Happy days - 17p for a glass of 'fresh beer' at a bia hoi junction

Catch of the day - street-sellers sorting shellfish

Hanoi, Vietnam

Good Morning Vietnam - well it was good until a deafening sit-you bolt-upright in your bed clanging of bells woke us from our peaceful slumbers at an unearthly hour. We had landed at Hanoi Airport from Siem Reap, Cambodia, at 11pm the previous night, and our hotel had arranged for a driver to meet us there, which he did. Strangely, though, he had a pal with him - the first time we have experienced two people waiting to pick us up. To be honest, arriving for the first time in Vietnam on a dark mist-shrouded night and finding two guys, who spoke not a word of English, occupying the front two seats of our taxi was a bit disconcerting and we both admitted to feeling a little uneasy. We were well aware of the scams that operate around the airport - one of them involves taxis and minibuses whisking hapless tourists and travellers off to a similarly named, but altogether different, hotel to the one booked. Our imaginations running riot - we were feeeling whacked and the journey in seemed endless - we thought at one stage we might be heading towards northern China never to be seen again! Silly us. Driver and mate, who sniffed, snorted and coughed almost non-stop, deposit us safely at our hotel in a dark Hanoi street and, despite it looking all locked up, there is someone at reception there to let us in. Shows us to our room - and proudly opens shutters to balcony which looks out on imposing Gothic cathedral of St Joseph's, architecturally looking much more English or French than Vietnamese. It's a serene moonlit evening, the street below us is quiet - and that peaceful easy feeling has returned. What our genial host has not revealed to us is that at 5am every morning the Notre Dame-like bells boom loud and proud for about 20 solid and earth-shaking minutes. Wake up Hanoi, it's time to get up - and no sleeping in for us either. After eventually rubbing the sleep from our eyes, we eat a quick breakfast before venturing out to the city's famous Old Quarter. We are about seven minutes walk away - and when we see the madness and chaos of Hanoi's major centre of commerce we are glad we are staying where we are - bells, or no bells. The OQ lies to the north of pretty tree-lined Hoan Kiem Lake and is the beating heart of the City of the Soaring Dragon. It's a maze of narrow streets, choked with thousands and thousands of motorcycles. The traffic and noise - a blare of honking horns - is unrelenting (even crazy Bangkok in traffic terms appears a backwater in comparison). Crossing any road here - particularly the wider boulevards which lead into the OQ - requires you to keep your antennae up at all times. Believe us, it's hairy out there, but we follow what the locals do - walking slowly and deliberately out into the traffic and allowing those motorbikes to go around us. One thing is sure as eggs - they won't stop for you, neither will they slow down, but they will do their best to avoid mowing you down. The worst thing you can do is to freeze mid-crossing. This is not recommended and could lead to a Hanoi hospital visit, or worse. It's not easy just walking straight out into the traffic, but unless you want to stay in your hotel room all day then you have to go for it. We do and, despite closing our eyes once or twice and praying for safe deliverance, we live to tell the tale. Surviving this urban jungle brings rich rewards - the Old Quarter itself. One thousand years old, this exotic and bewitching area oozes character from ever pore - rich in sights, sounds and smells. It simply pulsates with life. On every street there are hawkers selling their wares, while the aromas of sizzling food and spices on every corner make your mouth water. Despite the chaos - you must also step out into the road to avoid parked motorbikes and mopeds mounted on the pavements - the best way to savour and soak up this unique atmosphere is to walk (just be careful out there). Hanoi, though, is not just about the OQ. There is much more to it. Certainly one of the highlights is a visit to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Deep in its bowels in a clear glass tomb lies the embalmed corpse of modern Vietnam's founding father - and its people's most revered figure, communist ideologist and liberator from French colonialism. Our trip to the Ho's complex proves a bizarre occasion. Pre-viewing, we must register and leave our possessions, including cameras and mobile phone, at a reception hall. Hats are to be removed and dress must be appropriate (shorts and sleeveless T-shirts are a no no). Then it's join-the-queue-time to file past the body. As you do, you are aware that you are being watched all the time - and you are, by countless military guards - silent sentinels - in spotless brilliant white uniform. It's all very sombre and heavy, macabre even, joining this snake-like mix of part-Vietnamese, part tourist procession - the locals coming here in their droves to pay their respects to perfectly-preserved Ho, his face a whiter shade of pale and his hair and wispy beard silver grey. Very weird and surreal. Also weird, but a lot more fun, is Hanoi's Water Puppet Theatre, a colourful and ancient art form that is a sort of Punch & Judy show on water. Unique to Vietnam and set to traditional music, the stage is set in a tank of waist-deep water, the puppeteers - each of 11 is trained for a minimum of three years - control their characters (villagers, farmers, fishermen, water buffalo, horsemen and fire-breathing dragons). It's graceful and quite magical. Back in the OQ - after trawling the many markets, boasting everything from fake Ray-Ban sunglases and Rolex watches to authentic tribal wear and asssorted silver bangles, rings and suchlike - one of the best ways to relax is to pull up a plastic seat at a bia hoi joint where 'fresh beer' (light draught or microbrewed beer) is sold at around 5000 dong a glass (around 17p). The beer is indeed fresh. It's brewed daily and sold from steel kegs at bia hoi street junctions - backpackers and locals mixing aimably to sup copious amounts of the amber nectar. It would be rude not to join in - and so we do, with much relish. Lovely taste and lovely on the wallet too, so bia hois definitely win our vote - and it's been fun spending time sitting alongside the locals in a very convivial atmosphere. Ho Chi Min, water puppets, bia hois and motorbike madness - and lots, lots more - Hanoi is a heady Orient experience - where modern and medieval, not so much collide but fuse into one. It's energetic, frenetic, irritating and charming - one pot-boiler of a place. It's also utterly exhausting and polluted - Chris has donned a face mask in an attempt to combat the choking fumes - and four days here proves enough. Time to move on in search of some solitude then and where better to find it perhaps than on a traditional junk boat among the 3,000 island karsts (towering limestone rock formations) that soar out of the jade-coloured waters of the South China Sea. The islands lie in Halong Bay - a three-hour drive south of Hanoi. We have an early start. But no need to worry about setting any alarm clock. The bells of St. Joseph's will do the job.

