I took this photo of a mobile fruit vendor in Hanoi in November 1998.

It was raining stair-rods and while us soft travellers took shelter, this lady needed to get somewhere and she was not about to let a monsoon stop her!

It was the time of Vietnam’s worst ever floods and had quite an impact on our trip, especially one particularly horrendous journey from Nha Trang to Hoi An.

All trains and planes were suspended, so we had to go by road. The journey would usually take around seven hours but took us fourteen, mainly due to the main bridge having been washed away and temporarily replaced with a single lane pontoon.

I will describe the whole excruciating journey in detail in a future post……