Blogs from South Central Coast, Vietnam, Asia

After leaving Hanoi Claire and I decided to get a flight to Hoi An to save ourselves a 20 hour bus journey.. We checked into a nice little hotel that had a small swimming pool and included breakfast, all for about 7 quid a night (this is why i love SE Asia!) On our first day in Hoi An we decided to check out all the tailoring shops as this is what Hoi An is famous for! You can get any clothes or shoes made for you after one fitting. Claire not being on a budget like me was in heaven and got herself 3 gorgeous dresses and a pair of wedges, but I still treated myself to one dress which luckily we got a good deal on.. Hoi An is such a cute little town, ... read more

Suprisingly I awake on the nightbus feeling a lot better after an unexpectedly good night sleep. We arrive in Hoi An around 8am so I make a beeline straight for a little guesthouse in the ancient town called Thahn Duoy, where Steve & Nat are already staying and had earlier kindly facebooked me to recommend it. Accomodation is a little more expensive here but I don't mind as the town is beautiful! Old faded French villas line the quiet pedestrianised streets, just the occasional old lady in a conical hat will cycle past - it's so nice not have to dodge traffic and listen to the constant honking of horns. I take a walk around the pituresque town known for it's many tailors & dressmakers. They are literally everywhere, one after another after another, at least ... read more

We spent a few days in Nha Trang. Lovely beach so we spent a lot of time chillig on the beach and hanging out with some lovely ladies that we met (they know who they are). Drank at the why not bar one night and had a good dance. Nha Trang is a strange place as locals try and start fights so they can steal stuff off of you. I did not experience it myself but I met a few people that had. Apart from that, it is a beautiful place. Leanne and I then got the over night bus to Hoi An. The buses are strange. Loads of little beds fitted into the bus, reminds me of a harry potter night bus. I dont think i slept at all. We headed to a hotel and ... read more

The trip from Dalat to Nha Trang was very easy. It took 4 hours and it was very pretty meandering through the mountains watching the waterfalls come down and under the road. After arriving in Nha Trang we found a hotel on the beach and went out exploring the sea front and the shops, we found a night market with lots of nice places to eat and it was only 25,000 Dong for a cocktail which is about 70p! After two nights in the hotel we got a note under our door saying that we needed to keep an eye on our things as someone had had money stolen from there room, the cleaners tried to go around and collect all these notes so that the guests couldnt see! After we had a look through our ... read more

Sit back on a sleeper bus straight out of Harry Potter (crazy driver and near-misses included) and relax...for a fifteen minute ride to the side of the highway where I'm dropped off on the outskirts of Danang. It's the midpoint of Vietnam. I have been here for 15 days and I only have 13 left. Danang is ugly. Hate to say it, but it is. Industrial and pushing for development, it's hard to decide if the greyness comes from cloud cover or pollution. Probably a mixture of both. Riding on a motorbike from the highway into the city is like crossing a desert of half finished buildings, gaping structures through which sand flies to sting the eyes of my driver. But he swerves with style. Very few Western faces show themselves in the streets, the city ... read more

When I got to Vietnam, Trang informed me that she had several trips planned. One was to Nha Trang. I have been to Nha Trang several times and have never tired of the city. It is one of the most beautiful places in Vietnam and has possibly the best municipal beach. Today, Danang has used about all of "China Beach" of TV fame, with almost continuous Casinos and mega resorts. Nha Trang has done the opposite. Its five-star beach is accessible about everywhere. In Nga Trang, you have the beach, strip park, road and then the hotels. All you have to do is rent a hotel, walk across the road, through a strip park and your at the beach. While at the beach, you can rent a chair and sit there all day, and peddlers will ... read more

International volunteering can be lots of fun and also one of the most memorable and rewarding experiences of your lifetime, but it's also a little more complicated than just showing up and having a good time. Here is some advice on how to make the most of your volunteer work and an opportunity to do a little self reflection before you commit to an international volunteer assignment to make sure that you are really up for all that it may entail.. For an international volunteering placement to be successful you need to be able to selflessly immerse yourself in a completely new environment that usually brings with it many challenges. International volunteering is not for everyone. Great volunteers need to be generalists, by this I mean that they are happy to hop in and help when ... read more

For the last day in Nha Trang we had a free morning so I headed off on my own in an attempt to see a massive white Buddha statue. Unfortunately the map we'd been given didn't have a scale on it and by the time I'd reached the Catholic Cathedral (bizarre!) and then a war memorial statue near the train station, I admitted defeat and gave up on my mission, opting instead to get a cyclo back to the beach area. I haggled my price and off we set across the main road straight into oncoming, wave after wave of mopeds! We eventually got across to the right hand side of the road and only a couple of roundabouts - with criss-crossing madness - to endure and we arrived at the beach. I spent the next ... read more