Ho Chi Minh City

I have arrived. The train pulls into the station a little late, at about twenty minutes past six. I have been photographing the sunrise with Misha, a Korean sculptor and poet. It stops, I rush to get my bags off, feeling just as dazed as one does after 36 hours on board. Its almost a cliche to say that I didn't feel any of the cliches when my foot touched the platform. Everyone else was just glad to get to Ho Chi Minh, to go home and see their families, find a taxi, find a place to stay, start working, start selling, just get on with life. I'd just finished three months of travelling, covering over 11,000 miles. I felt as though I should be jumping around, planting a flag, kissing the ground. Instead I took a photo of the train and then followed everyone through the doors into the station, my ticket flashed for inspection.

After that I felt a little drained, as though not jumping up and down was in fact more tiring. I sat down and tried to record some of my thoughts but in my deflated state I was worried they wouldn't be positive enough. I'd started this trip positively, determined to end the same way but right now I couldn't conjure up much in the way of joy. I wasn't disappointed in people though, really I was more disappointed in myself: rueing mistakes made, interviews missed, rip-offs purchased. People had in many cases surpassed expectations considerably and without the many acts of generosity and kindness, on the rails and off them, I might well not be slumped here on my rucksack. Some of these people were suffering as the result of the actions of their fellow man and on a more trivial scale I was still smarting from some of the 'good' deals I still seem to manage to pick up along the way. Also a recurring theme, that cropped up all along the trip, was concern about the harm we're doing to the world around us. Mild winters then spring blizzards in St Petersburg, unseasonal warmth in Krasnoyarsk and at Lake Baikal, dying grasslands in Mongolia, China smothered in smog, the Halong Bay. Everywhere strange weather and pollution were talking points, though in most places Nature is still considered something to survive rather than something to save.

The important thing, away from the bigger issues, which I tried not to dwell on in conversations, is that there were many, many people who were keen to talk to someone else on the train. Some stared at me with stony faces, faces I never thought could crack into smiles and if I hadn't been doing this programme I'm not sure I'd have made eye contact, let alone talked with them. But a few words later and things changed, faces were injected with warmth, stones cracked open into smiles. Obviously I sometimes had to look hard for people to talk to, a problem compounded by a few fairly high language hurdles, but I think on reflection it was surprising how often that wasn't necessary. Frequently I'd start to talking to the person next to me and though they'd initially protest that they had no stories no interest, something fascinating, often something they were passionate about usually came to the fore sooner or later. There's a danger that now I'll just stay quiet on trains now, having shredded me nerves building up the courage to ask the hundredth person whether they speak any English, but I think, whether the program gets made or not, I've gained so much from these stories that it would be silly to stop looking for them now.

Hanoi - Saigon

After a quick trip to pay my respects to Respected Uncle Ho at his Mausoleum I head to the train station on the back of a moped. With a large rucksack and two people, driving through the crowded streets is something of a lottery, a Deer Hunter roulette with every crossroads another spin. The helmet doesn't have a strap, so one hand has to be used to hold this on. The other to hold the bag or for taking photos and the third for holding onto the moped. You may have spotted the flaw in these safety proceedures.

On the train my carriage is full of group of German travellers who are having an incredibly merry time in the corridor, offering swigs of various international alcohols to every train employee that tries to squeeze past, offers often accepted. Eventually the party adjourns to one of the cabins, with younger members of the party on the top bunks and older ones on the bottom. Cheese and biscuits are brought out and celebrations continue. Mr Hung, who I met earlier on the platform with his young son, comes to the cabin to find me, but is a little taken aback by the revelry. We head up to his carriage instead. Here the dinner ladies, with their carts full of all manner of fare, mysterious, sometimes in a way that piques the curiosuity and sometimes in a way that makes me want it to remain a mystery indefinitely. I have some egg rolls and rice.

The views as we traverse through the Hai Van Pass, meaning Sea Cloud, are spectaular. Between Danang and Hue you have on one side a gorgeous turquoise and on the other a deep, lush green. The train climbs the winding pass through the mountains slowly, while I am playing Chinese chess in the cabin of Mr Ngyuen, assisted by the 92 year old Mr Le, who speaks French. His daughter and grand-daughter are there too, but they don't play. After a couple of games I go to take some pictures. As we descend, following the line of the shore past large tidal fishing nets suspended from four poles, we often have to slow almost to a stop to cross fragile bridges. Here people jump up and grab onto the train, hitching a lift until the the next town, where the leap off again.

