Winter Wonderland

Hey y'all! Hope you all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year. We've been eating left overs all day yet seem to have more in the fridge now than when we started. Between work and the festivities it's been a while since I posted anything up here so I thought I'd better sort that out.

Last week I met up with some family and, amongst other things, we went to the Winter Wonderland on the corner of Hyde Park. It's basically a big fair ground with an ice rink, loads of places to eat and Zippos' Circus (which was awesome). All of these things were festooned with bright lights, often rapidly moving, and this provided a good opportunity to mess around with long shutter speeds. The pictures above and below had exposures of about half a second. As they were taken hand held and very much on the fly they are pretty blurry; however, the effect of the lights on the rides streaking brightly through the frame more than make up for the technical shortcomings of the shot, I think.

The next two shots were even more ad hoc. A bunch of us went on the Fun House which, asides from being a lot of fun, was actually quite perilous for my camera; all the moving walls and bits of floor led to it taking a few knocks. Still, I got these interesting looking photos out of it. There was a curtain of lit plastic tubes that you had to walk through and I just fired off a few frames as I went through. I wasn't even aiming so I can't take any real credit but I do really like the way they turned out. They're both quite abstract and the second one makes good use of negative, dark space which contrasts nicely with the brightly lit tube. The first one brings to mind those weird bio-luminescent creatures that are found in the depths of the sea; the tentacles of a carnivorous jellyfish maybe.

If I can get back to another fairground when I have time to use a tripod then I think there's real potential here for some imaginative work.

In the coming weeks I'll be finishing off a last few posts on my trip to Vietnam last year and I'll also come up with a post on using textures in photos. This is a post processing technique that blends images together to create a antiqued feel to your pictures. More next week!

One Thousand Thank Yous

Well that little ticker on the right of the blog seems to be saying that I have recently reached my first 1,000 page views and, I must admit, I'm pretty stunned by it. I started this blog on a whim back in March not expecting anyone other than my wife and parents to read it out of pity. As it turns out they very rarely look at it all and it would appear that I have no idea who most of my readers are but they come from 20 countries throughout the world. The stats say that my average reader is American and comes to the blog via Twitter on their Mac, so if that's you - Hello! As ever, if you like what you read, then by all means tell your friends and family about it and help in the push towards 2,000 page views.

I mostly write the blog because I enjoy it, but to have so many regular readers is certainly a motivation to continue the effort. I'm going to try to keep up the pace of posting, at least until I run out of photos anyway. I'm also going to try and find some time to update my website, which could do with a spring clean and is missing my most recent photos. I'll let you know when it's done.

As the new year dawns I'm looking forward to new travels around the globe and revisiting old haunts for new perspectives. My shot list seems to be getting longer not shorter so I guess I'll just have to start carrying the camera around a bit more; no great hardship. If you've only started reading in the past few months then you may want to go back to some of the earlier posts on the Lake District, South Downs and Inca Trail. All that's left to say is, once again, thank you; one thousand and eleven thank yous and counting.

Deer, Oh Dear...

I'm going to take a break from the series of posts I've been doing on Vietnam recently to show you some work from closer to home; Richmond in south west London to be precise. Those of you that follow me on Twitter will know that I spent most of last Sunday tramping around hunting for deer. I had set off early as it takes a good 90 minutes to get there from my home in the east of the city. On Saturday the weather had been glorious, sunny blue skies and unseasonably warm, but Sunday was a different proposition entirely. What used to be known as a "pea souper" had set in.

My first glimpse of the deer

Visibility was approximately 50 metres, the temperature had plummeted and along with it so had my chances of improving on my collection of deer photos. I had been to Richmond Park once before, again, with the sole purpose of snapping one of 650 or so Red and Fallow deer that roam free in the 2,500 acre park. I had had some moderate success that time; I had found a herd of 80 head or so but wasn't able to get very close without making the deer skittish and so had to settle for hanging back and taking some longer range shots. This time, I wanted to try and get closer for some more intimate shots of these beautiful animals. Unfortunately, the thick fog meant that even if I got within 20 yards I was going to struggle to get a clear shot.

