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Hue & Hoi An – Halfway to Ho Chi Minh

Hue Hoi An

The next stops on our journey south through Vietnam would be the central cities of Hue and Hoi An. Both are beautiful (especially Hoi An), but any readers hungry for photographs will have to wait a little longer. We’re currently marooned on an island in the South China Sea and have very limited access to the internet. That will mean that the next couple of posts will be text only, but I do pledge to revisit them and add some images when that becomes an option. Anyway, on to our continuing adventures in Vietnam… Continue reading “Hue & Hoi An – Halfway to Ho Chi Minh”

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Sapa and Tavan – Village of rice, rice baby

After scoffing down an early breakfast, we were collected by a mini-bus before being dropped off to our sleeper bus to Sapa. You’d have thought that we’d have had enough of sleeper buses after the last experience but, at a puny 6 hours, this was a relative blink of an eye. The journey was eased by the fact that much of the second half involved winding mountain roads which climbed up into clouds, looking down over the valleys below. It wasn’t long before the doors were opening into the northern city of Sapa. Continue reading “Sapa and Tavan – Village of rice, rice baby”

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Hanoi-ingly good

Hanoi

And so, after the bus journey to end all bus journeys, we had finally reached our first destination in Vietnam – Hanoi. After pulling into the bus station, we instantly hopped into a taxi and were on our way to our hostel. As the taxi pulled out and we entered the whirling sea of traffic, you are hit by one over-riding thought – “Shit! That’s a lot of bikes!”. Continue reading “Hanoi-ingly good”

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The Scouse of Laos

Laos

And so, our next destination would be the land-locked nation of Laos, situated right at the heart of South-East Asia. A surprising number of people that I talk to have never even heard of it, let alone knew it was a country worth visiting. This is all the more astounding when you consider that Laos is not some tiny back water. Laos is bigger than both Greece and Austria and has borders with 5 other nations, including China. Continue reading “The Scouse of Laos”

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Central Thailand – Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai

If you missed our trip to Bangkok, you can find the last blog post here.

The next day we woke up in plenty of time to get to the travel agency, where we would be picked up and taken to the bus stop for our journey to Ayutthaya. Due to our fragile state, however, we decided to stop for a cooked breakfast at a small bar just down the road from the hostel. This act delayed us to such an extent that we were soon sprinting down Khao San Road as fast as we could under the heavy burden of our backpacks. We arrived, panting, into the travel agents with a minute to spare and collapsed into the chairs inside. We needn’t have bothered. All departure times in Thailand, we were to find out, are very much approximate. Continue reading “Central Thailand – Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai”

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Bangkok – Our 1st stop in South East Asia

Bangkok

If you missed out on our final stop in Europe before heading to Bangkok, you can find out what we got up to in Dubrovnik here.

Our journey to Bangkok would be a long one. Having been dropped off at the airport at 6am, we would endure a 2 hour flight to Istanbul, a mammoth 13 hour layover in Ataturk airport and a 9 hour flight into Suvarnabhumi. All that would be capped off by an hour long taxi ride to our Hostel – Lub D Silom, a short distance from Lumphini Park in the east of the city. Continue reading “Bangkok – Our 1st stop in South East Asia”