I left Nha Trang by train to Danang. Failed to get any useful sleep, but had enough life in me to check out Danang that afternoon. I purchased a reasonable quality CD/VCD/MP3 portable player for US$52, which I have since come to realise is about double what I could have got it for, despite my aggressive bargaining in getting the price down from $85.

I went through a very good museum populated with artefacts from the ancient Champa civilisation, the people of which populated the Central Vietnam coastline from 600 AD. Then with my motorbike guide I visited the Marble Mountains, which had great Buddhas carved into caves and natural edifices in the rockface.

From the top of the mountain you could look down upon China Beach and imagine the Americans landing there in 1965, or enjoying some R & R.

Arrived that same night in Hoi An, 16km south of Danang. The town is a tourist mecca, I realised quickly just how dead Nha Trang was as it appears all the tourists had come to Hoi An. That of course meant inflated accomodation costs and a multitude of in-yer-face street sellers.

The attraction to Hoi An could be its glorious beach or its unique restaurants, but the tourists come here for the shopping, and even a non-shopper like myself was pulled in by the place. Some 250 outlets in this relatively small city cater for the tailoring needs of the visitors. I bought a Chinese-style suit and matching shirt for US$28, as well as a pair of denim jeans for US$8. The quality of the latter would later prove poor after the stitching fell apart while travelling to Cat Ba Island up north.

A group of 20 fellow travellers dressed in our best Hoi An garb and sat down for a good Vietnamese Christmas dinner. Then continued all night until the wee smalls.

On Christmas Eve I went to mass. It ran the same as any Catholic service with the exception that it was in Vietnamese, had bright colours everywhere, children doing dance routines, booming drums, and a few bats flying round our heads. It was a really good experience.