Sorry about the lengthy radio silence (I like to maintain the illusion that anyone might mind, or indeed notice) - internet connectivity has been a bit hit and miss. When Mike left off we were about to head into Sa Pa, the district capital of the highland region we''d been staying in. Sa Pa is a funny sort of place - it's usually characterised as a quiet and characterful mountain town, but after the remoteness of the Eco Lodge it felt like a bustling metropolis brimming with tourists. About 85% of the inhabitants are from ethnic minorities and their health is apparently often poor, partly because of food shortages (due to the climatic conditions in the mountains, only one crop of rice can be grown here a year), and partly because the town is typically wreathed in mist, which lends it an ethereal atmosphere but aggravates respiratory conditions. The streets are lined with rickety building sites and Black H'mong women - dressed from head to toe in black and deep indigo, their sleeves, collars and sashes highlighted with vivid embroidery -  peddling silver earrings and embroidered textiles but in a rather desultry way, as though resigned to the low likelihood of anyone actually buying something. Supposedly many also sell matchboxes stuffed with opium, but we weren't offered any - I can only assume we looked too square and/or down at heel.

Not being all that taken with Sa Pa (can you tell?), we sought refuge in a café which doubles up as a training school for young people from disadvantaed hill tribe backgrounds, giving them a grounding in the hospitality industry and exposure to foreign languages. This applaudable set-up handily means that you can enjoy a virtuous glow along with your hot chocolate. Once dusk had set in it was back to the sleeper train, which got us into Hanoi at the decidedly unwelcome time of 4:35 am. Clearly a fortifying coffee was needed, and luckily Vienamese coffee is superlative stuff.

I appreciate that this looks indistinguishable from an ordinary coffee, but it's an ambrosial mix of very strong coffee and - wait for it - condensed milk. Apparently condensed milk was originally used here as it lent itself much better to storage in tropical conditions than fresh milk, and Vietnamese palates are now firmly loyal to the taste. Despite being someone who considers adding sugar to coffee to be a cardinal sin in the normal course of things, I can only hail the combination as a work of genius. We've been told that coffee with a zabaglione-like egg froth and coffee with yoghurt are also popular in North Vietnam, which both sound intriguing, but sadly I''ve yet to see either for sale.

Freshly sugared and caffeinated, we set off for our next destination: Phong Nha in North Central Vietnam. As some of you might already know, Mike planned this entire trip by himself, and while this has been fantastic in many regards, it's also had a couple of slight downsides. Like, just to take an entirely random example, the fact that he decided the best way to get from Hanoi to Phong Nha was to fly to Hue and then take a four hour car journey back in the direction we''d just come from - rather than, say, to fly into the airport half an hour from Phong Nha. Still, he'd taken great care over our accommodation, plumping for the top Trip Advisor pick, which was inside a national park and only a stone's throw away from the spectacular Phong Nha cave. The accommodation billed itself as "French Colonial-style" and set against a "spectacular mountain backdrop". Possibly I have a deeply unpoetic soul, but I'd have described it as "a backpacker hostel in a muddy field". (I'm still waiting for the phone call commissioning me to write promotional literature for the tourist industry.) And just to crown the day, it turned out that the caves were closed due to high water.

The owners were lovely though, and incredibly helpful - they lent us a couple of bikes and suggested that we cycle to the caves and check whether they'd reopened. My bike, it swiftly transpired, had no functioning gears. There are no doubt  places in the word where gears aren't really necessary - Holland, perhaps - but the rugged, karst-covered terrain of the national park wasn't one of them. Despite the cave supposedly being only 7km away, we somehow managed to get impressively lost, and strayed into some villages where Western tourists were fascinating curiosities - scores of primary-aged children lined up to excitedly chant "good morning! Good morning!" or "hello!" at us as we passed. For some reason I kept finding myself replying in an unnatural, eerily-cheery sing-song voice that bore no resemblance to a native- English speaker's, and had to make a conscious effort to sound more vaguely human. One little girl enthusiastically high-fived us as we rode past her, which when you're as hapless a cyclist as I am puts you in mild peril, but was a sweet welcome nonetheless. We did eventually find the cave, but (much to the mystification of the locals) ended up on the opposite side of the river to the cave mouth, and so couldn't actually get in.

Feeling we'd now exhausted the local attractions, we hastily changed our itinerary and headed back to Hue, the imperial capital. This marked our first daytime trip on a train, and we were quite struck by the contrast between the seats - all of which were broken, although in an impressively varied range of ways - and the state-of-the-art flat-screen televisions in each carriage, which provided a steady output of violent/mildly pornographic films interspersed with Vietnamese ballads, all at top volume. Mike dogedly attempted to read a book, but such distraction techniques proved futile.

So, Hue - capital of Vietnam until 1945, when the last Nguyen emperor abdicated and the Communist regime was established in the North with Hanoi as its capital. (Incidentally, you might already know that Nguyen is the most common Vietnamese surname, but did you know that it's shared by up to 60% of the popluation? Fact for the day! Well, sort of fact - Wikipedia seems to think it's only 40%, but that doesn't sound as impressive as the figures in our guide book, so I'm choosing to ignore it.)

Today's token picture that includes one of us. Just to prove that we really are in Vietnam and not hiding out in the flat pasting in images we've turned up via Google.

As a city Hue has a more relaxed, elegant feel to it than Hanoi, and it's known for two legacies of its imperial past: elaborate food and historic monuments. Most imposing of the latter is Hue citadel, a vast complex of civil buildings and private Royal residences. Much of it was damaged during the Vietnam war  - which is here called, logically enough, the American War (this always reminds me of the Simpsons episode when they go to Brazil and Bart [or possibly Lisa] exclaims "look, Brazil nuts!", only for their guide to reply, "here we call them nuts") - but some of the buildings still stand, and others have been restored or rebuilt, with varying degees of authenticity. What we were most struck by, though, is how empty it was - considering that this is Hue''s premier tourist attraction, and that the entrance price (as with more or less all historical sites here) is negligible, we were expecting it to be heaving, but much of the time there was no one else as far as the eye could see. Having said that, even in the most solitary or venerated of places, you're never far from a motorbike:

Forget rice paddies - this encapsulates Vietnam for me. 

Speaking of motorbikes, once you''ve been here for a day or two you cease to be phased by the dangerously - though often comically - enormous loads people carry on their bikes. Some sights, though, still make an impression:

And before you ask - the cow was not only alive but seemed eminently relaxed, casually raising its head every now and then to take a lazy look around. I''m still trying to come up with a scenario in which you'd want to transport a solitary live cow a considerable distance, but no doubt this is a lamentable failure of imagination on my part. Ah, Vietnam, how I love you.

Next up: Ha Long bay! Aka "the bit of Vietnam you've probably seen National-Geographic pictures of".