Flying Lao Airlines was like revisiting the 1960's. The first time I ever flew was a short flight from Newark to Boston. The stewardesses (that's what they were called back then) were all young and beautiful, even for a short hop you were served a snack, you walked out on the tarmac and up a flight of stairs to get into the plane, and the plane had propellers. All of this happened on my flight from Siem Reap, Cambodia to Vientiane, Laos. The new twist was going through customs and immigration in a place called Pakse, Laos. The Pakse airport looks [View Full Entry]

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I have been in Cambodia since Feb. 26. Arrived after two short flights from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City ( formerly Saigon) and then on to Siem Reap. If Vietnam was hot then Cambodia borders on hell. The temps hover between 90 - 100 and the humidity is so high that just walking at a slow pace produces copious waterfalls of dripping sweat. We found some wonderful Khmer neckerchiefs that you soak in water and throw around your neck and they help to keep you cool. Perhaps it is just psychological but they seemed to have helped. So lesson #1 [View Full Entry]

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On this, my second trip to Vietnam ( the first being in Dec. 2001), I noticed many changes but also many similarities. The following are just my observations and opinions. I am by no means an expert or historian, just a traveler. There should be a new synonym added to the word 'resilient':Vietnamese. These are people who lived with conquerers and war for over 1,000 years ( the Chinese, the French and the Americans). Yet when they realized in the late 80's/early 90's that their communist system of land ownership wasn't working nor was their country able to compete Internationally, they [View Full Entry]

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Hue has more than 300 pagodas - and, no I didn't visit them all. I concentrated on two sites in his former capital city where so many architectural and cultural relics have thankfully been preserved. After Hanoi, I found Hue to be much quieter and, well, kinder. The city revolves around the Perfume River. since this trip is not the usual kind that Val and I take ( living on the cheap), we were blessed with a river view room at the large and rather ostentatious Huong Giang Hotel ( www.huonggiangtourist.com). From early morning to dark we could watch the fishermen [View Full Entry]

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I was sailing along on HaLong Bay.......an experience that I had in 2001 and one of the things that I wanted to repeat and, yes, I'd do it again and again. And there aren't that many experiences I would repeat over and over. Machu Picchu is one and the town of Oaxaca is another - but I digress. So let me first tell you a bit about this UNESCO World Heritage sight. The name means Dragon Descending. Legend has it that the bay was formed when a dragon plunged into the sea and whipped his tail from side to side carving [View Full Entry]

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I saw this quote from Paul Theroux in one of the airline magazines on my way to Vietnam and it struck me as perfect for this particular trip. He said “Travelers don't know where they are going and tourists don't know where they have been.” That was so true last Sunday when our airport greeter (Tien) picked us up for a day tour to see one of the hill tribes. All we knew was that we were going about 3 hours outside of Hanoi, that we would eat a lunch somewhere and that we would have some sort of folk dancing [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, One of the things I most wanted to see again in Hanoi was the water puppet show. I know that sounds a bit wacky for a, um, senior citizen to go 9,000 miles to see a puppet show but this is a truly unique experience. Over a 1,000 years ago rice farmers in the Red River delta would put on shows using the flooded rice paddies as a staging ground. This experience is recreated now in a theater in the old Quarter of Hanoi. Puppeteers stand behind a bamboo curtain in waist deep water manipulating a series of rods, [View Full Entry]

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Dear family and friends, Hello from Hanoi, Vietnam. A country who's very name brings up a visceral feeling of some sort-depending on your age. So I thought I'd do a little class of ' Vietnam 101'- with credit given to James Sullivan, author of the National Geographic book “Traveler Vietnam”. Vietnam is about the size of New Mexico with a population of 84 MILLION! It has a 93% literacy rate- one of the highest in the world. The median age is 25 ( the US is 36) which means that most of its population was born after the American War( as [View Full Entry]

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Really, this is the last( I hope) housekeeping detail that I have to take care on this site before leaving.... 1. If you no longer want to receive the 'blog' then write me an e-mail at: gunga5@juno.com I will delete your address. 2. Some people have said they have not been able to access the blog. You must have the address: webmaster@travelblog.org in your address book or else your server may delete it as SPAM. Hope that takes care of that little problem. Val and I are off to Vietnam ( Hanoi, HaLong Bay, Hue, and HoiAn- notice a pattern there?), [View Full Entry]

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Dear Friends, My teacher is having me try to do this task myself. so here goes.... [View Full Entry]

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