Vietnam
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Hot Days & Warm Hearts: A Week In Hoi An
The advice we’ve been given is that, when it comes to visiting the My Son Sanctuary, we have two choices: go in the morning when the coach parties are doing the rounds and visitor numbers are high, or risk coping with the intense heat of the afternoon when we’ll more or less have the place to ourselves. Seeing as we are one half of the “mad dogs and Englishmen” couplet we opt, of course, for the quieter, hotter alternative. As it happens, temperatures have raced up the scale since we’ve been in Hoi An and at the same time someone has adjusted the humidity setting so that T-shirts last about…
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To Hoi An: The Land Of Lanterns
And so we head to Hoi An, a place about which we have heard so many good things that this will be our longest stay in one place whilst in Vietnam, a full six days. Our original intention was to go by train from Hue to Da Nang and then taxi to Hoi An, but we got chatting to a guy in a cafe on the first morning in Hue who told us he can book a bus which will take us door to door for half the price of the taxi alone. Bargain. Bargain? Well, yes, but boy does the journey bring surprises. Sure enough, we get picked up…
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Adventures in Vietnamese Football
We depart briefly from our usual style of blog post to complete a report from our recent flirtation with football in Hue. Don’t run away, it may just amuse even those who aren’t football (soccer) fans. From the exterior the Stadium Tu Do looks like it could do with a bit of a facelift. Built in 1930 by the French who unimaginatively named it Stade Olympique, it bears all the hallmarks of a stadium which has received minimal investment since its creation. The ticket office is a little plastic table out in the street where a tiny ageing lady sells match tickets, pineapple chunks on sticks and bottles of water.…
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Tam Coc to Hue: Inside The Imperial City
The climb to the dual peaks of Hang Mua is a hefty ascent of over 500 steps which are so irregular and uneven that coming back down is almost as tricky as going up, but the magnificent views from the top make every bit of the effort worthwhile. Sweeping panoramas across the lush green paddy fields, towering karst limestone hulks and twisting rivers lead the eye eventually to the urban sprawl of Ninh Binh city. These views hammer home just how much water there is here: villages are islands and roads are causeways. At Hang Mua, gardens have been laid at the foot of the hills and a few cafes…
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Halong Bay-Hanoi-Tam Coc: Towards Stunning Scenery
The look and sound of a wet road and the repetitive whine of windscreen wipers are inextricably linked to my memories of childhood Saturdays, and as we make our way back to Hanoi from Halong Bay in the “limousine bus” this particular Saturday is doing its best to trigger those memories. We knew to expect inclement weather during this spell, it’s that time of year here in the north. No visit to Hanoi is complete without a trip to Train Street, so, given that we are passing back through the city at a weekend when there are more trains scheduled than at other times, we play the game of grabbing…
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Halong Bay
Sunshine greets us in Halong Bay and even that one simple fact is different from the miserable days when we bowled up here before, with the world starting to close borders and the grip of a pandemic stretching its dirty fingers everywhere. Back then, this entire place was a ghost town, just us two and a handful of others about to start the mad dash home. It was a hazy grey that day with a mist hugging the silent sea and all the tour boats waiting forlornly at anchor. Vietnam was already shutting down and tourist spots like Halong (or Ha Long) Bay had been among the first to have…
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Hanoi Revisited: Early Days In Vietnam
It’s funny how things even up in the end. After the tortuous India-Nepal border crossing, entering Vietnam is a dream. Our 4-and-a-bit hour flight from Delhi leaves before midnight and lands 5am local time, and at Hanoi we hit an empty airport, a passport check that takes thirty seconds, and a computer system which knows we already have our visas sorted. A matter of minutes later, we’ve bought and activated a Viettel SIM card, grabbed 3 million dong from the ATM (no really) and are on our way into the city. “Massage massage” call various tiny ladies on even tinier plastic stools outside each of the parlours in the tight…
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Run For Home: When COVID Began
Many travellers faced a panic run for home as the world shut down as the seriousness of the pandemic began to sink in. This is our own story of March 2020, when COVID began…. We walked hand in hand back from the deserted seafront and past the desolate locked hotels, trying to eke some romance out of the ghost town which surrounded us. Murky grey mists hung over the flat calm sea dotted with idle tour boats anchored out of harm’s way. As we turned the last corner towards the hotel, a figure in the street ahead was gesticulating wildly, arms waving in the air, his movements frantic. It took…
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Making Roots And Planning Routes
It’s fair to say that we’re getting a bit restless. Here in Side it’s a little bit like becoming becalmed at sea, eager to press on with this voyage and even more eager to make more voyages in the future. Settling into a single place for an extended stay was always on our agenda, but probably not for several years yet. It’s an experience we’ve added to our repertoire rather earlier than intended, but then our travel in 2020 has been a very different shape from the original picture. Until COVID intervened and blew our plans apart, our intention after retiring last Christmas was to travel for around four months…
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Escaping COVID: Our Next Move
Our regular readers will know that we retired at the end of 2019 to pursue our long held dream of full time travel. Unfortunately the obvious intervened and we were forced to abandon our trip after just 7 weeks of what should have been endless exploration. UK lockdown followed. As the slight easing of restrictions started, we took full advantage of the so called travel corridors and have just returned from 5 weeks touring Croatia, which was more than fabulous. We’re now nearing the end of the 14-day quarantine which was imposed just a few days before our return from that trip. These 14 days have naturally felt pretty dull…
