The Ha Long Bay circus starts long before boarding the boat, or even setting off for Ha Long city itself. Our plans to travel independently to Cat Ba island and visit the bay from there were scuppered by the week-long reunification day holiday and thousands of vacationing Vietnamese. In the words of one emailed guesthouse proprietor: “Don’t come this week, the room too expensive!”. So after a quick change of plans, we pressed on to Hanoi and started scouring travel agents.

The best travel advice seem to often times come from words of mouth from other travellers rather than from a guidebook. Hence, when my friend Fanny said to me that we HAD TO go to Phong Nha, I trusted that we did indeed have to go, and the seemingly extravagant expenses (that is, in comparison to our $45 USD a day budget) attached to the trip were overweighted by the appeal of walking through some of the biggest and most recently discovered caves in the world. And so we hopped on the train from Danang heading to Đồng Hới, and I’d say that the train ride alone made the journey worthwhile. The scenery between Danang and Huế is straight out of a game is Myst and I was a little sad that we were not able to stop and explore all these beautiful rural coastal areas along the Hải Vân Pass.

Dalat. What to say. I am unsure as to why we added Dalat to our itinerary in the first place and I can’t quite decide in retrospect if I’m glad we did or not. People we meet seemed to have either adored Dalat or to have been left completely indifferent. I leave you to guess at which end of the spectrum we stand.

Mui Ne was something of an enigma on our arrival – we rolled into town after dark, having taken the afternoon bus from Saigon. The ever excellent Futa bus staff dropped us right at the Duc Thao Guest House – the good reviews on TripAdvisor were promising, and when Duc himself had swiftly answered our emails the previous day, we knew it would be a good bet. The family welcomed us into a spacious, clean double room and Mui Ne would have to wait until morning.

We left Phnom Penh by boat, at once heart broken to say goodbye to such an amazing country and relieved not to have to sit through another karaoke infused Cambodian bus ride. A few hours into our journey along the Mekong, everything became suddenly vividly green and people in pointy hats started popping up amidst the lush background. We had arrived in Vietnam.