All was not lost though, these dull, overcast conditions are actually ideal for close up work and the fine detailing that that can reveal. They also lend themselves to getting some good shots of the woodland in the area and also the section of the Thames that I walk along to get to the park. I'm going to put the river and woodland shots in a future post but I'll show you a couple of other ones as I rather like them. All the leaves and grass in the area were catching the mist and forming little droplets that highlighted the fragility of the structures. Cobwebs in particular stood out, you could spot them from several yards away. After taking a few of these sorts of photos I noticed that my beard was catching the dew in the same way: I decided that this needn't be documented.

I should have found a more intact cobweb but I was keen to press on and find the deer

Even with 650 deer at hand that meant that there was only one per four acres of park on average which, with the weather the way it was, meant that there was no guarantee of striking lucky. My first sighting came after more than an hour of hunting but I had heard them long before I saw them. The great roaring of dominant bulls carries a long way even through the mist. Frustratingly, the weather made it more difficult to actually pin point where the noise was coming from as it was rapidly muffled. Not long before I finally found them I started to here the clash of antlers, now this got me really excited; the main reason I had came was to get some photos of rutting behaviour. Eventually I saw what I had come for; 80 yards away I saw a small group of hinds and, at this time of year, there was unlikely to be a group of females without a stag nearby. And so it came to pass. This actually turned out to be a pretty big group with three or four mature stags, I don't know exactly how many were there as the far side was shrouded in mist but there were at least 50 or more.

The hinds kept their distance

There was no way I was going to sneak up on them unnoticed so I went for the slow-and-steady technique and over the course of a further 90 minutes or so I slowly worked my way towards them; sometimes moving forwards, sometimes taking a few steps away again and always trying to pre-empt the direction the herd was moving in. I would also randomly fire off my camera even when there was nothing in particular to see to get them used to the sound of it; I now have quite the portfolio of my right foot. Most of the hinds had retreated but several stags had stood their ground to fight each other and I used this to my advantage. As they lowered their heads and clashed I edged closer until I was about 20 yards away. On a clear day this would have given me the chance to get some crystal clear shots, today it got me some more ethereal looking ones with the fog providing a plain backdrop. Importantly, though, I got the shots I had wanted of stags clashing.

These two stags appeared to be more junior and merely fighting for the practice. There was a larger stag, below, who remained unchallenged. Even though these deer were smaller and their antlers not as well developed they still made an awesome noise as they brought their heads together. There's something quite primal about the sound of lengths of bone being smashed against each other. They didn't appear to be injured at all, as can apparently happen when they really go at it. I've also learnt that a dominant stag that has control of a harem will normally not eat during the mating season as he's too busy fending off rivals and, well, mating. They can expect to lose 20% of their body weight during this period and if they haven't put on enough bulk before the season starts they can actually struggle to make it through at all. There are worse ways to go, though, I suppose.

Below I have the best photo I managed to get of the dominant bull in this group, a beautiful creature. It is in no way surprising that in Britain they have been associated with royalty and majesty for over 1,000 years. You'll notice that I have the same photo again underneath that but more crappy looking. This is just to show how foggy it really was last Sunday. I had got pretty close by now as they were far more interested in each other than they were in me but even at 30 feet it was damned murky so all my photos ended up looking rather flat and dull. That being the case I worked them over a bit in Photoshop with what's known as a 'Levels' adjustment to liven them up a bit and tease out some of the detail. I'm mainly telling you this because, as a general rule, I don't like to mess about with my photos if I can help it (not just for artistic reasons but because it's tedious in the extreme to do) and also as a continuation of my policy of telling you when I have altered photos so that you know what is real and what has been fiddled. The top most photo in this post of the group of hinds is unaltered, the others have been adjusted.

In all I spent about 5 hours following these deer around and I had a great time doing it. Even though it takes several hours of travelling I think I'm going to have to get down to Richmond more often, these are amazing animals and it's genuinely exciting spending time near them. Stalking these wild creatures is probably the closest we can get in this country to going on safari, I certainly got that same sense of excitement. I'd like to get some pictures of them in the snow this winter, that'll depend on the trains being able to cope with the weather, of course.

