Chicken in a basket

Greetings from Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City as they call it these days).
We had a few days in Hanoi. The weather was great - hot and sunny and not too humid. The traffic is horrendous though - a constant stream of taxis, buses and, mainly, endless motorcycles and scooters. It takes a while to get used to crossing the road. You just have to be fearless and stride out into road and hope the vehicles swarm around you (which they do - in four days we've only seen one incident when a motobike clipped the back of a woman's bag - amazing really).
Hanoi's centre is based around a lake - a real oasis of calm in the middle of the hectic streets. Locals stroll and jog (very slowly) and canoodle there in the evening. The tourists just walk about and take pictures mainly, but it's very nice. We visited the Old Quarter and the French Quarter, both full of colonial buildings in the French style, and fusion architecture, half traditional Vietnamese and half baroque - odd, but it works on the whole.
We caught the reunification express train from Hanoi down to Ho Chi Minh City - although at around 35 hours, the journey wasn't exactly express. We didn't think this would be a problem as we envisioned sitting back and enjoying the beautiful scenery - dramatic mountains, clear blue waters etc. However, with only cheap seats left on the train we wanted, our compartment of 6 bunks ended up housing 10 people, including a family who dominated the bottom two bunks for the entire journey, meaning everyone else had to squeeze into the narrow upper bunks - no light, no view, no room. Robin called the top bunk 'the coffin' - you can imagine. The toilets were commmunal too - you had to share with a chicken in a basket (a still clucking one, not one served with fries)
On the bright side, the family got off before Ho Chi Minh City. On the downside it was 45 mins before and it was already dark. Oh well - we have reached the end of the railway now - about 10,000 miles from Sheffield.
When we got to Ho Chi Minh City, we met up with Robin's dad who is joining us for the next couple of weeks of the trip. It has been even hotter down here in south Vietnam. Last night we got our first rain - a sudden torrential downpour that lasted about an hour. Even the locals were surprised. Thankfully the sun returned this morning.
We've seen a few temples, a 60's palace complete with James Bond style gambling room and a display of water puppets. Tomorrow we're going to visit the tunnels from the Vietnam-US war and the day after head to the Mekong delta with it's floating markets. Then it's off to Cambodia for a few days. No rest...