It was quite a reasonable time to get up for a change, 645am to be at Heathrow airport for 830am. Luckily I have some lovely friends (Jamie and Ticket) who came and picked me up and dropped me off at the airport. Unfortunately there was loads of traffic as a van had burnt out on the M4. But I still made it, even if around 20 minutes late. It was great to see Ali and Karen when I got there and meet Sherrien too – and the other 27 people I was travelling with.

After chreck-in, as per normal, we headed to the bar for a little tipple before the flight.

We got chatting to Mark and Jim (Shrek and Donkey) and Louise too. We were so busy chatting and shopping that we didn’t realise the time and ended up having to do a very fast walk to the gate.

Seats were all allocated randomly in the plane but I managed to swap with Ian, the Discover Adventure leader, and sat with Karen and Louise.

The flight was around 13 hours and Singapore airlines were brilliant. The good was really nice for airplane food, the alcohol was free and you got real cutlery!! I watched 3 films, ate loads and tried to sleep but probably only slept for around 30 mins or so.

As we flew into Singapore the sun was just rising.

We had a two hour stop over at Changi airport in Singapore so headed to the bar and had a couple of very expensive beers!

Once we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, otherwise known as Saigon we were picked up by the local guides Trong and his mate whose name I’ve forgotten. We headed through the city to pub street. It’s crazy, nobody gives way and the number of mopeds on the road is huge and some of them have four people on them! The electric wiring is interesting too.

We drove past the palace, which is the independence palace. Very impressive, shame we couldn’t stop and look around.

Lunch was delicious, but way too much of it.

After lunch we checked into the hotel where we will be staying tonight (tonight now being the day after we left as Vietnam is 6 hours ahead). The rooms are lovely and I can’t wait to get into it later!

Once everyone was checked in we then went to try out our bikes. The bikes are pretty good although as I was cycling round the car park on mine the gear cable popped out – they say they’ll fix it by tomorrow.

I made a lovely cute new friend too.

He was so pitiful I really did want to stick him in my rucksack and take him home.

So, we still had some time to kill before dinner and I know if I go to bed I’ll fall asleep and not wake up! So we had a look around the local market and surrounding area.

Then it was back to the hotel for a beer and a shower before we head out for dinner.