This trip to Thailand is kind of an accidental one. You remember how we were in Vietnam earlier in the year? We’d actually booked Thailand for that time but postponed it when Vietnam opened up, and so now we are in the land of smiles.
Continue readingFiled under Thailand
We’re staying in a slightly different area of Singapore than where I’ve stayed before – at the Village Hotel in Bugis, really close to Arab St. The hotel looks to have spent a lot upgrading their public areas, and the pool is gorgeous – a half star shape, but the accommodation decor is pretty tired and we have a very odd-shaped room with only a tiny side window for natural light. A nice rainshower in the bathroom though, and the aircon works well, which are the main things!
We arrived mid-evening, and after getting from the airport and checking in, it was quite late, so we contented ourselves with a bit of a walk to get our bearings, find an ATM and then some necessities like water, cola and canned coffee.
Continue readingIt 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!
Continue readingFiled under Vietnam
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.
Filed under Vietnam
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 readingWho 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.
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Being a poser at Gulseren’s shop in the Grand Bazaar
I love Istanbul and I’d planned to have a couple of days of R&R and shopping to round out the holiday. It turned out that the bazaars (and costumiers!) were closed for most of the time we were there due to the Eid holidays. Happily there were still some shops open, and the rest all opened on Thursday so I had a window of opportunity.
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In the pink in Sofia
Me’n’C were booked into the bus to Sofia early the next morning, thanks to the assistance of A, who kindly organised our tickets for us. We hopped into a taxi and arrived at the bus station nice and early, and tried to decipher our Cyrillic tickets.
Apple orchard
On the way to Bitola we stopped off at a family-run apple orchard called Spirit of Prespa, which also makes fruit liquors. The family were very welcoming, providing us with fresh juice, cakes and some of their potent fruit liquor, made from steeping rakija in sugar and berries for a month and then aging it. Drinks before lunchtime? Why not!
Filed under North Macedonia
Relaxing at the historical village (pic by Cat)
Our border crossing from Kosovo was at a tiny little border stop, where there was only us and two girls on foot waiting to be processed. Unlike the other borders we’d passed, we didn’t have to queue, but we also had to get out of the van and be processed individually rather than having our passports processed without more than a glance inside the van to see that we were the correct number of people.
Filed under North Macedonia
Two Weeks Away 