The final leg of the Reunification Railway and the terminus is Ho Chi Minh City. The journey started in spectacularly dodgy style. I get to Nha Trang railway station nice and early and I go over to the desk and the woman on the desk checks my ticket and says for me to wait in the seats until the train comes - usual story.

I have a chat to the guy next to me who is Vietnamese lives in Philadephia, I guess this is something that would happen a lot, I know where I live there is a large population of Vietnamese now in the second generation. Anyway a fair bit before the train is due the woman from the desk says I should go out on the platform - no one else does though she gets me a chair to sit on and the realisation dawns on me she doesn't work for the railway.

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The train trip south to Nha Trang was another overnight sleeper trip. This time it was our first encounter with Vietnam Rail First Class Sleeper Air-Con. It was pretty bad. Despite labour being so cheap in Vietnam they appear to not want to worry about leaving dirty sheets on beds and as one person leaves another arrives in the compartment to use the same facilities.

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The trip to Hoian (or actually Danang becasue the train doesn't go to Hoian) is the highlight of the train trip - the Reunification Express. It passes through an area where the mountains meet the sea. White crescent shaped beaches dot the coastline and the train cruises above the beach.

Well that's what its supposed to be like. However we had rain, a lot of rain and wind, so the brown murky sea crashed onto the brownish sand in huge breakers. In areas the sea smashed against the huge boulders throwing water into the air.

As for the train I was in coach seats 1st class and the train was awful. The drink tray in front of my seat was busted so was in the down position most of the way. A local guy tried jamming a plastic cup in it to try and keep it up but that only lasted for half an hour or so.

The trip was only a couple hours so the pain was only temporary. I arrived in Danang train station and quickly found a taxi that I shared with a couple from Belgium I had met in the train station in Hue. The fare was 500,000 dong to my hotel in Hoi An however the taxi driver was pretty keen to take us to the Marble Mountain for some sightseeing where, I'm sure his metre was have stayed in the "on" position.

Hoian though was a delight. French colonial building dominate the old town and there is a fantastic ambience to the place. This is maybe due to the lack of motorbikes and cars cruising around beeping their horns. The quiet without that was great.

Also the food was fantastic. We found a couple favourites that were owned by the same person - The Cargo Cafe' and Morning Glory Restaurant.

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After leaving Hanoi we had our first experience of the Reunification Express. We were in the Livitrans carriages - the most expensive and the first impression we got - cockroaches and plenty of them! Anyway other than the cockroaches it was an uneventful and uncomfortable trip.

Arriving in Hue was a nice culture shock because the incesant noise of Hanoi was over and Hue is a much smaller and laidback town.

The majority of hotels, backpackers and bars were in a small 3 or 4 block area and prices are cheap for food especially.

During the day we visited the Citadel which contained the palaces and capital buildings of the Nguyen Dynasty rulers of Vietnam from 1805 to 1945.

It is Vietnam's answer to the Forbidden city.

Also while we were in Hue we took a cruise on the Perfume River, It was a bit of a waste of time and money -although it wasn't expensive 100,000 dong I think. Our time might have been better spent going to one of the pagodas.

One other thing that was noticeable was there were more cyclo drivers offering prostitutes and marijuana in Hue than other places I've been in so far. Haven't been to Saigon or Vung Tau yet though!

Hue also has a number of pagodas you can visit plus tours to the tunnels in the demilitarised zone. Due to fact that we had been travelling so much the previous days we didn't do any of this and treated Hue as a bit of a rest and relaxation time.