It’s a long drive in the minibus from Hué to Hoi An. Luckily, the scenery is spectacular, as we trundle through the mountains, catching glimpses of the ocean. I’m still trying to plough through White Teeth, but there are too many competing distractions going on outside the window.

There are also plenty of stops along the way. At Danang, a museum full of mad Hindu stone sculptures: rampant dragons, elephant deities, multi-bosomed goddesses, and more phallic symbols than you could shake a stick at. At lunchtime, a quiet, vast, unspoilt beach (unfortunately, K and I are not Beach People, so we bury ourselves under a parasol and try not to snarl too obviously). Mid-afternoon, the Marble Mountains: a spectacular network of mist-laden caves, Buddhist temples and slippery tunnels.

The Marble Mountains are also home to the most aggressively persistent sellers of marble goods on the planet. As soon as we get off the bus, we are engulfed by a swarm of young women, one for each member of the group. “What’s your name?” “Marble, you want to buy?” “OK, maybe later! Maybe later!”

All the street sellers say this in Vietnam. Maybe later! Maybe later! Then, when they see you again (and they always see you again), the words are thrown back in your face. You said later! You promised! It’s all very playful, though – very good-natured, always with a smile on the face, and people will take No for an answer. Compared to the seriously irksome street hassles we endured in Egypt, it’s a breeze.

However, the Marble Ladies are a breed apart. As we exit the Marble Mountain complex, which is a good 20 minutes’ walk from the entrance, there they all are, waiting for us. Each one of them has remembered the name of their prey. Mike! Mike! Over here! You buy! You buy! You said Maybe Later! You promised! Again, we are surrounded. The Marble Ladies are grabbing and pulling at us, or slapping our arms (hard) for added emphasis. Keep smiling. Don’t get riled. It’s all a game.

It has been observed throughout the group that I consistently seem to be getting proportionally less street hassle than anyone else. People ask me to share the secret of my success. I pause to consider. Well – I never make prior eye contact with the vendor, and I never look at the goods for sale. If approached, I say “No thank you”, just once, politely but firmly. As I do so, I make direct eye contact with the vendor. At the same time, I give them my broadest, most open smile, while slowly shaking my head through about 90 degrees, and slowly raising my right hand in a kind of “stop the traffic” gesture. It seems to work, every time. I am asked to demonstrate my technique to the group. Maybe this will work for them – or maybe it’s just because the vendors all have excellent emotional intelligence, and have recognised me for the curmudgeonly, tight-fisted old git that I truly am.

Having said all this – of course I buy the occasional trinket, or set of postcards, along the way. You have to. People’s livelihoods depend on stuff like this. However, I’m a hopeless haggler. I just can’t play the game. People see through me in an instant. I resign myself to paying over the odds, and remind myself that this is still an outrageously low sum.

K and I have lucked out in Hoi An. While some of the group are consigned to cramped, noisy, airless basement cells, we languish in our very own mini-suite, with polished panelling and heavy traditional furniture, all in rich dark woods. Perhaps, in retrospect, we shouldn’t have mentioned this to the rest of the group…

Hoi An is the prettiest town in Vietnam, its well preserved 17th and 18th century buildings fairly dripping with old world charm. However, it is clearly changing fast. The main streets of the old town are largely given over to tourist shops and restaurants, and there are Australian backpackers everywhere. This hasn’t spoilt the intrinsic beauty of the town just yet – but I don’t have a particularly good feeling about the future.

In the evening, in a simple looking establishment on the waterfront, we enjoy our best meal of the entire trip. None of the meals we have eaten so far have been anything less than excellent, but this place scales new heights. Excuse me while I plug it: Hong Phuc, 86 Bach Dang St. Tel. 0510 862567. E-mail: hongphuc1990@yahoo.com.au. The tiny little scallops are particularly spectacular.

We round off the evening in Tam Tam, a wildly popular French-run backpacker bar which plays fabulous jazz-funk and French reggae. Oh look! Over there, in the corner! Fraulein Dings-Bums! Enchanté!

There’s a gay German couple in the hotel breakfast room. One of them clocks me and K, and immediately starts trying to transmit the Secret Gay Signal. At breakfast? I ask you. How wearing!

K and I have several comedy alter-egos. One of our favourites: the two jaded Northern queens.
– Just look at ‘er! Madam in the check shirt and glasses!
– She’s a one, int’ she? Radar Eyes, or what?
– She’s never off duty, is that one.
– Well, she’s not fookin gerrin’ any, that’s for sure.
– Too right she’s fookin not!
– Don’t look, you’ll only encourage her.

