Back in Vietnam

We're back in Vietnam now, halfway up the coast at the small town of Hoi An. It's our first proper stop since we got back from Cambodia a few days ago.
Since the last post we spent two and a half days visiting the temples at Angkor in central Cambodia. There are dozens of temples, some absolutely massive like Angkor Wat - with a 200m wide moat around its city walls, each a kilometre long - and others that are far smaller. A few of the more famous temples have been restored, the jungle that surrounds and attempts to devour the ancient sites cut back and the towers and walls painstakingly put back together from the piles of bricks and sculptures littering the ground. But others have been left in their 'natural' state - covered by strangler figs and the enormous kapok trees that grow over and through the walls. These temples are the most atmospheric, especially with the constant noise of crickets in the background and huge butterflies floating over the ruins. They really are spectacular, and once you get away from the most popular temples and the tour groups, surprisingly quiet.Other than in one or two places they let you scramble around exploring the crumbling tunnels and sancturies, which makes a difference to most ancient sites. It's unlikely to stay that way for long though.
After Angkor we headed back to the Cambodia capital Phnom Penh. The bus journey up the country was very relaxing; the return journey was a bit of a disaster. We got stuck in three hour traffic jam in 40 degrees heat. It was like a sauna that you couldn't leave. At least the hotel hadn't given our room to somebody else, so that was something.
The next day we visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. For the price it was a real rip-off as you could only peer into one of the several buildings and even then from behind a rope at the entrance. After that we visited a more sobering place - the Toul Sleng genocide museum. It is housed in a former school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison and torture facilty. The barbed wire was still around the classrooms and on the balconies, several of the classrooms divided up into tiny cells. Photos of hundreds if not thousands of the victims lined some of the other rooms. It was a harrowing place, and it really brought home how horrific the regime had been, and continued to be: even after the Khmer Rouge were driven out by the Vietnamese in 1979 they continued to fight and kill people until the mid-1990s.
We left Cambodia the next day on the morning bus (this time very comfortable with reclining leather seats and air con!) and reached Saigon (Vietnam) around lunchtime. We had a few hours to fill before our overnight train to Hoi An, so we visited another museum, this time regarding the US-Vietnam war. Here were more terrible exhibits - the destruction wreaked by Agent Orange and landmines - and a stunning if tragic show of pictures by the photographers killed in the conflict.
Our train back up north was far better than the one south - comfortable beds, space to sit up straight and a window we could see out of.
We've been in Hoi An for a couple of days. It's a lovely old town - a Unesco world heritage site - so it's been kept olde worlde with shuttered windows and yellow-painted houses. We hired bikes yesterday and cycled through paddy fields to the beach, a few miles away. It was great to have a day to relax but the sun was pretty strong. We all looked a little pink in the evening.
Tonight is John's last night, so we'll be back on our own from tomorrow. Pictures from Angkor to come shortly.