BrianandDrurysTravel

I apologize for not posting the past two days of our Alaskan Cruise, but for some reason I have been having trouble logging in on this travel site and very slow internet speed. I think I have it figures out now so we shouldn't have any more issues. This first post will be covering the first three days of our trip. Currently we are on the Holland America Euradam on our way to Juneau, Alaska. We left for our trip on Friday evening flying from Oklahoma City to Seattle nonstop on Alaskan Airlines. I really do love that we have a nonstop flight to Seattle. The flight lasts about four hours and was a very smooth and pretty uneventful flight. Drury and I both had dinner on the plane and the flight attendant was very nice. ... read more

Can't believe it is our last tour day. It really hadn't hit my that the tour was coming to an end till yesterday actually when they mentioned the farewell dinner this evening. Today we drove outside the city of Saigon and headed to the Chu Chi Tunnels that the Vietcong built. It is basically a complete underground city they built to escape the bombings. On the way to the tunnels we stopped by a home where they make rice paper for spring rolls. It was actually interesting to see how they make it and some in our group even tried to make some themselves. It's a very delicate process and not as easy as the woman made it look. After buying some souvenirs and trying the rice paper, we headed to the tunnels. We walked through ... read more

After having a quick breakfast at the hotel it was off to visit The Independence Palace, home of the former President of Vietnam. I was surprised when we pulled up to the gates as it ready does not look anything like a palace but more like an office building. Once inside we found out that the original palace was bombed by a rogue pilot trying to assassinate the President back in the early 60's. The President hired a well known architect at the time to design the new palace and he wanted it to have a modern feel. He also built the new palace with a very strong bunker in case it was ever bombed again. After the tour of the palace we got a brief tour of the city and then returned to the hotel ... read more

Today was Angkor day and we knew it was going to be a long but fun day. We woke up really early as we were meeting everyone in the hotel lobby at 7:00am. Our tour guide told us that we needed to get to Angkor Wat as soon as it opens as it gets crowded quickly. They took us to the east gate as it was not crowded. We walked past the mote that surrounds Angkor Wat and then proceeded down a long tree lined path and then Angkor Wat suddenly appeared. It really is an impressive site and our tour guide did a great job of taking us to through the east gate as the sun was behind us and shinning on the buildings. We took a group photo and then got in line to ... read more

This morning we are off to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat. We had to wake up early and meet our group at 7:00am so we could catch out flight. We were flying on a small prop plane again but the flight only lasted about 40 minutes so it wasn't too bad. At least this time I got to look out the window. We arrived in Siem Reap and immediately were taken to a large park wth a temple. We say some bats in the trees and all learned how to fold lotus flowers. We then gave the flowers as an offering in the temple and made a wish. We then headed to lunch before the group split up with half going to the museum and the other half going to the hotel. Drury went to ... read more