'Turn and face the strange...'

Anybody who has seen even a trifling modicum of American film or television from the last 20 years will have encountered the now cliched character known only loosely as the 'embittered and mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran.'

This man tends to have permanent stubble and a voice that could be created only with the willing help of tobacco. He will have an irrational fear of ceiling fans, and yet spend most of his time lying on dirty mattresses, staring maniacally at them. His list of stock phrases will include 'You weren't there, man! You don't know!', 'I think, on balance, we had the moral victory.' and 'Actually honey, I'm gonna give Apocalypse Now a miss...Glee is on.' and his best friend in the whole wide world is a man named Jim Beam (because Jim doesn't judge him). Finally, this gentleman will only speak in a non-aggressive tone to other veterans of the second Indo-China war.

Well, I'm delighted to say that James, Tim and I would get on with this man like a house on fire. The reason? We've done it. Been to Vietnam, and survived. Pettifoggers amongst you may argue that 10 days backpacking up the country with a healthy budget and the seductive warmth of travel insurance does not compare in any way to a decade of guerrilla warfare - but they're actually remarkably similar. We made friends, made enemies, spent too much money and got headaches; so throw in some casual slaughter and chemical bombing of civilians and you have yourselves a like for like. Essentially, we know. We were there.

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The last time I wrote was upon arrival to Ho Chi Minh City, and there was to be our home for four days. Besides Bangkok, the city is perhaps the most Westernized on this whole oriental peninsula, as Adidas stores and Pizza Huts litter the streets like unwelcome gypsies with warrants for stay. I cannot criticise too heavily, however, as we did enter both of these establishments and enjoy their products with a sad sense of nostalgia. It must be said, though, that our main motive for having a Pizza Hut was to see if Jan (the haggard mutton-looking head waitress from their Basingstoke branch) would have a Vietnamese counterpart. She does not.

Formerly known as Saigon and later named after the 20th century president, Ho Chi Minh (a man who lives up to his name's first syllable by being used for absolutely everything out here), the most startling thing about the metropolis is its mopeds. They're everywhere. By night, every red light sees before it a gathering of perhaps 150 two-wheeled beasts, like the start of a lazy marathon, or the assembling of a paraplegic army (not that I can envisage any diplomatic crisis where such an army would be called upon). The mopeds make crossing the road as a pedestrian a subtle art, and one which we cannot wait to put into practice in London.

The city's most popular attraction is its 'War Remnants Museum', a collection of artifacts (including tanks, torture cages and helicopters) from the 70s conflict. By far the most vexing and horrific exhibits were the vast number of photographs capturing the napalm, phosphorous and Agent Orange victims both immediately and years after the attacks. Even worse is seeing them in person, begging at the city's market; their skull-like faces devoid of skin, muscle and expression; each and every one a singular piece of evidence for the pointlessness and hypocrisy of that war. In fact, the whole experience is one which evokes a mass dislike for the United States. Walking around the museum as Republican American must be one powerful yet slow erosion of that national pride and arrogance that they seem so keen to thrust at the rest of the world. What's more, marry the whole chemical bombing malarky to the fact that they had the audacity to attempt remaking the Pink Panther films, spawned Miley Cyrus and think it appropriate to sit the wrong way round on a chair - well those chaps have a lot to answer for. A lot to answer for.

Very little of note occurred in Saigon, in fact so little that the next paragraph is about a Cornish Pasty. I shall now give you a moment to scroll down past it.

Those of you who know him will be aware that James Brewin has a certain pride in his ability to eat a lot, to consume amounts of food that would make a dinner guest with a regular appetite say 'gosh, James, you eat slightly larger portions than I would expect.' Well, ladies and gentlemen, that reputation has gone. Finished, to never return. This fall from grace occurred in an Vietnamese Irish Pub (a niche if ever there was one), not two weeks ago. Faced with the challenge of 'Cornish Pasty, chips and veg' (simple, surely?), James managed merely three whole mouthfuls. Tim and I, bewildered but still able to finish our meals with consummate ease, soon became aware that we were watching the most patently unadulterated case of a great reputation turning to mush since Alan Titchmarsh sold his soul to ITV1. James will blame illness, fatigue and my own uncontrollable narrative exaggeration , but the truth is that - to quote Top Gun (something I try and do at least once a day) - his ego was writing cheques his body simply couldn't cash. Incredible, and please feel free to deride and mock him upon your next contact.

