet bus required some attacking with a hammer and a spanner before it would start, and heavy boxes of Vietnamese batteries were placed on the floor to reduce legroom. The bus started and was remarkably empty, but then stopped 500m up the road. The stop was used to siphon 120 litres of petrol into the tank, as there was no handbreak woden chocks we put under the wheels at each stop and removed by a man who then jumped back on the bus. It occured to me that travelling in Lao wasn't going to be anything like travelling in Vietnam. The large character in the red shirt shouted 'Savann Savann' and the bus filled up with people and any gaps were plugged with children.

After many more stops the bus collected sacks of rice and people of all ages. At Xephon we were offered roadside refreshments in the form of roasted crickets on skewers and something that looked like a roasted bat on a stick. I opted for soft drinks and some roast pork. These were delivered by sellers inside and outside the bus, however here they didn't target us particularly and seemed much less pushy then people in Vietnam.

After 6 more hours of leg torture we got to Savannakhet, on the Mekong. 1 mile across the enormous river you can see Thailand, but we are heading further in Laos. The whole country seems much slower paced than Vietnam and we're still geting used to people not hassling us all day. I look forward to trying my first roasted cricket.