Around our group, the rice wine hangovers are kicking in, big time. None of us had factored in the sheer strength of the brew – although in retrospect, the fact that it was poured out from a plastic water bottle might have been some sort of clue.

As a result, we are not in the best condition for a lengthy morning tour of the Hué Citadel, with one of those earnest local guides who insist on giving you the precise facts and figures for everything. We are a shockingly reluctant and inattentive group, almost to the point of embarrassment (“Poor man! What must he think of us all!”).

Right in the middle of the Citadel complex, we come to the Forbidden City. Modelled on its Beijing equivalent, this sumptuous palace used to house the emperors of Vietnam. In what is known locally as “The American War”, 95% of the Forbidden City was destroyed by the US forces in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive in 1968. It is a shocking discovery.

The Citadel complex has now been designated a UNESCO world heritage site, and there are plans to rebuild the Forbidden City in its entirety. In the meantime, rice and vegetables are being farmed on the waste ground. This sticks in my mind as one of the best metaphors for the character of the nation:
Tragedy. Beautiful, historic buildings are destroyed in a bloody conflict.
Stoicism. The Vietnamese shrug their shoulders, and set about rebuilding them from scratch.
Practicality. But in the meantime, as there’s no point in letting perfectly good land go to waste, they’ll grow rice and vegetables.

At the Tu Duc mausoleum, we spot the German couple again. The one in the glasses clocks us, and immediately recommences transmission.
– I’ve got a name for her now.
– What’s that then?
– It’s German for Miss Thing.
– What’s that then?
– Fraulein Dings-Bums.
– Love it…

In the afternoon, my absolute highlight of the entire trip. Mr. Hoài has arranged a motorbike trip for the whole group, through the fields and villages surrounding Hué. I’ve never been on the back of a motorbike before, so there is an element of overcoming fear to be factored into the experience – this only serves to heighten the sense of exhilaration. Our drivers weave us in and out of the city traffic, and out into the villages, where kids line the roads, shouting Hello at us and high-fiving us as we scoot past. We are seeing Vietnamese life as it really is. I am ecstatic with delight.

The bloody awful Vietpop music starts blaring through the carriage at 6am, an hour and twenty minutes before we reach our destination. The music is so loud that it’s distorting through the speakers. There are very few things which I dislike about this country, but the local pop music is one of them (along with the humidity, and the lack of soft cushions). Actually, most of it isn’t even “local” – it’s all made by ex-pats living in L.A., and re-imported via the likes of MTV Asia. Without this set-up, and with the bootleg CD trade as big as it is, none of the artists would ever get paid.

K and J-Lo are in foul moods. J-Lo mentions that she hasn’t slept all night. I make a tactical error and confess to having had a few hours’ kip. J-Lo snaps back: “Oh, stop bragging about it, would you?” Brenda Blethyn pops a cheery head round the door: “Good morning!”. K glares back at her.“F**k off!” Strange as it may sound, these two exchanges actually seal our respective friendships for the rest of the trip.

We all feel like we’ve been slowly basting ourselves in our own chip fat. We all feel disgusting. The washing facilities on the train are, naturally, rudimentary in the extreme. We cannot wait to get to the hotel in Hué.

It turns out that there’s a great little pavement café next door to the hotel, which becomes our regular hang-out for the next couple of days. Excuse me while I plug it: Hoài Café, 35 Hai Bà Trung, Tel: 054.830860. The perpetually cheerful and solicitous owner, Mr. Hoài, becomes everybody’s new friend. Once showered and changed, we congregate around a long table and breakfast on rice noodle soup.

It’s only Day 5, but I have already become completely addicted to rice noodle soup at breakfast time. Up until now, I have always found it difficult to face food for the first hour of every day – but rice noodle soup has got through to me where all other breakfast foodstuffs have failed. I could feast on it every day. Here is a golden business opportunity just waiting to happen back home: a chain of Vietnamese breakfast bars, all doing rice noodle soup. Someone should do it. With the right marketing, it could catch on, big time.

We take off on a cyclo tour of Hué, which is our tour leader’s favourite city in Vietnam. Cyclos are like rickshaws: you recline comfortably in front, shaded by a canopy, while your driver pedals you along the streets on a three wheeler. It’s the best way to see the city when you’re still feeling weary, and it’s wonderful to be part of the mad flow of traffic, down at street level. There are almost no cars here: just two-wheelers and cyclos. Hué is a gentler, simpler, more relaxed place than Hanoi; it still bears the more conservative, traditional feel of the North.