Now give yourselves a moment to let that sink in.

Our method of transport in Vietnam, as is the norm for travelers, was the mysterious 'sleeper bus'. Envisaging a Harry Potter-style double-decker creation with palatial King Size bed, four poster slumber havens and a peaceful night's transit; imagine my staggering disappointment when it turned out to be an over sized hearse designed purely to drive its passengers to insanity, insomnia and the beach resort of Nha Trang.

According to these people, a 'bed' was a four-foot leather board, with a third of that length being taken up by a ludicrously capacious foot-well. The best description I can come up with is this: imagine lying on a stretcher designed for a toddler, about to enter an MRI scan. You begin to move for a second or two into the tube, before a powercut halts all progress. Then you are asked to sleep.

What's more, once contorting your body and dislocating several major joints to fit in bed, the bus driver will do his utmost to ensure sleep is a distant pipe dream. He will do this in a number of ways. Firstly, in Vietnam it seems mandatory to make sure other drivers know you are there not by headlights or the position of your vehicle or just by being an enormous bus, but instead by holding one's hand on the horn until your journey is completed. In our case, 14 hours later. Secondly, whenever the driver or his assistant dropped anything, or needed a to see a map or felt their passengers had built up a resistance to the horn trick - they would turn on every single light on the bus at once, with police-interrogation style surprise. Still not drifting off yet? Well on top of that he will drive with all the care and manners of Nick Griffin guiding a tank through Leicester. The extent of the bumps led us to create the game 'Pothole or Child?', which caused genuine debate on a number of occasions.

We'd spent 7 years with Mr. Leyshon's Friday morning services and seen the England Scotland game the week before, so it wasn't the toughest psychological test of our lives - but it ranks.

Dropping into Nha Trang was welcome relief from the bus, so we spent the day getting obscenely sunburnt - mainly in Brewin's case. Brewin, who is thus far bumbling his way through Asia with all the grace and panache of Barney the Dinosaur on an LSD trip, turned entirely one colour for around a week after thinking it a terrific idea to use Baby Oil for sunscreen whilst spending a day on the beach. Tim also used the oil, but being 80% werewolf, he was fine. That ethnicity is all well and good now, but he wasn't laughing come the full moon, no sir.

Anyway after a night in Nha Trang we gathered no moss by scything up the coast to Hoi An, a World Heritage town half way up the country. We've seen a lot of World Heritage things on our trip - and Hoi An is nice, but in reality, if Winchfield isn't granted that status within a year then I'll eat my hat. And out here, I'm wearing enormously inedible hats.

Hoi An, though, is renowned for its tailoring - and rightly so. The streets are lined with shops which could make you any garment in any material, all bespoke, for a fraction of the European price. The temptation was massive, but Tim and I were admirable in resisting the charms of a pink three piece, or tweed bikini. You'll notice I did not mention Brewin - for he has revealed himself to be the most easily persuadable human since Eve (of Adam and - fame, in Genesis. No, not the Phil Collins band, the Biblical myth. Ok?). Having bought a shirt that even Holden wouldn't wear to a fancy dress party, James decided to buy a pair of custom-made canvas shoes, which was a slightly less intelligent investment than throwing his money in the beautiful river that runs through Hoi An. The finished product looked like ugly bowling shoes that've had a 3 year old throw up on them after over-indulging at the Pic N' Mix, but he loves them.

Next, whilst waiting for a bus in Hoi An, we witnessed the single greatest thing that traveling has managed to serve up to date.

