The cheaper, the better

Half way between Kunming and the border town of Hekou, laid flat on the sleeper bus at five in the morning I asked myself: "Why?". For about a hundred years Man has been able to fly but here am I on the most pot-holed highway in the world on a 40 centimetre wide bunkbed, legs cocked to fit, bouncing - literally bouncing - through the night on holiday. I did the calculation again: a flight from Chengdu to Bangkok and then on to Hanoi would have cost twice as much as the train, three times as much when you add the taxes which they always forget to mention until the last moment. No, there was no way around this being a holiday on a budget, what - if I was in advertising - what I'd call a "holiday experience".

Sleeper buses are regular coaches with the seats stripped out and three aisles of bunk beds bolted in their place. That gives you an idea of how wide they are; length-wise they're just short enough to be bloody uncomfortable. But they're undeniably cheap even if there's a price to be paid for saving money.

A few miles short of the border PLA soldiers boarded the bus and took everyone's passport; they were scrupulously polite to the couple of foreigners aboard and returned twenty minutes later to give them back. The border itself was quite dramatic: an iron bridge straight out of a spy movie spanning the Red River and then, a few more forms filled-in, you're in Vietnam.

The price for saving money was then exacted. The train from Lao Cai (on the Vietnamese side of the border) to Hanoi was to take 12 hours. It'd have been quicker to walk. And the 'soft seat' I'd paid for really was not at all soft. In fact I couldn't imagine what a 'hard seat' must have been like. Ouch.

I didn't like Hanoi. I tried; its narrow streets and tree-lined avenues owe something to the French and look very charming but the avenues, boulevards and rues are filled from gutter to gutter with the buzzing of a million 50cc motorbikes, the riders with their fingers permanently pressed on the horn which is made even louder because the narrow streets act as a kind of architectural amplifier. Blimey, I thought China was loud. But if China were a Heavy Metal band, then Hanoi would be a Speed Thrash Death Metal one.

Three hours from Hanoi on the coast is Halong Bay, right at the top of the list of things to see in Vietnam. Towering shards of limestone poke above the green waters in the bay, a kind of watery Guilin, which was made famous as the baddies' hideout in The Man with the Golden Gun. Undeniably impressive, the shine was taken off a little by being part of a sanpan procession around and through the rocks. Some tours last three days but I was happy with the single day trip, feeling like a carton of milk on the conveyor at a Tesco's checkout .

Onward and southward. The reason for choosing Vietnam/Cambodia for a holiday was that, after two miserable Chengdu Januarys, I didn't want to spend another cold, damp, shops-shut month and Chinese New Year in China. Above all, I wanted to be warm; even here Hanoi let me down so I was glad to get back on the train to head ever closer to the sun, first stop being Ninh Binh.

Ninh Binh is the base for visiting a land-based version of Halong Bay: Tam Coc, a nature reserve with ribbons of rivers twisting among skyscraping rocks and a similar procession of bored looking tourists desperately imagineering that idyllic holiday experience despite being Number 21 in a queue of a hundred boats paddled by local women whose only word of English is "Tip?".

Some aspects of Vietnam and Cambodia were a bit disillusioning. Very often the smiles of welcome disappeared as soon as you'd paid your money; and it was impossible to get reliable travel information because everyone had their own package to sell or their own deal with one operator or another. The hotel owner in Ninh Binh out-and-out lied to me about the cost and availability of train tickets to Saigon because he wanted to flog me a bus ticket from which he'd get a cut. The moral of the story: if you're on a tight budget always buy your tickets direct from the station!

So I was glad to get to Hue, about half way down Vietnam, the ancient capital of this ancient country. Hue may have a long history but it's also the jumping off point for visiting sights (or sites) from Vietnam's more recent past: the American War (as the Vietnamese call the Vietnam War, funnily enough). So it was another bus, another day, thrown together with a bunch of other tourists as I spent a long day dodging between key spots from the war.

It made me want to re-watch all those Vietnam War movies I've seen too many times already. We saw The Rockpile - a lonely peak overlooking the surrounding countryside, used by the Americans to keep an eye on things but ultimately given up as undefendable. Khe San was a vast U.S. base, again at the top of a mountain, which was besieged by the VC as a diversionary tactic before the famous Tet offensive of January 1968. Defended tooth and nail by the Americans, they ultimately withdrew when they realised it had little or no real strategic importance - a microcosm of the whole American adventure really.

And then at the coast we saw the tunnels at Vinh Minh where villagers dug in to survive bombardment from the sea and land. But more about tunnels a little later...

Still cloudy and chilly, I chose to skip the beaches of Nha Trang and take a giant leap all the way down to Ho Chi Minh City on another long distance train, a journey of about twenty hours. Since 'soft sleeper' tickets are only marginally more expensive than 'hard sleeper' ones in Vietnam I opted for a little bit of luxury - a compartment with just four rather than six bunks. This is where travelling by train beats air travel hands down. You not only get to see the countryside all the way north to south but you get to meet people like Hua, a student who was returning home from college. Her English wasn't great but, naturally, it was a damn sight better than my Vietnamese and she told me about her life, her family and her hopes for the future. She showed me photos of her mates and a rather disarming one of her wielding an AK47 rifle taken during her military training. Wherever you go in Vietnam war is never far away.

