The first thing I did when I arrived late in the afternoon in Mui Ne is check out the beach… Only to discover that there wasn’t any! The guesthouse I was staying in had a beachfront without any sand; the ocean directly hit a small dike! Also the other guesthouses and resorts I could see, until far in the distance, didn’t have any beach. No!!! Why have a beachless beach resort town? It didn’t make much sense. After dropping my bags in my room I ran into Dave, one of the people I met on the mountain in Da Lat. He [View Full Entry]

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Da Lat is located in the South Central Highlands of Vietnam, and was originally the playground of the French who built villas in the clear mountain air to escape the heat and humidity of the coast and of Saigon. Because of the style of architecture Da Lat is often nicknamed ‘little paris’. Many of its hotels and houses built in a French style; the city spreads across a series of pine-covered hills, with a small lake in the center and surrounded by higher peaks, making for some lovely scenery quite different from the rest of Vietnam. When I got to Da [View Full Entry]

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Massage, Sauna, Mud Bat, Hot Springs... What more do you want? On Valentines day I took a night bus from Hoi An to Nha Trang. Finally I would reach the good weather... Nha Trang is a medium-sized city with a large beach front, and is the location in Vietnam for beach holidays and water sports. The bus arrived at 6am. I found a nice hotel, 100 meter from the beach, but I couldn't enter the room until noon so I walked around the beach. Already at this early hour people wereexercising and playing sports at the beach front. When I left [View Full Entry]

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Hoi An used to be an international trading port from as early as the 17th century. Now it's a living museum, a small tourist city with several houses, musea and handicraft places you can visit. In general I don't like these kind of places; it's just too fake and touristy for me. Who needs handicrafts anyway in this industrial age ;-) Hoi An was pretty nice tough, mostly because of the pleasant architecture and the nice restaurants. A good place to stay for a while and to relax. Probably if you like shopping it's great since there are lots of tailors, [View Full Entry]

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Just Not My Day After spending almost 2 weeks in Hanoi and surroundings it was time to move. Hue used to be the capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty between 1802 and 1942. Because of this there are many historical sites such as the imperial citadel, tombs of the emperors, and several temples and pagodas. To get to Hue I took a night bus from Hanoi. The 'beds' where decent, 1.80 meter long, too short for me but still OK. I didn't get much sleep though... Before we even left, the Vietnamese guy in the bed next to me started [View Full Entry]

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Tet in Hanoi One of the reasons for going to Hanoi this time of year was Tet: the Vietnamese New Year. The streets where quieter during the holiday, but also much more colourful. Flowers where sold everywhere, there where special celebrations at temples, and on the streets two types of trees where sold: a peach tree about to blossom and a Mandarin orange tree. The peach and the apricot blossoms are symbols of the Vietnamese Tet. The mandarin is symbolic of good fortune and, therefore, people tend to choose the little plants laden with fruit, big and orange, and verdant leaves [View Full Entry]

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Bay of Descending Dragons "Ha Long" is literally translated as "Bay of Descending Dragons." In 1898 a sub-lieutenant named Lagredin, captaining the Avalanse reported seeing a huge sea snake on Ha Long Bay. This was also witnessed by many of the crews. Thus emerged the European image of the Asian dragon. Whether this appearance of a strange animal looking like a dragon resulted the name of Ha Long Bay is not known. (source: Wikitravel.org) In Hanoi I booked a three day, two night trip to Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island. The trip included one night of accommodation on a [View Full Entry]

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Arrival of the Clueless To get from Nanning to Hanoi, Vietnam, it's possible to take the train, the bus, or a combination of both. Not wanting to spent time haggling for Vietnamese money and ongoing tickets at the border; I booked a bus ticket that covered the whole distance. This even included transportation from border checkpoint to checkpoint in golf carts :-) This bus on the Vietnamese side dropped all passengers at a hotel somewhere outside the city centre. There I was, without guidebook, no money, only the two phone numbers of Harm and Hao Bing; two friends that have been [View Full Entry]

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Green City of China Nanning calls itself the 'green city of China', and because of it's green parks and tropical surroundings it's a name well chosen. Since I had to wait until the next Monday for the Vietnamese consulate to open, I had three whole days to explore the city. Nanning is a very friendly city with some nice parks that are not filled up with gardens and tea houses like most Chinese parks. However it severely lacks nightlife: besides severalKTV's (karaoke bars) I only found a single bar. It's a Chinese shopping paradise though, lots of shops with the required [View Full Entry]

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Cheap taxi, wrong destination The night train from Guizhou arrived on the Guilin North train station. After exiting the station several bus drivers and taxi drivers approached me with the question if I wanted to go to Yangshuo. Yes I said, and I asked one of them in Mandarin if he had a bus and what the price was. He answered that to Yangshuo would be 20RMB. That's not that bad, I thought, he probably has a minibus or something. An Israeli couple that also exited the train station joined in and the three of us went with him to his [View Full Entry]

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