For years, caterpillars in Hoi An have been stuck. Unable to break free from the shackles of the leafy verge provided by one side of this particular road, and longing for one of their kind to stand up and fight. That hero came in the form of Ranulph, a quite fat and odd looking caterpillar found one morning on a side-street. Ranulph was sick of the way his people were stuck in this rut of entrapment. Caged by their location, attacked by society and sparrows - caterpillars had it tough. What's more, non-caterpillars saw them as merely ugly preludes to butterflies; or worse - they compared them to the one caterpillar that made it into mainstream literature, Ian, whose eating disorder was ridiculed and simplified to portray him as simply 'very hungry'.

Ranulph had a dream. He had seen the promised land, where caterpillars could go either side of the road and be judged not on the content of their stomach but by the content of their character. He was going to this land, he had seen the greenery on the other side of the street and he said 'who's with me?'. Their answer? 'I'm alright over here, Ranulph, but you go ahead mate.' Not put off by their lack of adventure and presence of common sense, Ranulph embarked on a dramatic 8 minute march across the road. Timing it to perfection to dodge mopeds, lorries and blue tits, Ranulph made the distance and rejoiced in his findings. Six small steps for man, and around 140 awkward contortions for Ranulph. It was like Sir Walter Raleigh and Martin Luther King rolled into one, the greatest single act of courage since Ricky 'she bangs' Martin came out.

In truth, Ranulph has inspired us all to get on with our lives - to not be boxed in by our reputation and what people 'say' we can or cannot do. Essentially, he taught us to not stop believing, to hold out for a hero, to do something today to make us feel proud, to heel the world, to know that it's my life, it's now or never, to imagine all the people living for today, to recognize that we're the world's greatest, that we are never going give you up, never going to let you down, that everybody hurts and to dream the impossible dream. Thank you, Ranulph. Thank you.

After Hoi An was Hue, where we stopped for an hour or two to meet with Jamie and Holden. This was the beginning of a two week period of being 'Five'. I don't mean we spent a fortnight as the popular performers of 'Keep on Moving' and numerous other late nineties smash hits - but rather that we gained two people in our merry troupe. Having them back in the gang was a real delight, especially when Jamie immediately perks up with 'Guy, when was Sherlock Holmes alive?'. We had missed that.

With them, we powered on to Hanoi - the country's capital and an enormously compact and inconsistently developed city. When choosing a hotel I remembered what I'd read back home about John McCain's experiences at the Hilton. Frankly he should not have had such high expectations of a US hotel brand abroad, and kept his grievances to himself rather than basing a political career upon that 'injustice'. Whenever he was here he should have headed to 'Lollipub', for $4 a night they did all you'd expect and had the best name in all of Asia.

The main night out in Hanoi was centered around the Six Nations, which was surprisingly easy to find all over Asia. Again, an Irish pub was the venue as we embarked on six hours of pure, filthy, non-censored and hardcore rugby union. Drinking our way through the Wales game while Tim shouted 'araf!' 'Tom Jones!' 'leeks!' and other preposterous Welsh words at the television, we eventually made it to the England game...and the pub shut. It turned out that all pubs and bars close at 11pm in Hanoi, and thus finding a lock in was the only possible way. This was most irksome, so wandering the streets seemed the only way of finding such a place. And we found one, but not before losing Brewin, losing the pub, finding some Danish girls, taking them home, getting threatened by a taxi driver and a local with a bottle/brick, and finally getting locked out of our hotel room. A busy night, and topped off only by the ineptitude of Danny Care.

Hanoi is an interesting place, and not a massively nice one. It's for this reason that we decided to book a tour to Halong Bay (another bloody World Heritage site), where we'd experience a beautiful bay of oddly formed rocks, clear seas and enormous caves whilst staying the night on a Vietnamese 'junk' ('boat'). Except, we did not. The weather was atrociously foggy, the tour expensive and itinerary hugely exaggerated. What is more, the cruise involved another hilariously inept tour guide. We have no idea of the man's name, but we immediately called him Jack (to his confusion), owing to his ludicrous comb-over. It later turns out that it was Bobby Charlton, and not Jack, who had the famous comb-over. The name still sticks.