The Bay of the Descending Dragon

I think I'm going to find this post difficult to write, partly because I don't particularly like the photos I took of the area and partly because I'm in serious danger of sounding like that most awful of things: a travel snob. I'll do my best to avoid this, I'll try to explain my misgivings in a fairly neutral manner, if it reads back as snobbish, then so be it. But I'll build to that......

The Bay of the Descending Dragon, then, is the translation of Ha Long Bay, that place I had so long wanted to visit. It can be found, here, about 100 miles from the capital, Hanoi. Over the course of 75 miles there are approximately 3,000 limestone islands that abruptly jut out of the sea in a way that I have always found captivating. The bay was recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in the mid '90s and has risen steadily up the list of 'Must Sees' on the average tourist's itinerary ever since. Some of the islands are very small and just a few hundred square metres in size whilst the largest, Cat Ba, is more like 150 square kilometres. One thing they have in common is that they are all smothered in fairly dense tree cover that, on the larger islands, is diverse enough to support quite a broad range of fauna. There are various goat type animals and some more exotic ones like Golden Headed Langurs, rhesus macaques and even some leopard cats. Research reveals that the islands were formed as a limestone plateau slowly sunk down and collapsed over millions of years; what made certain clumps remain standing proud I have no idea.

Although the area has very little habitable land it does, nonetheless, sustain a community that can trace it's ancestry back over millennia. Today, their traditional way of life has, depending on your viewpoint, adapted/become threatened by the influx of modern tourism. Living their entire lives on a series of boats and pontoons all lashed together they used to survive by fishing and exchanging their catch for land-based commodities. Nowadays they instead survive by providing kayaking opportunities to the glut of tourists that flow through the area.

A rare glimpse of blue sky

It takes a long time to learn your way around Ha Long Bay, to know which channels are deep enough for your vessel, which flow the way you want them to and so on, and this has often led to it being a stronghold of resistance from foreign invasion be it by the United States, who heavily mined the area leaving some parts unsafe even to this day, or the long term Vietnamese enemy, China. There is no love lost between these two countries, China has been trying to either occupy or exert it's influence over Vietnam for thousands of years. Earlier this year China was to be found pushing the bounds of Vietnam's sovereignty and in the news whilst we were there there were stories about China chancing it's arm by occupying a small, resource-rich island in the South China Sea that belongs to Vietnam. In the late 13th century Ha Long Bay played an important role in the expulsion of the great Northern Enemy from it's territories. Then it was in the form of the armies of the famous Kublai Khan, grandson of the infamous Genghis Khan, that had invaded. The locals of Ha Long Bay drove massive bamboo spikes into the seabed just below the surface and then forced the enemy vessels onto them sewing panic and confusion into the fleet and opening them up to defeat.

Not our boat, but they were all very similar to this

At that time Vietnam was known as Dai Viet and only extended as far south as what is currently thought of as central Vietnam; the south being occupied by the Champa people of My Son fame that I talked about in a previous post. It was many years later that the Vietnam we might recognise today came into being by incorporating the region to the south as the Champa moved out. Indeed, the word Vietnam means Viet - people, Nam - south; People of the South. This doesn't specifically refer to the south of Vietnam but is more a way of delineating itself from the Enemy of the North, China and Mongolia. As an aside, Vietnam should actually be written in two words: Viet Nam. In fact many of the words that the west uses should be two or more; Ha Noi, Sai Gon, Da Lat, Dien Bin Phu. The contractions of these words only came about in western circles as reports started coming back from the front line as the French and then Americans went to war there. The journalists used the Telex system to file their reports and this charged by the word so they just contracted some words to save money. There is talk of a move to make an effort to resort back to original spellings but some officials are reticent to upset or confuse potential foreign investors.

But now I'm rambling, back to the Bay, and then my gripe.....

One thing I didn't know about Ha Long Bay before I got there was that it has masses of caves. We had about 20-30 minutes in one of these caves, The Cave of Marvels (so named by 19th century French tourists), and I got some interesting photos whilst I was in there. The photos look quite bright but that's because the exposures are all in the region of 6 seconds or so; luckily I had thought to take my trusty tripod with me. Although they add some unusual colours to the photos it was a bit off putting to see the caves lit up by so many multi-coloured lights. It leant an air of Disney-style tackiness to the set up which was more of a distraction than an enhancement. Also, when I say we had maybe 30 minutes in there that's probably being generous. We were all but marched through with a couple of hundred other tourists and I can't help but feel that this was not the best way to contemplate the endless millennia that had gone into creating such mesmerising formations. And so begins my moan.

