Religion – Been there, Dunne that

Da Nang and Ba Na Hills

Walking Tour After a slightly terrifying morning biking the Hoi Van Pass, we arrived at our beautiful hotel in Danang. Danang is a big city, and a fairly new one at that, so in order to make the most of our two days there, we joined a walking tour that afternoon to make sure we got…

The Imperial City of Hue

Hue (pronounced Hway) was the seat of the previous emperors and also the nations capital until 1945. Hue has the benefit of being a fairly big city but very much has a non-city feel to it, with most of the it’s sites outside the city. We arrived in Hue after our overnight train from Ninh Binh and…

Ninh Binh

Vietnam isn’t a terribly large country, but it’s super long and going from the north to the south takes ages to do. We started in Hanoi and eventually wanted to fly out of Ho Chi Minh city (previously known as Saigon), but it’s over 30 hours on a train to go from one to the…

A Few Days in Hanoi

We spent 5 full days in Hanoi spread out over about 2 weeks between our trips to Sapa and Ha Long Bay. It was a great way to do it, as most tours of North Vietnam are based out of Hanoi anyway, and we found the spread out, relaxed pace to be a nice change….

Christmas in Hanoi

We flew into Hanoi from Vientiane on Christmas Eve, and arrived at about 5 pm that evening. Vietnam is a country which you need a visa for, and you can get one either on arrival or as an e-visa prior to entering the country. If you’re British, you are able to enter Vietnam for 15 days without…

Vientiane

After our horrific night bus journey to get to Vientiane (and a nap), we spent 2 days exploring the city. As the capital of Laos, I was expecting a lot more from Vientiane, and I have to say I found it pretty lackluster and boring. It wasn’t bad per say, it was just kind of…

Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang (say that 3 times fast) was our first stop in Laos, and it did not disappoint. Coming from Chiang Mai, there are 3 ways to get to get there, as we spent days debating each one before deciding what one we wanted to go for. Option 1 – the slow boat. This is…

Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai

After looking at various different options, we took an overnight train from Bangkok to Chaing Mai, which was surprisingly comfortable. It left Bangkok at 10 pm on Saturday and arrived in Changing Mai just after 11am on Sunday, which enabled us to have a fairly decent nights sleep and we were able to function the…

Ayutthaya

As we found ourselves with a few extra days in Bangkok, we decided to get out of the city for a day and head to Ayutthaya. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ayutthaya was going to be one of the places we stopped for a night en route to Chaing Mai before those plans were derailed…

Exploring Bangkok

We’d heard that it wasn’t worth spending more than 2 days in Bangkok, and after spending 5 days there, I sort of agree (but only partially). We flew into Bangkok on Monday from Krabi, and our original plan was to take the train on Thursday towards Chiang Mai, but stopping for 2 nights at various…