In this program, contestants will be crammed onto a minibus equipped with sticky vinyl seats to race around the south of Vietnam, stopping off for physical challenges such as ferry crossings and mental challenges such as watching obviously fake cottage industries in action. Wrapping coconut candy? Come on. It was delicious, though. Anyway, the cast is as follows (in order from the front of the bus to the back):

The Bus Driver: Small, old, and wearing a green shirt. This man will drive furiously, shouting and gesturing incomprehensibly at everyone else on the road. Then he'll grin.

The Dutch Couple: Bimbos, both of them. She has blonde hair and a slightly crumpled face, he has a shaved head and wraparound sunglasses. Early on, they will be overheard to say "So the Vietnam War was between America and who?"

The Australian Couple (our heroes): Disillusioned, world-weary and so over group-tours they can barely bring themselves to say where they're from, what their names are etc etc. Despite this ennui, she will wear a conical hat and eat coconut candy, and he will take 45 photos of the river. She will also contemplate the question: "How can I hate other tourists so much whilst actually being one?"

The German Boys: Fun-loving and easy-going. What a relief.

The German Couple (our villains): He has thinning, tightly-curled hair and a moonface. She has dark plaits and two tooth piercings. They are at least 15 minutes late every time the bus needs to leave. They refuse to exchange a single word with anyone else over the entire trip. During the final two hour drive back to Ho Chi Minh City, they smooch loudly and grossly no fewer than 9 times.

But who will be murdered first?

Having recovered from the minor setback of failure to renew domain name, my site is back. Normalcy has returned to my world.

You can look forward to some retrospective travel notes, complaints about summer TV and other incisive, analytical gems. Me, I'm looking forward to a Frosty Fruit...

By rights I should have been feeling tired and miserable, after what was objectively speaking a horrendous minibus trip from Mui Ne to Saigon. But the bright lights, the street carnivals and the undeniable buzz of this city gave me such a lift that I felt like partying with the best of them. It's an exciting city.

We ended up having late night drinks in a dimly lit bar that was part of the tourist ghetto. After we ordered our brightly coloured drinks, the waitress lingered, drunkenly putting her arm around me and stroking my shoulder while she eyeballed Clay. About that time, I noticed that most of the other waitresses were wearing very short skirts and flirting with the single, male clientele. Oh. Unfortunately for the waitress, Clay was utterly engrossed by the sight of a street vendor cycling past with a huge rack of dried squid. Meanwhile, a woman in head-to-toe sequins was screeching an offer of massage at me and an urchin was tugging at my skirt trying to sell chewing gum.

At first, I thought Jungle Beach would be a tiny, isolated honeymoon type spot. Then I found out it was a guesthouse with about 8 people in it. So I thought it would be like Vietnamese Survivor, and I wondered whether I'd be the first voted off. Actually, I thought someone might be murdered but that's because I've read 7 murder mysteries on this trip. It's a bit of a theme.

As it turned out, staying at Jungle Beach felt a lot like camping in the backyard of an eccentric hippy uncle - sleeping on bamboo slats, lazing on the verandah and going exploring. We went on a crazy boulder-hopping walk in search of an elusive waterfall. At night, the fishing boats were illuminated with long fluorescent lights that looked like alien life forms.

Mui Ne, our second beach stop, is totally non-hippy. It's a long strip of resorts and restaurants. We spent the first night in the fancy-schmancy Sailing Club where the beers cost two whole dollars each, then decided to move to a cosier little beachside bungalow. I love lying in bed watching the ocean, moving out to the balcony for an iced coffee, and then taking fifteen more steps to have a swim. It gets really windy here in the afternoons (blame the cyclones in the Phillipines) and all the kite surfers come out and perform tricks. Even though I've been dodging the sun like a madwoman I've still got a bit of a tan.

Today's plan involves a manicure, a trip to the Sand Dunes and a quite terrible Maeve Binchy novel someone left behind at the hotel. Those poor, romantic Irish villagers.

I love Hoi An. The tiny streets of the old town are closed to carss, so you can wander amongst the cafes and bars and lantern shops with minimal fear. The river front is perfect - slow-moving water, wicker chairs everywhere and 80-cent gin and tonics. Or, if you're feeling a little less elegant, a mojito bucket (about 1 litre) costs about $4. It's the vibe of the place - unhurried and peaceful.

I managed to tear myself away from the wicker chairs long enough to take a motorcycle ride to the beach 5 kms away yesterday. We paid for day-use of the facilities at a fancy resort and swanned around the swimming pool next to the beach for hours. Today was cultural - a tour of old ruins, a boat ride past handicraft villages, and then conveniently dropped off outside a watefront bar at Hoi An. The TV was on in the background, and after a while Clay and I developed the BBC Commentary on Yasser Arafat's Funeral Drinking Game. It involved slugs out of the mojito bucket whenever the phrases "dignitaries from around the world pay their respects" or "not liked by everyone" were used.

Tomorrow morning we're catching the train to Jungle Beach - a kind of eco-tourist guesthouse scenario. Sounds like I won't exactly be upping the pace of the holiday...