Almost everything in this blog post that resembles a fact or useful piece of information about Ha Long Bay and it's caves I got from the hours of research I do before starting a post like this. It probably takes me 3-6 hours on average to come up with a wordy post like this one, each fact I come up with I try to verify from a second source - and I never use Wikipedia. Normally I take the info I gleaned from tour guides or local people, try to verify it somewhere and then write it up. In this case the only thing I learnt from the tour guide or anyone in the vicinity was that the monolithic outcrops were made from limestone, but I spotted that as soon as we landed on one. Pollution is known to be an increasing problem in the Ha Long Bay area, the water was pretty filthy anywhere near a shoreline from both the diesel engines that power their boats and from their day to day refuse; locals tend to just throw their rubbish into the water. This might not have been a problem when all they were throwing overboard was food scraps and bamboo, but when it's countless pieces of plastic then the problem builds rapidly. This was indicative of the general attitude that seemed to permeate the region; the locals didn't seem to care about this amazing place in which they lived and that fed through to the tourist experience. They didn't provide any information about the area, didn't explain it's rich history, didn't tell us anything about their culture, they didn't make you feel at all welcome; it was like they had heard that tourism was just where you cram as many white people as you can into an area and charge as much as you think you can get away with for the privilege. Well, it's not. There was a cynicism here that I'm more used to seeing in the East End of London.

Part of the Cave of Marvels

I suppose this is where I could be sounding awful. It's easy for me to bemoan the behaviour of people that don't have the wealth and opportunities that I do, people who have to put all their effort into scraping enough money together to feed themselves and eke a living as best they can. But, then, I've been to a lot of places around the world that are far poorer and in far worse shape and don't have such a wonderful natural resource to exploit and yet the local people are still proud of what they do have and they take pleasure in being able to show off this precious commodity. And I don't mind being exploited myself, it's to be expected; I almost always over tip and pay over the odds for things but I'm happy to do so, they need it more than I do. But there was no care, there was no love, there was no respect for their own home; it was just a conveyor belt of tourists. Personally, I think you can take heart in your surroundings no matter where you live and if you can instill a sense of civic pride that permeates a community then those that visit that community will step in line and offer it a similar level of respect.

There are many examples around the world where this careful balance has been achieved, the one that sticks in my mind is that of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu (see my post on it here). For many years the trail was a free-for-all. Dozens of companies existed to take tourists to this most enchanting of places but there was nothing to say how many they might take, how many tourists per guide there should be, how much to pay the porters or how heavy a bundle the porters have to carry; also, it was becoming clear that the monument and indeed the trail itself was suffering with such a high rate of traffic. But then the Government started taking notice and they put a cap on the number of people allowed in each day, insisted on minimum standards of safety (still quite perilous by Western standards), decreed that the trail would close entirely for one month in the year for cleaning and restoration work and, importantly, a maximum weight and minimum wage was introduced for the amazing porters that do all the hard work and make the whole project run so seamlessly. In fact, I've just had a quick look and the authorities there have made the regulations even more stringent just this summer, there are now only 2,500 visitors per day allowed in to Machu Picchu. Now, this restriction of tourists may have meant less money incoming for local people, but that hasn't happened as the price has risen considerably over the years. Machu Picchu is preserved and local people can still earn a living, it's a good system that works well.

Personally I still found the actual geography and geology of the region very beautiful and worthwhile seeing; although I know that not all of my companions felt similarly. The final nail in the coffin may well have been when they tried to get everyone involved in an evening's karaoke - this was not what we were there to do and, it being a small boat, there weren't many places to hide. The only other event that was laid on was when they pulled up the boat's cook from below decks who showed us how to make spring rolls and then got us to make our own. This was a very simple and cheap way of involving us in something a little more personal and went down very well.

