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Our plans after our visit to Ho Chi Minh City were vague. Ideally we would have travelled further south but the weather wasn’t looking good. We were heading into the rainy season. As our flight home is from Bangkok we decided to go to Thailand instead. We were in a quandry about whether to head… Read more

I thought that as our second trip to Vietnam comes to a close, I would try writing something slightly different. I know that some people who read this blog are planning their own trips to Vietnam, so a few tips that I’ve picked up on the road may be of use. Please note, I can’t… Read more

We headed to the heat in Ho Chi Minh City, also still known as Saigon, by plane. Our other options had been further exploration of the highlands of Vietnam, which looked interesting but would have been time consuming. In an ideal world we would have hired motorbikes to do this, or to explore the southern… Read more

As soon as we stepped off the plane we felt the change in temperature. The climate in Dalat in May and June feels like English summer weather on a good day. It’s even cooler than Sapa is. At 1,500 metres it’s an old hill station where the French colonisers escaped in the summer months, like… Read more

We had arranged to spend one night in the old town of Hoi An. We’d already got a Grab taxi over there for an evening from the beach (a twenty minute ride) and we were looking forward to leaving the beach and moving on again. Our homestay at An Bang beach was cheap and friendly.… Read more

After our sojourn in Pu Luong we were relaxed and ready for a twenty four hour long trip to Hoi An in central Vietnam. The limousine bus from Pu Luong dropped us off at Hanoi railway station. We sat in Highlands coffee enjoying the air con – annoyingly all their drinks seem to have tapioca… Read more

We had a one night stay booked in a Hanoi hotel that we had used before on our return from Halong Bay. It was basic but cheap, so fine for an overnight. When we arrived at around 4pm our room wasn’t ready. On further investigation it was full of workmen replacing the entire floor. Although… Read more

We returned to Golden Times 3 Hostel at around 8pm and only had time to grab something to eat and bed down before our early morning pickup. I had been in two minds about whether to do the famed Halong Bay cruise. I was concerned about the environmental degradation that was going on in the… Read more

We were lucky as there had been heavy rain for the last couple of nights which had cleared the air and significantly reduced the temperature before our trek started. We arrived at the Sapa Sisters office in the nick of time and were introduced to Zhao Mai our guide. All the women who work as… Read more

The overnight train journey to Sapa wasn’t the worst I’ve experienced, but it wasn’t the best either. We were in a shared compartment with two quiet, well behaved Vietnamese girls and the toilet along the corridor was relatively clean. The train had definitely seen better days and rattled and clunked its way slowly through the… Read more