Author: Galavanting Geezers

Saigon

A modern bustling city…somehow not what we imagined but Saigon has some very expensive shopping as well as everyday people shopping. The price on that LG TV practically floored me until I remember that it was in Vietnamese dong! (It is actually $1,812.88) The city’s traffic is crazy, like Hanoi, but maybe a bit crazier….

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Hoi An

The loudspeaker starting blaring propaganda messages at 8am followed by over an hour of music and singing. Now this is not something you choose to listen to; this is something you are forced to listen to. Various messages came on several times during the day. Our hostess said they were reminding people to pay their…

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Hue to Hoi An

So feeling pretty confident in our moto scootering skills, we booked with a company to ride scooter from Hue (say wheigh) to Hoi Ann, a 140 kilometer (86 miles) trip over the Hai Van Pass. It was a terrifying, exhilarating, tedious, mind numbing experience. We stopped at a fishing village and Elephant Springs to swim,…

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Hue

The train to Hue was fine; uncrowded but warm even though we paid for an AC car. The 3 hour ride was partially spent watching the gamecast of the PSU game. Both on this trip and the train trip from Nimh Binh to Dong Hoi we saw miles and miles of flooding from last week’s…

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Dong Hoi

We had met a young German woman at our hotel in Ninh Binh and she was also going to Dong Hoi and so she and a young Brit shared a cab with us to Red Pepper Hotel. Our room is quite sparse and it is a shared bathroom but we have a front row view…

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Ninh Binh

The 2 hour train ride to Ninh Binh was very close to torture. A loudspeaker that was broken, of course, mumbled on and on very loudly. Then “Rail TV” came on and it was a comedy act and they ended up screaming and yelling. It was hot in there and not exactly comfortable. Then we…

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Ha Long Bay

Another 3 hour bus ride to board our small cruise ship for a tour of Ha Long Bay. Our ship is a little aged but perfectly suitable with nice little staterooms and a great sun deck. The capacity is about 20 and we are full. We were served a delightful seafood lunch with prawns and…

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Hanoi, Part 2

We had Dong (our home stay hostess) book us a tour to the Perfume Pagoda. We took a 90 minute bus ride and an hour boat ride to get there. You can walk up to the pagoda or you can ride the cable car. We had heard the walk is brutal so we opted for…

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Sa Pa

  We left at 7am for the 4 hour ride to Sa Pa in the mountainous area of north western Vietnam, famous for its trekking and its cable car up a 10,000 foot mountain. Sa Pa is a much busier town than we expected and there is a ton of construction. You pretty much have…

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Viet Nam

Hanoi The flight from Cochi to Kuala Lampur was horrible. First off, between walking into the airport and getting on the plane, we had to show our passport and boarding pass a minimum of 6 times; it might have been 7, we lost count! Then there was so much turbulence and it lasted for so…

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Kerala

Our taxi driver this morning was a jerk. He was supposed to be there at 4:45 and was not there on time and you could tell he was pissed he had to be there so early. We paid a fortune for the 10 minute ride to the Mumbai airport, much much more per mile than…

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Mumbai

We had to leave for the airport at 4:30am for our flight to Mumbai. Yuck! I was fascinated to learn that Bombay (Bombay and Mumbai are used interchangeably) was originally 7 different islands that they connected with stones and dirt. That is why you sometimes hear it referred to as the Island City. Mumbai is…

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