The bus journey to Kunming was less exciting than the train ride to Kaiyuan, but was nevertheless very atmospheric. It was quite a small bus with maybe 20 people on it. They all wore thick, warm coats, and looked like important working people. They sat quietly, in a disciplined way, with their hands lightly resting on top of each other on their laps. No chitter, no chatter, no spitting in the aisle, throwing rubbish out the window, or the like.

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The Journalist enthusiastically showed me round Kaiyuan in the evening. It’s a clean, bright, bold place. With wide boulevards, and cruising cars. Lots of pucker shops, but not at the gluttonous extremeties of a Ho Chi Minh City department store, these were clearly targetted at a substantial middle class. People were all smart and confident.

My slightest whim was catered for by The Journalist. For example, I had trouble looking up a word in my phrasebook, and had indicated that I needed to buy a dictionary soon. Next thing I know he was confidently asking all sorts of people in the street for directions, and we arrived at a bookshop. It did indeed have English-Chinese dictionaries, but I thought I’d wait for both better choice and advice in Kunming. So, he took me to another bookshop, which had a different choice. I had to say “Kun-ming” very clearly, and indicate that I quite wanted something to eat.

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The train journey along the Red River from Vietnam into 云南 province (Yunnan, Cloud South) is stunning. I embarked at 河口 (Hekou, River Entrance) , the border town, armed with only half a bottle of water and no food. The Playboy kindly met me in the morning, albeit half an hour late. I’d given up and gone to the station on my own, but he found me half way there. To get in with the spirit of things I checked to see if he’d been with a girl, but he denied it. He helped me buy a ticket and get on the train. Immediately the station was impressive, clean, organised, with neatly tended plants. A security guard searched my luggage before boarding. The Playboy wrote a note in Chinese to help me later on with the second leg of the journey, but I put it away thinking that with my phrasebook I wouldn’t really need it.

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The population of all the other countries I’ve been in during the last three months (Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam) is about 200 million. The population of China is about 1250 million. If I took the perhaps reasonable attitude of spending time in a country proportional to the number of people who live there, then I’d have to spend the next year and a half here.

When I got to the border town of Lao Cai, I had one day left on my visa so headed to Bac Ha to see some countryside Vietnam. This is the upcoming place (now Sapa is getting too self-contaminated by the tourists) to look at the beautiful mountain scenery and check out the ethnic minority hill tribes. Midweek, when I was there, it is completely empty, and I didn’t see another white person for a whole day until I found two on the bus back to Lao Cai. At the weekend there are colourful markets to which people come down from the hills, and some tour groups arrive to photograph people in their traditional costumes.

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Last weekend, Nat took us further along the coast to Cam Pha just east of Halong bay. The area is where they mine coal, and it adjoins the beautiful Bai Tu Long bay which is just as fantastic as Halong. I predict that within a few years Lonely Planet will tell everyone to go there for the authentic experience and skip Halong, then in another ten years it will be completely touristy. We went up to a cave where the guide kept pointing out dubious animal shapes in the rock which Nat had to translate from Vietnamese. Bizarrely, at the end of the cave there was a big open area with a huge atmospheric bar and no doubt karaoke if you come at the right time. On the Sunday we went to another island in mid-development off Halong bay and saw a dolphin show. I haven’t seen dolphins before, and found them really amazing. I was surprised by their strength, and also impressed by the agility of sea lions.

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I spent the last two weekends with people from the expatriate community; first in Halong bay and then in Hanoi. Being an expat is pretty different from being a tourist. You are away for so long without the constant newness of travelling, so finding places with home comforts is more important. And western comforts are very much available in Hanoi, and in a form even in Halong.

If you work in Vietnam and are on a European wage, then locally you’re very rich. For $30 a month you can employ a full time maid to do your cleaning and washing. The office by necessity employs cars with drivers to transport staff around, but they also get to use them in the evening and at weekends. No need for taxis or to buy a car.

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Vietnam has been ravaged by first of all war and then the poverty of an undeveloped economy. Unlike Cambodia and Laos, or even Myanmar, it has managed to rebuild lots of infrastructure. The roads are universally excellent, with flat tarmac surfaces. Bridges are easily destroyed in war, but now there are many new ones, including a magnificent one that I went over in the Mekong Delta. I’ve seen maybe even a dozen new bridges being built in my short journey through Vietnam.

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Me, mindlessly propogate links? I’m going to make an exception to the byline at the top of this page. It relates to both Vietnam (where I am at the moment) and to the impending Iraq war, so perhaps we can forgive me.

‘Quiet American’ Irony article. Seeing the film “The Quiet American” in Vietnam months before its long-delayed opening in the United States, PNS Associate Editor Andrew Lam finds a country where activists and artists risk government crackdown to promote freedom of expression. Back in America, though, self-censorship is rising as an anti-war masterpiece is draped and a poetry reading cancelled.

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Last week, I made my way into the old North Vietnam. I went on a tour of the old DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) which separated the North from the South, and across which the Vietnam war was fought. The trees are starting to grow back, and replacement houses in all the bombed towns have been largely rebuilt. Our guide was a child during the war, from a village near the border. He was moved several times when fighting came too close, ending up as a refugee far away in the South, separated from his parents.

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This afternoon I saw some amazing tombs, also from the Nguyen dynasty. One of them was also used as a hideaway by the king - not happy with the imperial palace, he has a second palace next to his tomb. The high taxes and forced labour to build it were so detested there was an attempted coup during the building.

The tomb itself is magnificently landscaped, with a huge slab describing the kings life in his own words (in the old Chinese-like characters the Vietnamese used to use). He even says bad things on it about his reign, apparently! How someone, along with his society, can accumulate the power to build things like this is extraordinary, fascinating, and I believe quite wrong.

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