An early start today, as we were woken up at 6:30am in order to eat breakfast before climbing to the top of Ti Top Island. With its 400+ steps, Ti Top Island offers panoramic views of Ha Long Bay from…
Junk boat in the bay
Refreshed after a fourteen-hour sleep, I departed early this morning on an overnight tour to Ha Long Bay. The so-called pride of Vietnam, Ha Long was recently voted one of the “new” seven wonders of the world. Even though I…
Back in Hanoi
Lest you think that travel is nonstop glamour and excitement, here’s a nutshell summary of my day today: My train arrived at the station in Hanoi just before 5am. I’d managed a bit more sleep on the return train, so…
More from Sapa
We woke up with the rooster’s crow at dawn, and promptly went back to sleep for another three hours or so. It was warm under the blankets and freezing outside, so getting out of bed was difficult, to say the…
Highlands, hiking and hill tribes
Party on the Sapa Express Last night, I took the overnight sleeper train from Hanoi to Lao Cai station, up in the mountains of northwestern Vietnam. The train was an interesting experience, to say the least. No announcements or information…
Education and brainwashing
Day two in Hanoi, and I haven’t been run over by a motorbike yet. Wow, I’m practically a local! I woke up early this morning and enjoyed another giant buffet breakfast. Being over my jet lag and fairly well oriented…
It’s a mad, mad city
Greetings from Hanoi’s Old Quarter, a maze of one-way streets and free-flowing chaos. Shops, hotels, travel agents, merchants, street stalls selling pho and other foods, taxi drivers, buses, tourists, locals going about their business… and the motorbikes. The millions of…
Chasing daylight
Hello from the Land of the Rising Sun, otherwise known as tomorrow. I’m here in Tokyo’s Narita Airport after a 14-hour flight during which the sun never set. That’s right – we left New York around noon, flew over the…
The early bird … is someone else
To put it mildly, I’m not exactly a morning person. So you might think that after all these years of travel, I would’ve figured out not to book 6:30am flights. But that would assume a level of intelligence that is,…
Some pre-departure practicalities
I leave for Vietnam in about a week, and I thought this would be a good chance to review a few pre-trip practical details. Will that be Visa or…? Those quirky Communist governments being what they are, you need a…