Today marks the halfway point in our time away from friends and family.

It's cool, not drizzling but not far from it. Misty, overcast. Many are wearing padded jackets. The streets are noisy and trumpet horns sound continually from early hours until after midnight. Not five seconds would elapse without irritating blasts in the tiny streets outside the boutique hotel, six flights and no lift, something like being in a lighthouse plunked into a noisy soup kitchen.

Wooden-shuttered windows, cooking smells from the street, people always calling out, cries from those selling wares as they walk along and every morning and afternoon, loudspeakers broadcast propaganda in Vietnamese for 15 minutes to everyone in the streets. The hotel staff said it is a police message. Others said it was the usual broadcast from the government. It is delivered calmly, routinely. Nobody seems to listen.

We are in the old quarter of Ha Noi. Also called "36 Streets" after the ancient town on this site where each street, or part, had the same goods for sale. Tinsmith street, Gold street, Puppet street... Streets changed their name according to what they were selling. Quaint and perpetually crowded in main areas, we never know what to expect in the next 10 seconds.

Footpaths are used to store goods, to eat at, to park motor scooters, to block with tiny booths for preparing food and selling goods. Those walking are forced onto the road, which is already crowded with cars, trucks, coolies carrying baskets on bamboo poles, scooters, and cyclopeds for the tourists. Vehicles shoot past, missing each other by millimetres. Everyone warns of their presence with horn blasts, the noisiest city I've ever been in, but I've not yet been to Sai Gon.

I've begged off going to the markets with Janet, wanting time to myself. The fall at the pool at Siem Reap has left her in some pain with sprained intercostal muscles. The ride to Para's hometown on a long dirt road full of pot-holes, has bounced her even more, but she's a trouper and little ever throws her.

Janet has the most enquiring mind I know, always has interesting questions to ask and always reading, chatting to everybody. Janet loves communicating, but today I would like silence and time just to be with me. In that she understands this mood, I am so grateful.

I like to sink into a torpor, trying to connect with something unique at each place we visit. Those who meditate really have a tremendous gift and if it is a ladder of 100 steps, I feel I still have both feet on the ground but maybe with one toe raised. To be at one with your surroundings, with no barrier between you both, is the goal. It takes immense strength and time to achieve, but first, one must have time alone.

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It is not so pleasant here. I miss Cambodia and its people: those dark, warm-skinned people who tumble over themselves to please and provide delight. You catch their eye when driving past them in your tuk-tuk and they burst into glorious smiles. I wave and they wave back. They want contact, and the poverty there encourages communities and liaisons and mutually helping each other. But here, in Communist North Vietnam, there are not the smiling faces so much and not the enjoyment in practicing English and not the desire to make contact. Americans, I would suspect, have damaged the image of the white man, for bombing their city has left deep-seated bitterness. I could be paranoic about this but I feel there is a resentment that will not easily be extinguished.

Janet gave some informal English lessons at the hotel in Siem Reap. They were just to a few staff members, especially the duty manager who slipped away to sit with her. Mr Boung Lai, whom we called Mr Moonlight as his name sounded like that, came especially close and he brought his young wife in on our last full afternoon to meet us. Janet and he were very close and leaving him was her saddest experience on this journey.

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And now, for some obscure reason, I will go to the Museum of War, maybe by taxi. It's marginally less dangerous than on foot and, besides, with an overcast sky, I get lost quickly. I'm wearing my favourite long-sleeved $8 Target's grey jumper, the sloppy one, thick black jeans, woollen socks and RM Williams boots. Just about right for the temperature. In Siem Reap, soon to be named Angkor City, it was three-quarter length shorts, sandals, T-shirt and a hat. Fruit smoothies all through the day and people saying hello, would you like to ride in my tuk-tuk. Here, they scurry past carrying their double baskets of fruit and goods for sale, looking like overburdened human scales of justice.

The thought occurred to me this morning to pack up and go back to Cambodia this afternoon, leaving Ha Long Bay and Saigon and the Vietnamese to themselves. Probably the wrong thing to do, now that we are here. But in Cambodia, I felt most like the person whom I would like to be.

The interminable noise is getting to me. The greyness, the claustrophobia of these tiny, over-packed streets and the remoteness of the people. Maybe Sai Gon will be a happier experience but that's not until next Thursday. Apologies to all if I sound miserable but I'm really not - too many strange things at once, I suppose, and not enough dark-skinned natives with ear-to-ear grins, wanting to say hello.