Our five day trip with Duc and Thai was an amazing experience and easily the best thing we have done so far on our trip. We saw how many businesses work in Vietnam and met so many wonderful people. There is nothing quite like driving through small villages all day where kids wave at you and shout out “hello!” Riding on the back of a motorbike can be a very relaxing experience because your mind wanders and you have so much quiet time to reflect. If you are coming to Vietnam, we could not more highly recommend a trip with Duc [View Full Entry]

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Thursday - We checked out of our hotel and waited for our open tour bus to Da Lat. Without access to the pool we became miserable in the un-air conditioned lobby of the hotel and conditions did not improve much on the cramped bus. Piled high with luggage we started out of Mui Ne along the coast before turning inland. About thirty minutes in to the drive the bus driver got a call from a resort in Mui Ne for one of the passengers. As the driver spoke no English a good ten minutes of misunderstanding and comedy preceded the realization [View Full Entry]

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That's right! We're in Austria! We had a wonderful three months in Southeast Asia and loved just about every day of our seven weeks in Vietnam. We intended to head north from Sapa, Vietnam in to China, but decided that the rewards and challenges of travel in Asia had worn us down just a little too much for us to fully embrace our much-anticipated Chinese trek. Thanks to our flexible schedule and some very cheap tickets on Tiger Airways we have leapt ahead in our itinerary and are currently in the "red center" of Australia in Alice Springs. We will be [View Full Entry]

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Our time in Mui Ne (pronounced Moo Nay) started much like our time in Ko Samet, Thailand - at a budget guesthouse which left us unsatisfied. This hotel was actually a great value for the money and was clean and right on the beach but it did not have air conditioning and was located on the center beach which is relatively narrow and steep because of erosion. We are slowly starting to realize that we are just not happy at the beach if we’re staying in budget digs. So after arriving by bus from Saigon and eating lunch, we spent a [View Full Entry]

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Saigon (April 24 - April 30) Note: We have referred to Ho Chi Minh City throughout our blog as Saigon for three reasons: (i) It's shorter and so requires less typing from us, (ii) Most people that we have met in Southern Vietnam also call it Saigon and (iii) Roger refuses to use the name given the city by communists. We really enjoyed our time in Saigon and liked it much more than Bangkok. It’s a pretty city and from the area around Pham Ngu Lao in District 1, a nexus of backpacker friendly accommodations and services, you can walk to [View Full Entry]

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Note: During our first few days in Vietnam, we had a recurring argument over whether to write Vietnam as “Vietnam” (as Amy wanted to do) or Viet Nam (as Roger wanted to do). After much discussion, we agreed to look at five websites (US State Department, Expedia, Western Union, Britannica and Amnesty International) to determine how they wrote Vietnam and the best of five would win. Amy is happy to announce that all websites which use Vietnam (Amnesty International has no reference to Vietnam) write it “Vietnam” and so that is how we will be referring to it in our bl [View Full Entry]

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Our time in Cambodia was short and half was spent at Angkor (the other half was spent drinking fruit shakes). Cambodia was not a country that we expected to enjoy and it really only made the cut because of the ruins at Angkor. No matter how excited you are to see the country, entering at Poipet and taking the rocky three hour drive to Siem Reap will test your resolve (and the quality of your dental fillings). We left, however, with a very good impression of a country where there has been so much turmoil and where there remains great poverty [View Full Entry]

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April 10 - 15, 2006 -- Siem Reap and the Temples at Angkor Written April 24, 2006 from our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City Having completed our often harrowing ride from Poipet and the border to Siem Reap we were relieved to find our hotel, Villa Siem Reap. We didn’t find it right away, mind you. We stumbled around in the heat for a few minutes before settling in to have a Coke, ask directions to no avail, and then stumble around until getting directions from a chef named Raymond (a Chinese man married to a Vietnamese woman living in [View Full Entry]

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April 15 - 17, 2006 - Phnom Penh Written April 17, 2006 in our hotel room Our first day in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, began in Siem Reap. We woke up early, had breakfast at our hotel and caught a tuk tuk to the bus station. Our guesthouse in Siem Reap booked our bus tickets to Phnom Penh and our accommodation in Phnom Penh as well as arranged a tuk tuk to the bus station. It made getting out of Siem Reap and to Phnom Penh extremely easy. Our bus left Siem Reap at 8:30 am and arrived in [View Full Entry]

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We loved Thailand for many reasons. The people are warm and friendly, the landscape is gorgeous, and for travelers it is an easy and accommodating place to explore. Most people in Thailand speak at least a decent amount of English and the tourist infrastructure is well-developed. And the food… oh how wonderfully we ate. In 31 days we did not have a single bad meal and can count only a few mediocre culinary experiences. More specifically, we really enjoyed our time in Chiang Mai, Ko Samet and Kanchanaburi. As much as we did not love Bangkok, after four separate visits over [View Full Entry]

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