Vietnamese incense sticks

After travelling two hours, David discovers the location was so much smaller than expected, and then weather took a turn for the worse...

- DAVID CLAPP

Have you ever looked at a house on an estate H agent's website, then when you viewed the house, find out it's much smaller than you'd thought, and realize you were the victim of a super wide-angle lens? I'm sure it's happened to us all. This was the case when I arrived at a surprisingly compact and bijou incense factory in Vietnam, and what happened afterwards prompted some super fast decision making, and arguably the best shot of the trip.

It's the beginning of August in Vietnam and Rach and I have arrived in Hanoi. We are going to join a tour with my friend (and fellow Canon photographer) Julian Elliott, taking in as many cities that coincidentally begin with the letter H. The huge metropolis of Hanoi is first up, but we will soon clock up Hue, Ho-ChiMinh and Hoi-An.

After arriving a couple of days early we have endured two solid days of torrential rain. Surprisingly, it has been welcome relief from this summer's drought, but after wearing a rain cape during a storm, my sodden trainers have lead to suspected trench-foot. The novelty is wearing off fast.