Squeezed into one cyclo, a young family group passes by in the other direction: father, mother and baby. They have the same quiet serenity which I have observed time and again over the past few days. They make such a lovely family that I find I cannot help but beam as they go by. The mother spots this, and catches my eye, and beams straight back at me. For a second or so, there is a complete communion between us, as our respective states of contentment become momentarily enmeshed. A few seconds later, in the midst of the traffic, an elaborately decorated coffin passes by, sitting on a cycle cart, on its way to be delivered somewhere. Birth and death, both gone in a flash.

There’s an afternoon boat trip down the “Perfumed River”. The boat is staffed by a young married couple, with a cheeky toddler in tow. Between the ages of around three and five, most Vietnamese children have the most delightfully strong characters: playfully bold and impish, you can’t help but love them. This kid is a prime example; everyone is taking his photo, and he’s loving the attention. As the boat sets sail, his older sister waves him goodbye from the shore. He doesn’t want to leave her. He starts crying, as toddlers tend to do. It doesn’t last long. However, his parents’ reaction is interesting, brief as it is (and easily missed): they look visibly embarrassed. Overt public displays of emotion do not take place in Vietnamese society, as they are seen as “losing face” – and this even applies to toddlers, it would seem. This isn’t self-repression; it’s self-control; a subtle but important difference. Thus by the age of around six, the vast majority of Vietnamese children are calm, well-behaved creatures, with sensible heads on their shoulders, busily making themselves useful. There is no sentimentality attached to childhood here. Nor are children afforded any special protection; they are streetwise from the moment they can walk (which is OK, because the streets here are safe and crime-free). This particular kid is happily running round all parts of the boat, with no fear on his part or on his parents’ part. He is trusted from the outset.

As we pass under one of the main bridges, teeming with traffic in both directions, I notice that only two people are crossing it on foot. A European or American couple, they look every inch the “independent travellers”. No cyclos for them at “tourist rip-off” rates (around 60p or 70p a journey, in fact); they look doggedly determined to trudge the streets of Hué by foot alone, through the heat and humidity. The man is half a dozen paces in front of the woman. They both look thoroughly miserable. They both notice our colourfully painted vessel passing below, and visibly frown at the “false”, “touristy” frivolity on display.

The Thien Mu pagoda, and its accompanying Buddhist monastery, and its surrounding formal gardens, are all exquisitely beautiful, in a naturally harmonious and un-showy way. K and I are both utterly captivated by the atmosphere of calm. K has one of his periodic “I want to be a monk!” moments, and our usual well-rehearsed comic banter ensues. Back in London, The Hempel hotel had boasted of a “Zen garden”. Compared to the real thing in front of us now, its clueless pretentiousness now lies completely exposed. We also make amused comparisons with the suburban “Zen garden” makeovers which are so beloved of British television programmes. However, this still does not stop us from snapping loads of detailed “inspiration shots”, ready for when we get back to Nottingham (our long neglected yards are in need some drastic re-planning).

In the evening, a celebratory meal in honour of Gabriel Byrne’s birthday (and his honeymoon with Demi Moore). The best squid I have ever tasted, anywhere. We all get totally hammered on tiny amounts of the local rice wine, and stay up way past our bedtimes at the Hoài Café. This has been the best day yet, despite its inauspicious and painful start. I bloody love this country.

It’s a long drive from Hanoi to Halong Bay and back, but the boat trip proves to be well worth it. We slowly weave our way round countless rocky islands; they are tall and steep, lush and verdant, dramatic and other-worldly. Sizeable portions of the film Indochine were shot out here, particularly on Dau Go (“Dragon Island”).

The heavy rain has stopped just in time, and the sun makes one of its very rare showings (the two weeks are mostly spent underneath a cloudy sky, for which I am most grateful; I’m hot enough as it is, and have no wish to slather myself in protective gunk). We sit on the top deck and zone out, gazing into the middle distance with dippy smiles on our faces.

The two caves on Dau Go are cavernous and spectacular, with stalactites and stalagmites a-go-go. The first cave is illuminated with cheesy coloured lighting (which only I seem to like), and is packed with gawping boat trippers. The second cave is naturally lit, much emptier, every bit as dramatic, and much more atmospheric. Inside the second cave, K snaps away for all he’s worth; meanwhile, I have decided to leave my digicam in the suitcase until the last night. He creates “visual essays” on top quality slide film – I do cheerful point ‘n snap people shots, when we’ve all had a drink or two. I call this “complementary skills”.

