Sat 2nd-Weds 6th Nov - Hoi An, the town

When I first got to Vietnam, I thought Hoi An was some reverse slang for Hanoi. It's not, it's a delightful old coastal/river town about halfway down the coast. To confuse the nomenclature more though, the south bank of Hoi An,where a lot of the bars are located is called An Hoi.

This is the typical Vietnamese sleeper bus. I got it for the three hour journey from Hue to Hoi An. Ironically they're fine in the daytime, but very difficult to sleep in at night.

If you get the back row, make sure you're with someone you don't mind sleeping next to..

Hoi An is a rare town in Vietnam. One of the few to survive both the French and the American wars. It's heyday was as a C17th Japanese trading port, and a lot of the surviving architecture was funded by those overseas merchants. It's a charming place, most of the buildings in the old town are now tailors, or restaurant bars.

There's some lovely old trader's houses in Hoi An. This is one of them.

The Japanese dragon bridge in Hoi An.

Typical shopping street in Hoi An

Bailing.

A short cycle ride to the beach was just what I needed after a big night on the tiles.

This was the best breakfast I had in Vietnam, at the Cargo Cafe, it cost something like £3.

As news of a serious impending typhoon started to filter around south-east Asia, we looked at any heavy rainfall as the beginning of something worse. We had a lot of torrential rain, but nothing apocalyptic. Haiyan wouldn't reach Vietnam until long after I'd left.