Ho Chi, Củ Chi, KFC, Minh

The last stop on our Vietnam trail was the city of Ho Chi Minh.

Saigon, as it was formerly (and still is unofficially) known, is just as crazy, chaotic and thrill-riding as you'd expect it to be, and a fitting way to end our journey through this often intense, and at times insane, country.

Saigon is a city full of dizzying contrasts: hawkers in conical hats walking under huge, flashing billboards; ropey motorbikes roaring through the streets next to perfectly polished Hummers; timeless alleys, lined with ramshackle stalls selling spices and pans, leading to designer malls and gourmet restaurants. Yet, everyone is as much a part of this living organism as the next, adding their own energy and eclecticism to the city's urban mosaic.

Reminders of what the city and its people went through, just one generation ago, are in the tourist trappings (the museums and the Củ Chi tunnels) but today, propaganda about the Vietnam war (or, to the Vietnamese, the American war) is now only contained in the faux-vintage poster shops and group tours led by grinning guides. The American outlets of KFC and Adidas hammered home that point.

While there, we took part in the touristy propaganda - silently looking at horrific images from the war and making our way through a stifling section of the Củ Chi tunnels, an immense network of underground tunnels used by the Vietnamese (in Western history books, known as the Viet Cong guerillas) to bewilder and defeat the Americans.

At Củ Chi, we took a tour through the jungle where a lot of the Vietnam war was fought, and where a great deal of soldiers, on both sides, lost their lives. We circumnavigated bomb craters and booby traps of all kinds that were made by the communist soldiers to capture, kill or maim American fighters when on the ground. I squeezed myself into one hiding hole - not advisable if you are even a little bit claustrophobic, or "big-boned" for that matter.

The tunnels, which have been widened and reinforced for tourists in parts (not that you would know as they are so small and cramped), go deeper into the earth and the Viet Cong and civilians alike lived under there to avoid being shot or captured. We shuffled along inside, our backs bent right over

as we made our way along in the dark and dirt. We bailed out early (you can walk 100 metres) and it was a relief to see sunlight again, I can tell you!

It must have been a terrifying life, living underground, only emerging to shoot at the enemy. So many lives were lost here and the deafening sound of the theme park style

shooting range was quite unsettling.

Another sobering day arrived when I rounded a street corner, looking for postcards, and stopped in my tracks because I was aware that there was something strange with the formation of people ahead of me. A kind traveller approached me and said "if you don't want to be depressed, don't come down here." I looked ahead and could see why everyone had stopped in their tracks. A Vietnamese man, surrounded by a huge pool of blood that was spreading onto the grey tarmac, was writhing around in the road. He had slit his throat and was slowly dying in the centre of a busy street. Stunned, and feeling wobbly, I decided to turn on my heal and leg it back the way I came.

But the image stuck with me all day and I was left wondering what would drive a person to do that so spontaneously and so publicly. That evening, we asked a local guy while sat drinking bia hơi if he knew what had happened. He said, looking very solemn, "love, I can't think of

another reason but love."

Despite their often hard exterior, the Vietnamese are a bunch of hopeless romantics after all. And we left on this note, happy we had experienced this beautiful, unruly country with its formidable, resilient and occasionally charming people, yet glad to be moving on to Cambodia for our next adventure.

Bia hơi and phở bò in Hanoi

With heartfelt memories of Nepal fresh in our thoughts, we weren't quite prepared for the humdinger that was Hanoi.

It’s a political capital city with a robust, hard-faced attitude that more resembles China than South East Asia. I can see why this city wouldn’t appeal to everyone - and it certainly didn't to Med.

In Hanoi, crossing the road became an extreme sport, with a ruthless, kinetic flow of traffic racing through the tree-lined city. Masses of motorbikes swarm through the tangled streets, choking the heart of the city and stealing our peace and quiet at every junction.

We, and other people we met, also felt that tourists weren't made to feel that welcome in the city - we even got shouted at to get out of a restaurant filled with locals before our bums had hit the seats.

Bemused, pining for Nepal, we wondered why we had come

to Vietnam.

We reminded ourselves we were here for more rough and ready travel, more chaotic, Asian experiences, to try new food and witness a new, raw and overwhelmingly unique culture. I tried to keep an open mind, despite the set-backs and the road-crossing drills.

Hawkers in conical hats ply their wares, many speaking French as well as Vietnamese; locals sip iced Vietnamese tea on the street or linger over coffee in Parisian-style cafés, watching life pass them by; ramshackle market stalls, selling anything from caged birds to coffins, line the grand, leafy boulevards.

If you strip back the gaudy commerce and block out the pulsating noise and traffic, Hanoi is quite beautiful - a city with a blend of Parisian grace and Asian pace.

We thanked the French for their wide, attractive pavements with quaint blue and white street signs, for the crusty baguettes we tucked into over breakfast and for the continental architecture dotted amongst the modern, Vietnamese structures. These moments of Paris make Hanoi special, as the smell of café au lait permeates street corners and lakes and parks dot the city - providing a romantic backdrop to the non-stop roar of the city.

But there are still incongruous moments of East meets West in Hanoi. Remnants of the wars are ever present, behind the bricks of museums and in the stony faces of some of the Vietnamese.

There was still a war of words in the Army Museum, with the enemy (be they French or American) painted as evil by the propaganda-laiden displays. We grimaced at the rusty bits of metal that had taken the lives of thousands of men and stood, suspended by horror, looking at the images of extreme deformities in the Agent Orange exhibition. A day on the historical trail left us slightly bewildered but helped us understand the country we were in a little more.

We joined the locals for meal times at the pavement food stations, perching precariously on tiny plastic chairs we've not sat upon since primary school - Med's knees were up to his ribcage.

We tucked into phở bò (noodle soup with beef and bean sprouts) and not so bò phở as I attempted to ask for the vegetarian option, as the sight of the raw meat left out to bake in the day's heat sent my stomach churning. But this was lost in translation as most of the Vietnamese don't speak English and couldn't understand our attempts at their tonal language, so I sucked it up, and swallowed the lumps of chicken fat that mysteriously appeared in my hot bowl of phở. Still, it's only 20,000dong (about 60p) for a big bowl - we weren't complaining.

And then we'd move to some even smaller plastic chairs that spilled out into the road to enjoy bia hơi, a locally-brewed, fresh beer that is served for 13p a glass on almost every street in Hanoi. It is brewed daily and delivered to street vendors in plastic bottles and jugs. Sitting with new friends in the street, watching the lights of the traffic stream past us, we decided Vietnam was going to be a great adventure after all.