The overnight sleeper train from Hanoi to Hué starts off as a giggle, and ends up as an ordeal. It’s a giggle while we’re drinking beer and playing cards; it’s an ordeal when we realise that the air conditioning in our compartment is malfunctioning. Through the night, the compartment grows progressively hotter and stickier. On the top bunks, where it’s marginally cooler, Brad Pitt and I manage to doze fitfully, after a fashion. On the lower bunks, where it’s roasting, K and Jennifer Lopez get no sleep whatsoever.

Leonardo de Caprio has researched, written up, copied and distributed a “suggested walk” round the narrow streets of Hanoi’s Old Town, so K and I give it a whirl. It’s a revelation – especially the street markets, which are so easy to miss otherwise. Everywhere you go, families are sitting on the pavement on those dinky little kindergarten chairs, tucking into the freshest looking, most exotic, most delicious food you’ve ever seen. It’s a nation of food lovers. It’s our kind of place.

Before the holiday, I read an article about Hanoi titled A Day in the Life of Hang Bo Street, which perfectly sums up the experience of walking through the Old Town. In particular, I am struck by the way that entire streets are given over to shops which all sell the same merchandise: paper lanterns, Chinese medicinal herbs, cooking implements, motorcycle seats. It must have been the same in medieval England.

For although the country now appears to be largely Communist in name only (they have had their own glasnost/perestroika), and although the spirit of free enterprise clearly prevails, there is still a strongly overriding spirit of co-operation to be found. No-one seems to have thought of opening a paper lantern shop on a different street, to corner the market in a new part of town. It just wouldn’t be fair play. What’s more: if a storekeeper has run out of a certain stock item, it is more than likely that a neighbouring storekeeper will lend him some of his own stock to sell, until the next delivery. How strange and wonderful is that to a Western sensibility?

Vietnam is also a country of artists. There are art galleries everywhere we go. To our surprise, most of the paintings are heavily influenced by the old French school – Gauguin, Chagall, the Impressionists. The period of French colonial rule has clearly left an impact – and of course, a French street scene must seem as exotic to a Vietnamese sensibility as the Far East does to the likes of us. However, these influences are generally a little too heavy-handed for our liking (although we do eventually start to “get our eye in”).

Therefore, we seize upon the works of Le Thiet Cuong (hanging in a chic little galley on To Tich street) with particular delight. He is part of a new generation of Vietnamese artists, who are at last finding their own visual voice (if you, er, see what I’m saying). True, there is a marked Paul Klee influence, but there is also something identifiably Vietnamese about Cuong’s work (this becomes more apparent as the trip progresses). We buy a canvas, which is taken off its frame and stretcher, and securely rolled up for us, as well as his monograph.

In the afternoon, a long coach drive up to Halong Bay, and our first real experience of Vietnamese road etiquette. Of which more later, but suffice it to say for now that, if you have ever been in a car in Malawi, then nothing that Vietnamese traffic can throw at you can make you so much as flinch. While the rest of our group gasp and cover their eyes at each fresh potential “incident”, we sit there stoically, keeping faith.

I am going to have to learn how to eat fresh crab better than this. Meat is flying everywhere, except into my mouth. My fingers are stinging with the juices, and from repeated jabs from stray fragments of claw. I am getting stressed out with the effort, while next to me, K is doing a superbly professional job. Smug bastard!

I also appear to be back on the cigs. Oh well, it’s a holiday. Over here, Marlboro Lights are anything but light. In fact, they’re delicious. Long, stong and pure, with none of that horrible rancid chemical aftertaste. Could this have anything to do with the multinational tobacco firms seeking to penetrate new markets by first getting them all hooked on the decent stuff, before downgrading it to the shit that the rest of the world smokes? I really couldn’t say.

Conceptually, Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum is very much like the Lenin mausoleum in Red Square. You stand in line for ages, and eventually you’ll get to file reverentially past a recumbent waxwork, in 30 seconds flat. Except that the Lenin mausoleum looks like a mere Portakabin compared to Uncle Ho’s vast edifice. I guess this means that – when it comes – Fidel Castro’s will be the size of a football stadium. Gotta keep up, boys!

Actually, I shouldn’t be too sneery. Filing past the body of the spiritual father of modern day Vietnam was a surprisingly moving experience. I definitely felt some sort of ocular pricking sensation, as I thought to myself, “Well, Ho old boy – you did it, didn’t you? You saw off Uncle Sam! Respect!”