An author like, say, Donna Tartt, whose book "The Secret History" received rave reviews a couple of years back and which I finally got around to reading over the last few days. It was underwhelming. I had substantive concerns with the plot, but really I think they arose because of the poor writing style.

Now I'm no Lynne Trilby or whatever that Eats, Shoots and Leaves woman's name is. In everyday, run-of-the-mill signage, a misplaced apostrophe is something I accept as a vicissitude of life. But when an author is hailed as a genius, then the egregious examples of poor writing that pepper her work irritate me no end. Also, when the author insists on writing 648 pages (every single word is too precious to be cut!) then the author should at least write well. I'm talking about this:

a) A sentence features only one adjective and one adverb, and they are the same word. "He gave her a conspicuous look, then smiled conspicuously." I think the problem was that the author had exhausted her vocabulary in long rambling sequences of adjectives to describe the colour of the wallpaper or the taste of eggs.

b) Commas used so that the meaning of the sentence is obscured, and has to be worked out backwards. "The weather turned suddenly, insistently, beautifully cold." See? At first you think suddenly is an adverb modifying turned, but then later you work out that it is an adjective modifying cold. Shoddy work.

c) The author ascribes a particular wacky trait to a character ("He had the knack of becoming invisible") and waffles on about it for a paragraph, then 300 pages later ascribes the same wacky trait with slightly different waffle to another character. Get an editor!

d) The author assumes the reader is an imbecile. "How can I describe to you the power of that Greek word pur, and everything it conjured up? How could you ever know?" Man, I guess I'll just never know the dizzying intellectual realm of the 20-year-old Classics student. Poor me.

On to Dashiell Hammet next, thank god.

These early mornings are killing me. Luckily, my hotel room in Hoi An has a charming balcony overlooking the "river" (damper than usual rice paddy) and air conditioning so I plan to sleep all day. I went for a bit of a wander around town this morning - the town is teeming with tailors who will whip up anything you like, cheap as chips. I plan to be tempted tomorrow. I also had a local specialty for lunch - white roses are prawn meat steamed inside wonton wrappers. It's pretty delicious, but frankly I was more interested in throwing as many Sprites down my parched and overheated throat as I could.

It's hot, but good.

I'm a bit bleary-eyed this afternoon, because unwittingly I've become a Hard-Core Backpacker. That is: I took an overnight train last night from Sapa, hung out by the lake in Hanoi at 5am,* got a crappy little windowless room in the city and am preparing to leave for the airport at 4.30am tomorrow. Like...whoah.

Sitting by the lake was cool, actually. The Vietnamese turn out en masse in the wee small hours to take their exercise - a process that involves absolutely mindboggling leisure wear (my fave today: a synthetic, tan two-piece with puffed sleeves and knickerbockers) and disarmingly awkward movements. There was also a group of people dancing with fans. So pretty.

Anyway, that's a Hanoi scene not a Sapa scene. Ergo, I digress. Sapa was a cool, airy retreat from the humidity and noise of Hanoi - an almost European resort town (European = French architecture and a lake) where terraced rice paddies back onto groves of conifers, with the occasional bamboo forest. It would look weird if it weren't for the perpetual mist which blurred the edges of things. Clay and I went on a couple of short walks around Sapa and then on an overnight trek through the villages of minority hill-tribes. We were continuously assaulted by cute little girls selling bracelets and cushion covers. I loved the traditional dress of indigo hemp cloth and bright embroidery. There were buffalo and ducks. All extremely satisfactory (apart from the cold I've got now).

Recent culinary highlight: I am digging the coffee here - filtered, with a dash of sweetened condensed milk, served in a tall glass with ice. It's perfect, and my love for the bean is stronger than ever.
Recently read: Shaun Micallef, "Smithereens". It gets funnier as it goes along, till by the end I was chortling merrily at every second line. The script for a telemovie featuring Heath Ledger as Roger Explosion! was particularly good.

* Lyn, and anyone else dorky enough to be interested - I could only think of one song about walking the streets at 5 o'clock in the morning (Vince Jones). Are there others? Surely Paul Kelly has an offering?

After a tragic computer mishap which wiped my long, rambling and not very poetic description of Ha Long Bay, I required several beers. I'm feeling better now. And beer-goggles have given the emerald waters, looming islands and charming wooden boats of Ha Long Bay even more retrospective appeal. I'll say nothing about the ghastly fluorescent lighting (the aesthetic disjuncture!) or the pack-mentality of organised tour groups (horrible minibuses to rushed treks to large roadhouse type eating establishments). I spent a day in a hammock on a tiny beach sheltered by palm trees. And a day swinging my feet over the edge of a boat daydreaming. That's the main thing.

Tonight, we're catching the train to Sapa up in the hills. Apparently, Sapa has only recently become a tourist destination; before that (to paraphrase Lonely Planet), its development was hampered by WWII, the guerilla war against the French, the American War, the border skirmish with China in 1979 and the severe economic downturns of the 1980s. Little details like that.

Recent Culinary Highlight: Fried Green Beans with garlic.
Recently read: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene. It's excellent.