Tag: Vietnam
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Saigon
The train ride from Mui Ne to Saigon was par for the course for the developing world: people selling weird foods, a disgusting toilet, and really pretty scenery to watch for hours. After arriving at the train station, we hopped in an Uber to our guesthouse and got our first taste of Saigon traffic. As we lurched and crawled our way through thousands of motorbikes, bicycles, cars, carts, and pedestrians, I wondered to myself: “Oh shit, it’s not going to be like this everywhere, is it?” Answer: yeah, it’s like that everywhere. After we checked in to our cute guesthouse, got…
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So That’s What They Mean by “Canyoning”
Back in November, after the trip itinerary was finalized, I knew that I wanted to schedule at least one full-day excursion in Dalat. I told myself I would research options once I was on the road, but ended up being busier than I thought I would be, so Laurie offered to look into it. She did some research and sent me a link to a “canyoning” adventure. I assumed “canyoning” was some cute Vietnamese synonym for “trekking” or “hiking” – but in a canyon, obviously – so I signed off on it. Truthfully, I didn’t actually open the link, but…
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Dalat and Mui Ne
With my work finished for the year and our time in Chiang Mai at an end, Laurie and I met at the airport on a Sunday morning for our flight to Vietnam. During the hours and hours of travel research and obsessive flight searching that preceded this trip, I had found a direct flight from Chiang Mai to Saigon. It doesn’t operate every day, but it saves time and money compared to flying through Bangkok. Being the holders of e-visas, we were confused about how to proceed after landing in Saigon, but we figured out that we could enter any…
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Southeast Asia Part Oh Who’s Counting Anymore
Another December, another trip to Southeast Asia! Shocker, right? Having used only two weeks of vacation the entire year, I decided in September – while in Beirut, actually – to embark on another winter adventure. If you’re wondering why I keep doing this, see my post from last year because the reasons are just as relevant today. Given the success of working remotely last year and the appeal of being able to extend the trip, I pushed my luck a bit with my manager and told him I’d be gone for five weeks: three weeks of working remotely and two weeks…
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Hanoi and Ha Long Bay
Hanoi After a quite decent night of sleep, further extended by a multi-hour delay due to track maintenance, we grabbed our luggage, disembarked, made our way through the crowds, and were promptly scammed by a taxi driver while trying to get to the bus station. Clearly we didn’t realize we were being scammed at the time, but it happened. I hadn’t done my homework with respect to researching Hanoi public transportation (mistake #1), so when a driver approached us offering a metered taxi, I agreed without walking to the street first (mistake #2). In other countries in Asia, a metered…
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Da Nang, Hoi An, and Hue
Da Nang Since we were rapidly fleeing Cambodia because the heat and humidity were too much to bear, we decided to skip the similar climate of southern Vietnam, start in the middle of the country, and finish in the north. Our Vietnam travel plans were thrown together at the last minute (again, because of our sudden intolerance of the weather), so we paid a travel agent in Siem Reap to handle our Vietnamese visa, then flew from Siem Reap to Da Nang, a mid-sized city home to Vietnam’s third largest international airport (after Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi). Our…