So ends my rant. I was right; I didn't enjoy writing this. I've never written negatively about anywhere I've gone before but, then, generally I always enjoy myself because the local people do such a good job often with very limited means. Soaring mountains, crystal clear lakes, expansive deserts or vast savannas are all well and good, but it's people that really make a place come alive. Hopefully I haven't come across too terribly, but I think I have a point in there somewhere. You can judge.

Travelling Buddies

My travelling buddies in Vietnam, my wife Sue and our friend Eleanor, for some reason, inexplicably, don't like having their picture taken. I wanted to have a record of our journey, though, other than the usual holiday snaps so I came up with the idea of photographing them in front of each of the major places we visited but having them face away from the camera. Admittedly, I forgot to do it half the time and there were occasions where Sue and Eleanor would just misbehave but I think it worked pretty well in the end. Thanks girls......

Hoan Kiem Lake in central Hanoi

The banks of the Perfume River in Hue

Inside the Imperial City in Hue

The temple of My Son near Hoi An

En route to the Elephant Falls near Da Lat

The Elephant Falls

Inside the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City

The Mekong Delta near Ben Tre

The 55th floor of the Bitexo Financial Tower in Ho Chi Minh City

Not co-operating at the Mekong

Hoi An and My Son

The Thu Bon river in Hoi An

Let's clear something up right away. This post isn't about some secret boy child of mine that I've squirrelled away with my new Vietnamese wife Hoi An. My Son is, in fact, a temple complex near the city of Hoi An in central Vietnam. Hoi An is a very picturesque town that doesn't seem to have been built up as much as every other town we'd been to so far on our journey. The vast majority of buildings were under 5-6 floors and in the older part of town, near the river, most were 3 or under. The river itself has a lazy sort of feel to it; slow and fairly wide it sort of ambles it's way through town; even the boats on it seemed quieter and slower. This feeling was perhaps exaggerated by the intense heat that was bombarding the town. By this point in the trip we had gotten used to temperatures in the low and mid thirties but this was another beast entirely. We could only manage about 15 minutes gentle exploration before we had to pile into the nearest cafe and seek shade; we know when we're beaten, leave the sun to the geckos. The phrase "mad dogs and Englishmen" was deployed.

The thing that Hoi An is famous for is it's tailoring industry. There are dozens of tailors in the town each one bursting at the seams with stacks of cloth piled floor to ceiling for you to choose from. For those that are not used to having clothes custom made which, let's be honest, is all of us, they provide a range of catalogues from all over the world for you to browse through. Just flick through and if you see something you like then they will measure you up and knock you up an exact replica. That simple. The next day you can go back to try it on and make sure the fit is good, if any alterations are required then they can all be done in a couple of hours. And there you have it, tailor made clothes at about a fifth of the price. It almost made me wish I had to wear something more smart than t-shirt and jeans at work. Almost.

As my wife was being measured up for her new clobber (she has to wear smart clothes every day) it gave us the opportunity to speak to the people that worked there. It was staffed by a group of women one of which had a young lad that was playing near by and whilst I was off scouring the town for cash Sue had a heart-to-heart with the mother. Now, ideology aside, there tends to be certain things that Communist and extreme socialist states do well. They may not be so keen on the old democracy, multiple political parties, freedom of speech, that sort of thing, but they tend to be pretty up on getting kids to read and write, health care and the more social aspects of life. Cuba is an excellent example; even though the barbaric and short sighted trade embargo of the US has kept it a third world country the children of Cuba can read and write better than their American counterparts; better than ours too. And if there was ever a country where I wanted to break a leg or fall horribly ill on holiday, then Cuba is the place to do it - their healthcare is second to none and free to all. It would appear that that is not the case in Vietnam.

The woman explained how people tend to get married fairly young and have a child as soon as possible after that; so far so normal. But then she revealed that healthcare is not free in Vietnam; indeed, to it's indigenous population, it's very expensive. The cost of having a baby is approximately six million Dong; now, this may only equate to £190, but that is more than 8 months wages to the average Vietnamese. The Government will foot this bill for them but they have to repay it all and it's so expensive for them that most Vietnamese have to wait many years before having their second child as they clear the debt and perhaps save towards the cost of their next. But the expense of parenthood doesn't end there; education, even at elementary level, is also not free. This was a bit of a bombshell for me. The cost at this level is subsidised by 50% by the Government but this still leaves a basic level of education out of reach of many Vietnamese. It is the children of these families, we were told, that roam the streets trying to sell you their wares.