Next day I woke to blazing sunshine as the train hauled itself into Saigon station. (Yes, they still say 'Saigon' to denote the centre of Ho Chi Minh City; the railway station is 'Saigon station', the airport 'Saigon airport'.) It's a vast city (when taking the bus to Cambodia a few days later it would take an hour and a half simply to reach the outskirts) but I liked it so much more than Hanoi. It seemed more cosmopolitan, more modern and far better equipped to deal with the millions of people that populate it than Hanoi had done.

Highlight - although that's probably the wrong word - was a visit to the War Remnants Museum, once called The Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. As at so many sites in Vietnam there was a collection of American armour, machinery and ordnance that never made it home outside: tanks, jets, helicopters, huge 'seismic bombs' stood on end. I'd never realised just how vulnerable a helicopter pilot must have felt with just a sheet of glass between him and the enemy below. But the museum, of course, is about the Vietnamese victims and it was interesting to read and feel the sense of indignation that Vietnam still feels at the American intrusion into their country. More than that, there was plenty of evidence of why the museum had initially had its original name. Grotesque pictures of inhumanity - soldiers posing with the decapitated heads of Vietnamese soldiers - brought to mind more recent images of American soldiers in the jails of Baghdad.

Two hours' drive from the centre of the city there's an even more chilling reminder of the war. Centred on the village of Cu Chi the Vietnamese dug hundreds of kilometers of interconnected tunnels on up to three levels. It was from these tunnels that they conducted their guerrilla war with the Americans, even managing to burrow right under one of their largest bases to attack the enemy from within. They're grim though. Bent double in blackness, the clay walls damp, the floor slicked with dirty water, it was enough for me to struggle about 30 metres before escaping through one of the modern day exits, a twinge of panic fluttering inside. To think that fighters would spend weeks down there; and to think that the Americans sent soldiers down those stinking holes to flush the fighters out. Staggering.

And so on to Cambodia, one of the few countries whose recent history could rival Vietnam's for grimness.

Throughout Vietnam you can pick up what's called an 'Open Bus'. These are coaches which tramp up and down the country which you can jump on and off as you choose. They're also incredibly cheap. From Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh is just $10.

So that is what I did.

Cambodia struck me as being abut twenty years behind Vietnam in terms of development. Not bad considering it started at Year Zero not so long ago. More Indian than oriental, the capital - and the people - have a laid-back, almost Caribbean vibe; it's much less frenetic that the big cities of its neighbour.

For the penniless backpacker there's a great strip of cheap hostels next to the (mosquito infested) lake in the north of the city. $3 buys you a single room with a fan (and when you think of it, what more do you need?). During the trip I paid much more in places which delivered much worse value. It infuriates me sometimes how hotels just don't seem to give a damn, how they ignore the most basic things that'd take pennies to fix but which make a big difference to the experience of staying there: a remote control that doesn't work, TV channels that aren't tuned in, bathrooms awash with water that doesn't drain away or with rails and soap dishes hanging from the walls. Oh don't get me started.

Time was running out so there was a limit to how much I could see of Cambodia. Top of the list, of course, were the temples of Angkhor so it was back on the bus (there are no passenger trains in Cambodia) and up to the town of Siem Reap.

Plenty has been written about the temples, especially Angkhor Wat which is said to be the largest religious structure in the world. My biggest worry was having too great expectations. But it was sublime. How can something so vast, so colossal be so graceful, so elegant? Around every corner there was a new aspect to its immense harmony.

Even the restoration work is exemplary. They have only rebuilt structures if more than half of the original stonework is available; otherwise they leave the tumbledown stones to tell their own silent tale. I'd seen the same approach at the old citadel in the centre of Hue where the most evocative parts of the emperor's palace were those left as ruins in a sea of fresh cut grass which invite your imagination to fill in the gaps.

At Ta Prohm temple the balance of nature and the ruins is of a different order. It's as though the jungle is slowly swallowing the structure, reclaiming it, as giant tree roots crawl along and around the mighty stones like some great devouring dragon. This, incidentally, was the temple featured in Tomb Raider.

Then at Bayon temple there's the eery sight of the hyper realistic face of the king carved into the stones of the temple no less than 216 times. Outside, a majestic avenue straddling a moat is lined with more immense busts . Again, the scale of it all is mind blowing (I loved the Elephant Gate - a door to one of the temples about two or three metres above the ground opening apparently to nothingness but this was where the king would have alighted his elephant to enter the place); how could they even have imagined it let alone built it? They reckon it took a million men working every day for thirty years to complete Angkhor Wat.

One day is not enough to see Angkhor but it was all I had; this was just a recce for a future visit.

There was time though for one final indulgence: a day on the beach at Sihanoukville on the south coast. Given Cambodia's history I wanted to experience something of its future - a simply beautiful holiday destination.

So that's how this year's adventure ended. Who needs flights and fancy hotels? Just give me a cheap bottle of beer in the shade of the tropical sun and a lot of wonderful memories. Definitely one of my better holidays.

See more pics at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=216463&l=9f87a&id=589175623