HappyGoLucky

Local Colour & a Great History Quiet breathing all around me, faces concentrated and involved on a level I’ve never seen before, eyes on the verge tears signaled by strong and uncontrolled emotion at the historic sights held within the Saigon War Remnants Museum………. This was the sight of people all around me, and as I viewed the photos in the museum myself I couldn’t help but wonder if many others shared the same uneasy feeling from there stomachs up to their chests. The museum here in Saigon was very different than the northern Hanoi museum, and the pictures were extremely graphic. They depicted war crimes such as; Agent Orange chemical birth defects, horrific Napalm burns, and Children who would not get a chance to grow past puberty. The pictures also captured the results of ... read more

Hue Vietnam Asia » Vietnam » Hue By HappyGoLucky April 11th 2007 Hue the imperial City Hue is located in what is considered central Vietnam. It city rests near the 17th parallel where a Tet overthrow was attempted by the Viet minh. As well as having much history in the Vietnam war, it also holds many imperial tombs of ancient emporers. I visted the Tu Duc tomb, Khai Dinh tomb, Thien Mu Pagoda, Old Ciditel, and the Tu Hieu pagoda. I basically spent the morning visiting Graveyards, but the detail in some of these tombs really was something to marvel over. My favorite was the Khai Dinh Tomb, which was built in the 1920s, and took a total of 10 years to construct. The detail in the 127 step st... read more

Hanoi Canada’s landmass is nearly 3 times that of Vietnam’s, however Vietnam has almost 3 times the population of Canada. I am currently in Hanoi, which is the capital of the single party (socialist) communist Vietnam and has carried a great history for 100s of years. I arrived here early this morning at 4 am and sat outside a guesthouse waiting to be let in by a prior telephone booking. After realizing no one was going to let me in, I wondered down a block to find an internet café and sat on the computer doing a blog for Sapa while waiting for everything to open. The majority of the population here seems to be in their late twenties, and in central Hanoi there is very decent backpackers accommodation. I checked into a hotel, had ... read more

C’est Incroyable. Je vais prend une autre baguette si vous plait Once again I find myself in a small passenger van wide-awake and contemplating what it would be like to drive on a normal less windy road, what a great “AAA” Alberta beef T-bone steak tastes like with potatoes, why I still might be able to out might my older brother even as a weary traveler on a diet of rice and curries and in a weight class around 180 lbs, why they call a Grapefruit a grapefruit and not something more fitting, and just how and why in the world Laos has so much French influence in their culture? Laos, a former French colony due to an intervention in Vietnam over religious beliefs 150 years ago, became an independent nation in 1952. It remains ... read more

Patong Bay & Ko Phi Phi The last 10 days have just flown by. As I near the end of my trip my time over here in Southeast Asia seems to just disappear. The journey out of the Gulf of Thailand heading southeast to the peninsula of Phuket was quite a long one. It began with a night boat ride aboard an old passenger ferry that departed Ko Tao at 9pm and arrived on the mainland the next morning at 6 am. The extensive boat ride was followed by a long layover and a very unpleasant 6 hour bus ride in mid day heat to get to Phuket. Phuket, is one of the largest tourist destinations In Thailand. It plays host to Backpackers, Business travelers and families who come to Phuket in search of sunshine ... read more