After 6 weeks it was unfortunately time for me to leave Vietnam. Although keeping a tight schedule isn’t really a concern of mine at the moment, there are a couple of things I want to knock off the list and occasionally things need to be booked in advance; like my upcoming tour to North Korea in April. With the goal in mind to get from South East Asia to Amsterdam without using a plane, this meant that the logical move would be to spend March in China. […]
Ha Long Bay is one of those places that you can’t miss if you’re in the vicinity. It’s a World Heritage Site and a huge tourist attraction, bringing in thousands of foreigners each year. With all the talk around Ha Long Bay, I hoped it would live up to the hype. In Old Quarter in Hanoi, there are hundreds of travel agencies and billboards advertising one, two and three day trips to the bay. There’s so much information to be had, and thousands of reviews […]
Sapa is a town which is rather close to the Chinese border. It’s known for for its rice paddys as well as a selection of surrounding hiking trails, which are often sold as ‘packages’ with a local home-stay for accommodation. I visited Sapa for a week along with some of the fellow volunteers from VCV, where I’ve been teaching English. This is a photo I took from the top of a surrounding hill. The town itself lies at around 1500m above sea level. The bus […]
“Err… we eat the pets.” That was the response I got from one student, in my first ever class I taught, in Vietnam. The subject for the English lesson was ‘Companies,’ and I had been tasked with teaching the fundamental ideas and vocabulary behind limited liability companies, publicly owned companies, mutual funds… you get the idea. Part of this involved touching on charities and non-profits. The line above was in response to a question based around shelters; I probably shouldn’t have asked if they know […]
Following a brief visit to Saigon / HCMC, we travelled to Da Nang, which is a city approximately half way between HCMC and Ha Noi. Da Nang is close to another town named Hoi An, which is known for being home to some of the best tailors in Vietnam. Arriving at the airport after a short flight, we were soon beckoned forth by one of approximately 40 very eager taxi drivers to give us a ride. After being assured that his pricing would be spot […]
Xin Chao! (Hello, in Vietnamese). Well, I finally made it to Vietnam. I’ve actually been here for about 3 weeks, but I’m lagging behind a little on posts so I’ll cover off getting in to Vietnam and my short time in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon). Crossing the border from Cambodia was a breeze. The whole process took about ten minutes, involved a body temperature check, some smiling and a couple of dollars. The plan was to stay the night in the local border town of […]
The province of Sihanoukville had popped up in my searches, often described as a ‘party town’ but with a little less of the tourist swarming that has occurred to many parts of Thailand. We figured we may as well make our way there and check it out before heading to Vietnam. Doing a little more reading revealed the province was also home to a couple of islands, notably Koh Rong. After spending the last wee while inland, sea water would be a nice change. $7 and a […]
Following my travels to Siem Reap, the next logical destination was to head south-east to the capital and largest city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. As we were on a slight time constraint we took a direct overnight bus, which landed us there at just after 7am. As is often the case with taking public transport, local tuk-tuk drivers know the schedules and are conveniently waiting less than one meter from the door of the bus, ready to solicit your business and take you to your […]
To be completely honest, I really didn’t know what to expect of Cambodia. The first time I heard the name of the country was in early high school, when we did a small study on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime. I didn’t know how big the country was or where it was. It was a few years later, when I became a little more geographically aware that I realised it sits between Thailand and Vietnam, and after travelling to the former in 2014-15 […]
First off, sorry for the delay in a new post. I’ve been without my laptop as the one I took with me broke and it’s just too difficult to put together a proper update on my phone! Aaaaanyway, I’ve been in Vietnam for the last week but I’m going to backdate a couple of posts on here to cover off what I’ve been doing the last month or so. I’ll write about traveling from Thailand, through Cambodia and into Vietnam, and hopefully give a few […]