This serves me right for never researching stuff in advance (I like the thrill of surprises too much, you see – nothing to do with congenital intellectual laziness at all, honest). As I later found out, Uncle Ho actually popped his clogs in 1969 – well before the routing of Uncle Sam in the mid-1970s. So the ocular pricking was a tad misplaced after all. Ah well, plenty more chances for that sort of thing later in the trip.

As for Hanoi’s Ho Chi Minh museum: never before have I visited a museum that was quite so stark, staring bonkers, albeit in a wholly endearing way. They had clearly given some Vietnamese Stephen Bayley type complete conceptual and artistic freedom to do whatever he wanted, and the result was…bizarre. Instead of a boring old chronological biography of the great man’s life and times, various attempts had been made at “symbolic representations” of the preoccupations of his era. There was a lot of badly reproduced Dada/Surrealism – giant fish, that sort of thing – on account of Ho’s early years in Paris. Unfortunately, it all looked like a poorly executed GCSE art project. There was a giant bowl of artificial fruit, resting on a wonky table, to represent “the spirit of the youth of Vietnam”, or some such. No, me neither. Great fun, anyway.

In the evening, we sit on tiny plastic kindergarten chairs on the pavement (these are ubiquitous, throughout the entire country), and witness our only street brawl of the trip. Predictably, it involves a drunken Englishman watching the football on TV (English soccer is big in Vietnam). No police arrive, and the brawl soon sorts itself out. We never really see many police. The country is so peaceful, and so crime-free, that they don’t seem to be needed much.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), which opened just 4 years ago, is quiet, spotlessly clean, and the most beautiful airport building I have ever been to. The architectural design is dramatic and harmonious, and I feel like I’m in a Wallpaper* magazine spread.

In Hanoi, the members of our tour group introduce themselves to each other. This is our fourth trip with Explore Worldwide, and it becomes immediately apparent that this is the best group yet. We gel almost instantly. If there is any animosity between any of the group members over the next two weeks – which I doubt – then it is kept very well hidden.

During the second week, we all cast ourselves in the film version of the holiday – a classic murder mystery, with group members disappearing one by one in grisly circumstances. The cast list reads as follows.

Leonardo De Caprio (tour leader). Best tour leader we’ve ever had, by miles and miles. Handsome (very), friendly, easy-going, personable, sensitive to the needs of the group, committed, organised, efficient, knowledgeable, and did I mention handsome?

Brad Pitt (pop music TV producer) and Jennifer Lopez (teacher). Pop music celebrity gossip ahoy! Actually, I was admirably (and uncharacteristically) restrained in this area (sorry, Chig). I did find out this much, though. More friendly, genuine and down to earth than you’d ever expect them to be: Victoria Beckham, Steps. Demanding prima donna bitch from hell: Suzanne from Hear’say. Worst case of acne you’ve ever seen in your life: Ricky Martin.

Steve McQueen (architect) and Nicole Kidman (teacher). We bonded over art and design type things.

Gabriel Byrne (cattle farmer) and Demi Moore (GP turned public health policy maker). From Western Ireland, and on their honeymoon with 11 complete strangers.

Brenda Blethyn (teacher) and her colleague Bette Davis (teacher). Living in North West London, Jewish, gregarious, hilarious and razor-sharp, Brenda reminded me so strongly of a certain London blogger that I actually had to drop the blogger’s name into the conversation, just to check whether they knew each other (they didn’t). Bette Davis came down with a nasty eye infection halfway through the trip, and had to spend the second week wearing dark glasses at all times; this gave her an appealing “woman of mystery” allure.

Terry-Thomas (army major). Took him a while to twig that K and I were a couple. Don’t think he’d spent much time in the company of gay blokes before. Didn’t make a scrap of difference in the long run – the three of us remained firm drinking buddies throughout the entire trip, usually the last to bed most evenings.

Jeanne Moreau (former Bolivian revolutionary, now a schoolmistress at a top girls’ boarding school). One of our most consistently fascinating and well-informed conversationalists.

Ralph Fiennes (systems developer) and Richard E. Grant (company director). Two drunken poofs who liked their food.

Leonardo De Caprio takes us outside, onto the busy street, and shows us how to cross the road. This is basically a triumph of faith over instinct. As there are never any gaps in the traffic, you simply have to step out into the road and keep walking at a steady pace. Miraculously, the traffic will somehow weave round you. It’s counter-intuitive, and initially fairly terrifying – but it works.