Ancient world of wonder at Angkor's Banteay Srei temple

Cambodian children clamour to sell their trinkets to Chris

Reunion time with Sam and Polly at Siem Reap

The Temples of Angkor, Cambodia

Have flown into Siem Reap and donned our Indiana Jones hats to search, not for the Temple of Doom, but the awesome Temples of Angkor. Using Cambodia's top tourist destination as a base to explore, among other sacred sites, Angkor Wat, the eighth wonder of the world and the largest religious structure on Planet Earth - a completely realised microcosm of the Hindu universe. Find ourselves a sweet little French-run family guesthouse Le Tigre de Papier which sits on a red dirt track road - a veritable dustbowl - away from the beating heart of the city itself. Owner is a delightful laidback guy from Toulouse and his local Cambodian staff utterly charming. Nothing is too much trouble for them. Picked up at the airport by a tuk-tuk driver who charges us a very reasonable five dollars for a 15-minute ride to hotel. Introduces himself as Lacky, and asks us whether we would be prepared to let him be our driver over the next few days. Like most Cambodians we come across, Lacky has a winning smile and easy-going nature, so we strike up a deal with him to take us Indiana-style into the network of stupendous ancient monuments built by the mighty Khmers between the 8th and 13th Centuries. Angkor Wat, constructed 1113-1150 during the reign of King Suryavarman II, is the stuff of legend - and we see it in all its glory at sunrise, Lacky having spirited us there in his tuk-tuk after 5am (Aaaargh) pick-up. It is the grandest and most sublime of all the Khmer temples. Dedicated to Hindu god Vishnu, it is an architectural masterpiece, the magical five tower structure surrounded by an enormous 190-metre wide water-filled moat. After crossing a broad causeway we enter the temple - its galleries, mysterious corridors and terraces climbing skywards take our breath away. The sheer size and scale - total area of almost 200 hectares - defies belief. While the moat represents the mythical oceans surrounding the earth, the succession of galleries symbolise the ranges that surround Mount Meru, the home of the gods, and its five staggering towers (now we know where Manhattan's roots lie) the peaks. The wow factor is undeniable, but strangely, and despite its total and absolute majesty - it may be something to do with the swarms of visitors who throng to it (okay, we were there too) - Angkor Wat, we feel, has pretenders to its throne. Lacky is proving lucky for us and knows his way around some of the lesser-known sites built by a succession of Hindu and Buddhist kings. Among them are the enigmatic and complex Bayon, its 54 towers decorated with more than 200 huge smiling faces; the amazing Ta Prohm. which has been left as it was discovered in a jungle-like state (its pink and green-hued walls are covered in lichen and moss, while centuries-old trees wrap their branches like tentacles around its walls); and, last but not least - and our particular favourite - the tumbledown grace of Preah Khan, a maze of coal black corridors illuminated by glorious bursts of dazzling light at journey's end. Staring down them is like looking into a hundred mirrors - infinity perhaps. Linger long enough and you become aware of an almost hypnotic effect. Did the phrase light at the end of the tunnel originate here perhaps? It would not surprise us if it did. These were just some of the several highlights - the sublime Banteay Srei, boasting some of the best preserved stone carvings, is another unmissable gem. There are so many temples, both large and small, it's like an assault on the senses (in the best possible way, of course). We