Today I said farewell to my Easy Rider guide Sinh after five days and 500 miles on the back of his motorbike, travelling from Dalat in the central highlands of Vietnam up to Hoi An, on the coast.

It was a great experience and the 58-year old father of six was a pretty cool guy to hang out with.

Having spent the best part of a week away from the backpacker trail I am now firmly back on it and already missing Sinh's easy company.

While the whole experience is fresh in my mind, here's a list of things (in reverse order of course) that I'll miss about cruising around on a motorbike with Nguyen Xuan Sinh:

Top Five Things I'll Miss About "Easy Rider" Sinh

5. The grimace and little shiver he gave whenever VCs or Viet Cong (basically the communist government people) were mentioned. Sinh really doesn't like the reds, although to be fair they did try to blow him up several times during the Vietnam (or American) war.

4. His initially rather disturbing, but seemingly completely socially acceptable, practice of playfully trying grab the genitals of young boys, usually when we're eating in some local restaurant.

3. His constant urging for me to tell random Vietnamese girls, in Vietnamese, that I love them – and often doing it on my behalf if I declined too many times in one day.

2. His one-time use of the expression "boom-boom" to mean the physical act of love. He told me one morning that a girl in the (seemingly above board) massage parlour at the bottom of the hotel we were staying in had offered him a massage and "boom-boom". When he told her he only had 10,000 dong (less than dollar), she apparently shrugged and said "okay". I'm glad to say he declined, which I'm sure his wife and numerous children will be pleased to learn.

And at the top of the chart:

1. His habit, on seeing a slightly larger than usual Vietnamese girl (i.e. small rather than tiny), of pointing her out, and saying "Look, big one". He'd then puff out his cheeks, stand up, and do an elaborate mime I can best describe as a fat man in a large rubber ring waddling down to the sea for a paddle.