A bustling, colourful, perfumed strip of a country which once visited leaves you with an understanding of the adversity and struggle its people have endured over the centuries.

Having travelled to Vietnam several times now, each and every time the emerald lushness of its scenery and the deserted beaches, its chaotic cities and the never quite finished roads only make you love this country all the more.

From the south you have the Mekong Delta with flitting boats and ferries, you can only be entranced by the power of the river and the grace and purpose of the people absorbed in its rhythms. Nothing we know in Europe prepares us for such an mystical waterlogged world of the delta, a stream so abundant and all-providing, a true river of life for its millions. Crisscrossing its pale-brown waterways on crowded boats and ferries, I am moved by the grace and purpose of people absorbed in its amphibious rhythms, journeying, planting, harvesting and netting. In this paradise for fish lovers, I did my bit. Eating fish, eel, shrimp or crab at every meal.

The lush jungle country edged to one side with an almost continuous slither of soft sand and on its others fractious borders with old sparring partners of Laos, Cambodia and China always meant it was never destined to have a quiet history. This history which still lives on gives you glimpses of a different life with monks worshipping their deities and oxen ploughing fields oblivious to the sands of time.

The bustling cities with a thousand mopeds and their five thousand passengers in every street all on their way to or from the busy markets, where western commerciality is embraced amongst this ‘communist’ country gives an eclectic mix of the old and new. Barbers shops at the side of the road giving customers a shave with a cut throat razor and amazing markets full of smells and colours which just assault all of your senses, surely no where else can you just wander and stare with such amazement at their ‘everyday life’. The architecture is a crazy mix of Russian influenced government buildings and marching squares, French colonial tree lined streets with grand facades and Asian temples and ramshackle buildings making every corner or view different from the last.

And although the dark deeds of the past still cast a shadow, the young of Vietnam are eager to face the future with an ear to ear smile.