She also told us that her husband worked for the Government; well, I thought, some hope here perhaps. An Insider, maybe they can work the system and get some benefits? Alas, no. The Government seems to have their employees between a rock and a hard place. You see, you can't really turn down a Government job, it's not the done thing and this difficult position means that the Government can get away with paying them very little and no one really complains. It doesn't come as a huge surprise that the lot of the Vietnamese, then, is not necessarily a joyous one; this was corroborated by other local people we spoke to in other towns, but I'll come to their stories in future posts.

Whilst much of this was going on I, as ever, was messing about with my camera and decided to try to lure the woman's son into a photo or two. After a while she noticed this and asked to see the photos, she looked very pleased by this, even a little overwhelmed, perhaps. "My son," she said. I suspected that she didn't have too many photos of the young scamp knocking around the place so I said that, if she had an e-mail address, I'd be more than willing to send her them once I got home. Happily, she did, and she seemed pleased to receive them.

From her son to My Son.

This temple complex is the largest and most complete in Vietnam but is not actually all that large and can be given a pretty thorough inspection in an hour or so. There are approximately 30 structures still intact of which about two thirds are still in good condition. There used to be more than double this amount but time, nature and war has taken it's toll. My son was established by the Cham people in the 4th century and was still in use and occupied right up until the 13th century, a remarkable achievement. Unusually, the culture here is not contemporaneous to the nearby Khmer civilisation but the more distant Hindu peoples of Java; although the architecture is similar to that found in Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Building 7 from Group C, try to ignore Sue and Eleanor taking shelter in the shade

This masterpiece of the Champa Kingdom was eventually abandoned as the Cham people moved south to avoid an increasing Chinese presence from the north. Over the centuries it was completely swallowed by the jungle, this made it useful as a base of operation for the Viet Cong during what they call the American Aggressive War. For several years this was deemed a Free Fire Zone, which basically means that if a leaf fluttered suspiciously then the American response was to bomb the place back to the Stone Age. This policy was only changed when a French archaeologist wrote to President Nixon explaining the damage they were doing to this important monument.

Buildings 1, 3 & 4 from B Group

Dedicated to Shiva, it was a complete mystery for many years how it was these shrines were all held together, there being no sign of any mortar holding the bricks together. It is now thought that they built up the bricks and used some sort of resin derived from local plant life between the bricks. They would then essentially bury the entire structure in wood and soil and set light to the whole shebang effectively creating a huge kiln and firing the entire building at once. They would then dig out the finished shrine, decorate it and add in the statues.

Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, the complex is starting to get the protection it needs. My Son is one of the most popular tourist destinations in this region of Vietnam and is often swamped by coach loads of people. We wanted to avoid this and so made our own way there as the sun was rising; even so the temperature was dauntingly high already. Our early start meant that we had the ruins to ourselves, the only people we saw there were a team of archaeologists working on the Group G structures and a team of gardeners that have to fight a constant battle to hold back the jungle from taking the ruins hostage once more.

Buildings 3 & 4 from Group B

If you ever plan to go to My Son then don't expect Angkor Wat, they're not comparable; but if you make the effort to have some time there away from the crowds then you can look forward to getting a taste of a long gone but once rich, widespread and little known civilisation.

The Sky at Night

Briefly Vietnam's tallest building, the 79 floors of the Bitexco Financial Tower stand at 269 metres high and dominate the skyline of Ho Chi Minh City. On the 55th floor, just below the helipad, there is a viewing deck with 360 views of the city. Based on the national flower of Vietnam, the lotus flower, the ideal time to go up is just as the sun is setting, that's what we did. The following photos are all 2 or 3 separate ones that have been blended together. They're far from perfect, however, there are rogue window frames and reflections all over the shop. I quite like them, though.