scratched the surface - tip of the iceberg - over three days, but to really get into the underbelly of this labyrinthine world would take months and months, if not years. All we can say is that in our short time here we gave the temples - as many as you could pack into any given day - our best shot (aching limbs surely the testament). We loved exploring this wonder world of stone - and learning about a civilization which created such spellbinding images and intricate and elaborate carvings. The good, unfortunately, has to be tempered with a little bad and the one downside comes with, what is in all essence, the begging of small children, pleading with us to buy some little trinkets from them ''for a dolla''. It's hard to say no to them - they are full of smiles and mean well. But there is also a sense of desperation about their persistency. We feel - rightly or wrongly - that they are being exploited by adults, sent to the entrances of temples to bring home the tourist dollar. Chris handles it well. John, while sympathetic to the plight of these poor (and they are truly poor) kids, finds the constant hassle hard work (maybe it's a guilt factor thing). Believe us, though, when you have heard ''Where you from, buy from me, give me dolla'' repeated constantly over a 10-12 hour spell your patience starts to wear thin. Being much the nicer person, Chris buys a few items from them at various temple sites. The problem is that two cheeky young ones can quickly multiply to 20 once your wallet comes out - all insisting that you buy something from them.

Also, while most are appealing, there are hints of aggression from others. A plague of locusts (albeit it without the destruction) springs to mind. but it's tough to refuse. Here we are Westerners with money in our pockets in a land where poverty has no margins. However much as we want to help, giving money to these kids is not the answer. We can't escape the feeling that this use of young people to sell knick-knacks and postcards is wrong and are not fooled into thinking that they get to keep any money handed over to them. Oliver Twist is hard at work in the heart of Cambodia, while Fagin waits in the murky shadows to count his fistfull of 'dollas'. Preachy? Maybe. It's just that we feel strongly about it - plain and simple. Over to Bob or Bono. Live Aid 2012? Anyway (rant over) after exhausting, but truly exhilarating, days climbing terraces and towers, clambering through ruins and remains, discovering hidden and secret corners - and fending off the unwanted attention of the, by and large, rather lovely local 'locusts' - our evenings are mostly spent recovering slowly in the bars and restaurants that make Siem Reap a lively place to stay. It was on the very aptly-named Pub Street (yup, believe it or not, it has a very Wind Street feel about it) that we enjoyed a reunion with young London couple Sam and Polly, who we first met in Fiji some seven months ago. Like ourselves, Sam and Polly are travelling the world (they are going at it full on for a year with an incredible itinerary that makes ours look like a two-week holiday in Barry Island). We struck up a great friendship in Fiji, so we were just so pleased to catch up with them all this time later here in, of all places, Cambodia. Several Ankor beers later (what can the brew be possibly named after?), some hearty nosh and comparing travel adventures - theirs are mind-blowing - we say our farewells and wonder whether we will meet again in Vietnam, next destination in South-East Asia for both the Walters and the Masons. They start the latest leg of their journey in the south, while we begin in the north. It would not surprise us were our paths to cross again somewhere in the middle.