This visit to Cambodia was very different to the last. This time I was on an Intrepid Real Food tour, and I got to visit a bunch of different places around the country.
Category Archives: Vietnam
Happy Hoi An
(Posted retrospectively) We love visiting Hoi An. This is the fourth time and it’s not lost its shine, although every time we visit there is more development and bigger resorts and hotels. I’m glad it’s bringing money into the town.
Since R was leaving after three days so he could go back to work, we started our tailor stops with his requests, starting at Bebe. Since we were staying on the east side of town this time. we stopped at the flagship Bebe shopfront, which was very busy and businesslike. R ordered his items, but I didn’t really feel the joy so left it until the next visit.
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Fun in Da Nang
We’d been through Da Nang three times on our way in and out of Hoi An before, but not spent any time there, so this trip we decided to make a stopover before hitting Hoi An again. Good choice! Da Nang is similar in character to HCMC and Hanoi, and given it is the biggest airport in the area, it sees a lot of tourism (so it’s pretty well set up for people like me who don’t speak much Vietnamese.)
Continue readingHappy New Year in Quy Nhon
When we were planning our stop in Quy Nhon, we found out that it was a beach town kinda like Nha Trang, but less touristy, and they had great seafood. We didn’t realise this meant that very few Western tourists went there, so we were a bit of a spectacle. Walking down the street, people turned and watched us, and children and teenagers practiced their English by saying “Hello” and giggling. We even had one lady ask to take our photo. We felt very famous.
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Ho Chi Minh City
The last time we were in HCMC was in 2014 and I got pretty sick, and that coloured my impression of it, unsurprisingly. Happily, this time I was able to enjoy it much more and revise my first impressions.
Continue readingA Return to Hoi An (and much shopping)
It was a long travel day between Sapa and eventually reaching our hotel in Hoi An. Next time, I’d recommend a night in Hanoi in between, rather than mixing the 6 hour hilly drive plus a flight.
Hoi An is an old favourite of ours, gorgeous and seemingly the whole town is focused on food, massages and custom-made clothes. A pretty good focus, and we pretty much stayed within this purview!
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Holidaying in the clouds – Sapa
We decided to include Sapa on our Vietnam visit as we hadn’t been here before and many people had said it was interesting and as it was in the mountains it’s a bit different to the rest of Vietnam. Why not!
We’d initially planned to catch the night train (I love me some train travel!) but since Vietnam only reopened to tourists three months ago, the train is only running once a week, and not on the day we wanted. So we took a minibus… a “limousine” minibus, if you will, meaning there are 9 passengers instead of 12, giving us all a bit more elbow room. We were picked up from our hotel before breakfast and zoomed through the Hanoi traffic out of the city towards the Noi Bai – Lao Cai Expressway, stopping an hour in for a snack and bathroom break. FYI, the Lobster with Golden Salted Egg Sauce chippies were pretty good.
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Hello, hello Hanoi!
We touched down in Hanoi right on time, and bid a fond farewell to our SQ cabin crew, before hightailing it through the airport to Passport Control. Like everywhere to do with passports, there were queues. Unlike the regulations we’d read about online, the official didn’t ask about travel insurance or vaccination status, just checked the e-visa and we were off.
Our taxi driver drove relatively sedately compared to how I remember Vietnam traffic: mostly staying in a lane and mostly giving indication of changing lanes (but by flashing his lights rather than using the indicator). The trip between the airport and the city took about 45 minutes, and we were definitely ready to stop moving by the time we arrived!
Continue readingBack to Vietnam! The joys of transit
Who would have thought, back in 2019, that it would be almost three years before international travel was possible again? Even in December 2021 when we started planning this trip, the international borders were still closed and people shook their heads when I mentioned wanting to revisit Vietnam.
But I had some long service leave that had to be used, frequent flyer points burning a hole in my pocket, and moths flying out of my passport, so I thought why not book (with generous cancellation policies, natch) and see what happened.
Continue readingVietnam – Hoi An
Japanese Covered Bridge… with all the other tourists
As we drove through Danang from the airport towards Hoi An, we were pretty amazed to see a lot of development, especially along the beach. There are a startling number of new resorts in varying stages of completion along there, and the Danang airport also has a brand new international terminal since we were last here in 2014. Wow!
Da Nang isn’t the only place to be developing – as we drove in, we saw Hoi An is growing quickly too, and the sleepy town we’d visited is now much bigger too. One night we walked along Cua Dai where we’d stayed last time, and we were shocked to see that almost all the places we’d eaten at (and the cheap beer places, too) had been replaced by more new hotels and electronics shops. The little Pho place next to that hotel was still there, but it looked like only just!
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Two Weeks Away 