Vietnam

Vietnam, then. It's quite a country. The first country I've gone too in Asia and, based on my experiences there, hopefully not the last. We started by arriving in the capital, Hanoi, in the north of the country; a frenetic, hustle and bustle type of place where crossing the road is a genuinely exciting endeavour. The older part of the city is full of narrow, twisting streets where if a bar runs out of room to seat it's guests it simply starts putting them out in the road, even if that means restricting flow to one lane - not that vehicles stick to any given lane.

One of Hanoi's more open and less busy streets

From Hanoi we moved on to Ha Long Bay, a place I had wanted to visit for many years. Sadly it was cloudy nearly the whole time we were there but I still enjoyed seeing this most unusual of seascapes. Vast outcrops of limestone soar out of the sea in a seemingly random manner; carpeted in trees and without any apparent flat areas they take on an ethereal aspect, especially in the early morning haze.

From Ha Long bay we moved on to Hue (pronounced Hway, possibly. See below) which is famed for it's Imperial City. Formerly a capital of it's country, I'm afraid to say that by the time we got this far I had all but given up on trying to learn Vietnamese. I normally pride myself on learning, at the very least, how to say hello, goodbye, please and thank you in any given language but, like many oriental languages, Vietnamese is tonal. This means that even if you figure out how the word should be pronounced, which is hard enough, the tone in which you say it can completely change it's meaning. For example, the word ba, I had looked it up as it is the word for Mrs/Madam. Can't be too complicated, can it? Two letters, and both of them pronounced how you might expect. However, each vowel in Vietnamese can be said with up to 6 different tones; mid-level, low falling, high rising, and so on. Each of these tones confers a different meaning to the word. Ba, then, depending on what tone you say it in can indeed mean Mrs, or it can mean three, grandmother, aunt, any, waste or poisoned food. Interact at your peril. Most people looked at me with a puzzled look, some with amusement and some mercifully came to my rescue with vastly superior English. I found Arabic easier than this; Vietnamese totally defeated me.

Statue and pagoda in Hue's Imperial City

Hue gave way to Hoi An, probably the most traditionally picturesque town we stayed in. Hoi An is renowned for it's tailoring industry; every third or fourth shop is a tailors and their rates are invariably very good. Walk into their shop and they will offer you a range of everyday western catalogues like the Next Directory, all you have to do is pick out what you want and they will make it to measure; in less than 24 hours. My wife got shirts, skirts and a jacket for about seventy pounds. Bargain. Furthermore, they'll hold onto your details for you so, so long as you don't change shape too much, you can e-mail in an order at a later date and have them ship it over to you; all of which is far cheaper than the high street.

They were quite keen on lanterns in Hoi An

Based out of Hoi An we went on a trip to the My Son temple complex. Closely related to the larger and more well known complex of Ankor Wat in Cambodia, the My Son site was constantly occupied for 1,000 years. It was also home to a Viet Cong base during the war and therefore had holy hell pounded out of it by American B-52s; it is also recommended that you do not stray from the footpaths as the area is not yet fully cleared of land mines. Despite this, there is still lots left to inspire the imagination, as I suspect the designers of the Uncharted series may know.

An overnight train and a long bus ride brought us to our first stop in the south of the country, Da Lat. At 2,000m above sea level it had a very different feel to the rest of the country and the temperatures were mercifully lower.

The view en route to the Elephant waterfalls

Another hop skip and a jump brought us to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon but renamed in honour of their revolutionary leader. Ho Chi Minh City is actually larger than the capital, Hanoi, and, as it was mostly held by the Americans during the war, is generally more intact.

The moped - the workhorse of Vietnam

From there it is easy enough to go on an extended trip into the Mekong river delta. Here, the Mekong river sprawls out into a huge fan shape criss-crossing hundreds of miles with meandering water ways. Known as the rice bowl of Vietnam, it is the harnessing of this region that changed the country from a net importer of rice to the world's 4th largest exporter in just ten years.

Sue took this photo of the delta. It goes on like this for quite a long time.

This is just a taster of what I saw over the trip and I intend to write more detailed posts about each of these places and to tell the stories of some of the people I met over the coming months. I would just like to say thank you to all the people that helped make it run so smoothly and, of course, my travelling companions Sue and Eleanor for making it such a great trip.