Chinese chess is a little like normal chess, except there is a river in the middle of the board and you move along lines instead of in the squares. The game is immensely popular in Vietnam and always draws a crowd, a crowd who will often dispense much advice, all of which sounds extremely sage and wisdomful. However just because the person nodding slowly while giving the advice looks like the old master from the last Chinese film I saw doesn't mean he's the best player.

Before I go to bed a woman requests that I marry her daughter. This doesn't happen very often but its wise to have practiced the art of politely declining in case the situation ever arises. When I get back to the cabin a tiny mouse politely declines my request that it leave. Tomorrow morning both he and I will be in Saigon.

Halong Bay

I guess traveling is a bit like fishing. To catch the best experiences you have to be prepared to wait. They’re not just going to jump into your boat, or onto the bank of the river. Which means you have to put your rod out there, choose the right bait, bring an umbrella in case it rains and a jam sandwich or two for when you get hungry. Tourism can be like a seafood restaurant, with all the possibilities on a menu. The problem is you want to try them all, you feel bad when you miss one thing and then or you’ve eaten so much you end up feeling sick. Or the restaurant is so popular its become like a school canteen. Halong Bay: the tourism equivalent of a nightmarish school canteen. I’ve wanted to go there ever since I was last in Vietnam. I arrived in Hanoi early in the morning, got my Vietnamese Dong on the black market and then mixed up the exchange rate when paying for a Chinese chess set. Took a moped through town, rucksack and all to a nice little hostel and here, looking at beautiful pictures of the white islands of Halong I thought I would arrange a trip there. In fact I had wanted to head onwards towards Ho Chi Minh as soon as possible but I had arrived on the day before Liberation Day, the anniversary of the Vietnamese driving the Americans out of Saigon. Because this year it falls on a Thursday, with International Labour Day (May 1) the day afterwards and then a weekend after that it is effectively a four day holiday and many were taking the chance to go and see family, something they would normally do during the Tet holiday earlier in the year. The upshot of this is that there are no tickets at all on the trains traveling South for the next three days. So, in the hostel, looking at pictures of red sunsets and red sails only a few hours drive away I thought I would be mad to miss it.

Mad, indeed. Halong Bay City, in the morning. Our guide goes off to find us passes for being inside the national park. Admirable though it is to have set up a system for controlling the entry of tourists into an area of outstanding natural beauty, I begin to question whether the motives were entirely motivated by a love of nature as I make my way down the jetty. 600 tourist junks operate out of this harbour, 300 are large junks with sleeping quarters for up to 60 people. The smog is worse than the centre of Hanoi in rush hour, the engines on these hulking beasts have one smoky finger stuck up permanently at the atmosphere. These junks then process between the small number of spots permitted for tourist use by the Vietnamese government, another piece of legislation that might be admirable, were it for the greed that led these few spots to be populated daily the huge numbers from this filthy flottilla. We narrowly escape the parking crush by the Marvellous Cave. Is this as bad as it gets? I ask our guide. This is the low season, he replies with a smile forced on top of ruefulness. He knows its wrong but knows he has to smile to get the money he needs. We stop for the night and jump off the boat. On my last jump I unfortunately land on a jelly fish. Luckily for me its a direct hit, right on the dome, feet first and I don't get very badly stung.

At night we catch cuttlefish by the light of a powerful lamp. This is not really very traditional fishing either. I accidentally hook a jellyfish, probably not the one I landed on earlier. In the main dining room the crew are drinking some sort of firewater and eating sour apples. "We don't usually drink this much, but as your here..." Is probably what they're saying in Vietnamese. What they are definitely saying is "tram phan tram" which means "100%", meaning you're expected to drain your glass and also "Chuc suc khoe" which is "to your health". There is never any irony in the latter, even as I hear my liver drawing up a complaint to lodge with my health in the near future.

In the morning I wake up to see sunrise but its a dull grey. I go swimming again, try to get away from all the boats. I reach a large island with the tide rushing through an arch at its base. Some men are fishing here. I start to head back. A woman in a rowing boat, one of the floating stores that ply the junks with a wide range of over priced goods, comes round one of the small islands. She offers to tow me back, saying that the guide is worried about me. I say I'll be fine. I realise that the bubbles my strokes make are topped by the rainbow film of oil, I must have a good shower when I get back. On the way home the school canteen analogy really hits home. Actually, its more like the waste bucket at the school canteen on a day when the the dinner ladies decide to do something experimental with the left-overs and diesel. What it is not like is fishing.