Jack, who was described as 'English speaking' but must have been fluent in cockney-rhyming slang or Cornish to earn such an ill-placed moniker, guided us through the caves of a mountain telling us not how they were made, or any particular facts or statistics, but stopping and pointing at any particular rocks that looked (to him) like a crocodile, Buddha, some cauliflower or, in one memorable case, like a man's penis. Thirty two dollars for a pervert with a laser.

As for our 'junk', well the food was portioned to be roughly enough for a shrew with a fever, but otherwise nice enough. Leaping from the sides of the junk into the bay was a highlight, as was spending the night sitting atop the boat, drinking, and listening to Bob Dylan. That made me think that without the Vietnam war, Dylan would have written about flowers and Marmite and rubbish stuff like that. So maybe it was worth it?

Alright it was not.

Come the morning, however, when the 'cruise' was set to end, the driver decided to delve into a lovely bit of blackmail - which was nice, as we'd not suffered that for at least a week. Upon leaving the boat, he demanded 5000 dong -

Which reminds me - the currency is called 'dong'. This led to much hilarity, as we could say 'Tim put your dong away', 'Brewin, just give the lady some dong and she'll be happy' and 'Guy, your dong just came out of your trouser leg! So did your money.' Brilliant, cutting edge humour there.

Anyway the driver demanded 5000 dong per can of whatever beer we drank, no matter if we bought it from the shore, Hanoi, Bangkok or Newbury, or we would not get our passports back. After arguing for perhaps 12 minutes, we saw our passports as more important than our pride (just), and left the boat feeling bitter and slightly racist.

That fiscal rape, I am afraid, is an overriding feeling from Vietnam. They want your money, and will charge wherever they can, for whatever they want. In addition, there's a terrible North/South divide here. In the South, the people are less likely to steal your money, are nicer with better manners, speak a little clearer and aren't as dirty. In the North, the people seem less welcoming and keep a keener eye on your wallet, they like to fight and lack a little in courtesy. *You may choose your own punchline to this lazy set up: (01) FOR 'Which reminded us a lot of England.' (02) FOR 'I guess Vietnam is alone in this... NOT!' OR (03) FOR 'My mate drowned in a bowl of muesli the other day, it's thought that a strong currant pulled him in.'

And that, ladies and gentleman, concludes Vietnam. We did it mighty fast, but saw an awful lot. A list of 'only in Vietnam' is easily created after the oddities of the nation. Only in Vietnam could a baby be riding on the back of a motorbike holding a gun. Only in Vietnam could a travel booking shop be so alarmed by customers that its staff have to wake up, dust themselves off, flip up a laptop to pretend they were working, have a shop covered in different ladies' shoes and then offer only a train ticket to one small town in the North. Only in Vietnam could a man use a circular saw on an iron girder in the middle of a busy street, and only in Vietnam could nine beers cost £1.24.

In a lot of respects the country is tremendous. It has it all in terms of mountains, beaches, shops, restaurants and travelers - but lacks Cambodia's naivety and Thailand's services. Vietnam is incredibly aware of its own beauty and potential for development on the grounds of tourism, resulting in it trying too hard to make money from the West, missing out on the chance to charm tourists with its people. It all just made me think, 'jeez, what's the West ever done to you?!'.

Oh, oh well fair enough then.

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I can't refrain from tendering a massive apology for the tardiness of this second blog (we are now in Chiang Mai and six days from Australia), but solemnly swear that the next - a roundup of Laos and Thailand - will be posted before we touch down in Sydney. I also understand that is was a long old read, so must ask - why did you waste that time? Take heed of Ranulph's example and get off that computer. 'Cross the road'.

Once more, love to all back home and please keep us posted with your news - but only the interesting bits as we probably won't read what you have to say if it isn't written in colourful capital letters, and concerns exciting things like guns, girls and car chases and cool stuff like that. We continue to miss you in those varied amounts I spoke of last time, however some people have even had a namecheck of late. So count yourselves lucky Georgie Maughan, Graham Smith, Isabelle Manley-Cooper, Fuller's London Pride, Ed Butler, Lizo Mzimba and 'being cold'.

Until next time, big love to all.

The Englishman.x