After exploring Hanoi for a few days it was time for the four of us to head to Halong Bay. I first saw images of Halong Bay on an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and it looked like something from another world. We knew it was something we could not miss. When we got to Vietnam and started talking to other travelers a lot of people started telling us that Halong Bay wasn’t worth it; that it had been…
Picking up where I left off: when we finished our cave trek in Phong Nha we were driven back to the tour headquarters where we were able to take a quick (cold) shower, change and get ready for our overnight bus to Hanoi. Exhausted from two days of trekking, we slept surprisingly well on the bus ride, waking up to shouts of ‘Hanoi! Hanoi!’ from our driver. When we stepped off the bus at 5:30 AM it was still dark…
Two weeks ago Dan and I embarked on the most challenging and rewarding adventure of our trip thus far: cave trekking in Phong Nha National Park. Right around when we started doing research for our trip to Vietnam a girl I knew in college posted on Facebook that she was heading to Southeast Asia and asked the social media universe for advice on what to do when she got there. One of her friends commented on her post recommending an…
When we got on the bus to from Hoi An to Hue it almost immediately started to rain. When we got off the bus in Hue it was still raining and quite cold. We later learned that the Hai Van mountain pass between Hoi An and Hue essentially divides north and south Vietnam into two distinct climates. Even though Hue is less than 80 miles from balmy Hoi An, suddenly it was winter. The fact that it did not stop…
Before I talk about Hoi An itself, getting there was an adventure that seems worth describing. It started with a moto taxi from our homestay on An Binh to the ferry landing. Our homestay host had arranged a bus for us to get back to Ho Chi Minh City. He told us to take the ferry accross the river and to cross the street when we get to the other side and a shuttle would pick us up. We had…
When we arrived at our Homestay on An Binh Island we heard cheering and yelling coming from the next door neighbor’s house. Our host smiled and explained that they were watching “the football match” (football meaning soccer, of course). Later when we were relaxing in hammocks we noticed some of the younger members of our host family circled around a laptop watching something intently and occasionally jumping up and shouting. When they noticed us staring they explained that Vietnam was…
One of the things I found most interesting about Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) was the scooter/motorbike culture. HCMC spans 2096 square kilometers, has 8,000,000 people, and what feels like twice that number of motorbikes. That’s a big city. That’s a lot of people and a lot of motorbikes. I had been warned, both by friends and by travel guides, how hard it was to cross the street. I was ready for this though. I’ve been to Bangkok and Beijing,…
After our day exploring the floating markets we decided to continue our stay in the Mekong Delta region at a homestay on An Binh Island. Our hotel in Can Tho arranged a shuttle to take us to the ferry station in Vinh Long where we boarded the ferry to An Binh. We wandered off the ferry looking confused and were quickly accosted by moto-taxi drivers offering to take us to our homestay. We were a little hesitant about jumping on…
Yesterday afternoon Dan and I took a bus from Ho Chi Minh City south to Can Tho, the biggest city in the Mekong Delta region, with the goal of getting up early and spending a day at Vietnam’s famous floating markets. We fist heard of the floating markets while watching a travel show on Netflix and it looked like an experience we couldn’t pass up. After some initial confusion about where where to buy bus tickets we successfully made it…
We are four days into our trip and I’m struggling to put my impressions of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) into words. We arrived at 1AM on Wednesday night after almost 20 hours of travel and I have to admit that, in my exhausted and jet lagged state, I did not love Ho Chi Minh for the first couple of days. We spent our first two days wandering around the city, trying to get our bearings and trying not to…