Vietnam
Saigon
I have to say that I am quite surprised at the economic progress that has taken place in Saigon in the seven years since I was last here. There has been a great deal of development with new high rise buildings, cleaner streets, and less beggars on the the corners. The infrastructure has been improved […]
Read MoreVietnam Trip Report
Between September 13 & September 29, 2007 we spent some time in Vietnam with our friends Rob & Mary Neal and Max Dong who is an old friend from my National Service days. Max served as a driver at 1 Field Hospital at Vung Tau. I was simply too busy to post any blogs during […]
Read MoreVietnam – The Summary
These are the five things that we liked best in Vietnam (not really in any order) 1. Hoi An – A lovely old city with character and charm along with a fantastic hotel. 2. Vietnamese Road Manners – Miss River told us that if you tooted before hitting someone, it was OK to just say […]
Read MoreWater Puppets
We spent our final day in Hanoi taking it easy. The weather was cool and very hazy. It felt rather wintery and although we wore only our polar plus jackets, we noticed that all the local people were well & truly rugged up in coats and jackets. We spent the morning finishing any shopping that […]
Read MoreCyclo Touring in Hanoi
Well, the highlight of yesterday was a Cyclo ride through Hanoi. It was better than walking and really got the adreniline pumping. On a Vietnamese cyclo, the passenger sits at the front while the driver peddles from behind. As a result, you feel that you are at the mercy of every motor cycle, bus and […]
Read MoreHa Long Bay
Returned from Sapa on a very slow train which took 10 hours to cover about 340 km of distance. At first, we enjoyed watching the countryside go past but after a million rice paddies it was getting a bit boring. Hardly an inch of the countryside is out of site of a house or a […]
Read MoreSapa
Here we are in Sapa – a hill town not far from the Vietnamese / Chinese border. It is providing us with an interesting cultural experience in that we are able to visit some of the villages of the Black H’Mung and Red Dao ethnic groups. These are some of the people that the French […]
Read MoreHanoi & Uncle Ho
Today was a tourist day. We were met at the hotel by a very eloquent young lady who took us on a tour of Hanoi. The first amazing thing we found was that Hanoi has three quarters (not four as one would expect) – the Ho Chi Minh Quarter, The Old Quarter and the French […]
Read MoreHere in Hanoi
This morning we reached Hanoi after a 60 minute flight from Hue. I couldn’t get to an Internet Cafe there, so I am offering two bangs for the buck with a double report tonight. Hanoi was foggy and very humid. The temperature is only about 20 degrees, but it feels like it is much higher. […]
Read MoreHue to Go!
We left Hoi An by car and drove to Hue over the famous Hai Van pass. This is a very mountainous area of Vietnam and just north of Danang a spur from one of the mountain ranges extends down to the coast. There are quite a number of kilometres of windy mountain road over the […]
Read MoreHere in Hoi An
Well, here we are in Hoi An, a world heritage town on the central coast of Vietnam. I’m sitting in an Internet Cafe with a rather slow connection but it’s only costing me 5000 Dong per hour (AUD$ 45c). This is an historic trading town with some buildings dating back to the early 17th Century. […]
Read MoreMekong River Delta
We spent yesterday looking around Saigon. Very difficult to walk around in this temperature and humidity but when we get to the wilting stage, we retreat to our hotel for a bit of air conditioned comfort and a recharge. Today we went down to My Tho in the Mekong River delta and did roughly the […]
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