cantonfamily

I have a confession to make. I am writing about this part of our adventure in Thailand, from the lounge room of our home in Perth. Yes I was that slack and laid back in R&R mode that I just stopped adding to the blog. But rest assured my memories of our adventure will never fade as I now use them, when getting shitty at work, to go to a happy place! So I now continue our adventure in Thailand.... Haad Yuan will always be tough to beat. Just like Hue was in Vietnam, after we had such a great time in Hoi An. And since it had been 7 years since Maureen and I were last in Phuket, we didn’t quite know what to expect. 'Same same but different', as the saying goes. While we ... read more

Well as you know its been a while since we made an entry. That's because we are in beach bum mode. After our final night in Hanoi, staying at the Splendid Star Hotel (www.splendidstarhotel.com) next to the large Catholic church, we caught a quick flight to Bangkok. The hotel, by the way is an excellent hotel and I would recommend it highly. You get a great breakfast provided and the room we had was massive with beautiful decor, Air con, large screen TV and computer with Internet in the room. Back to the landing in Bangkok. From here we had to catch a taxi to the train station to pick up the overnight train tickets we had booked online earlier in the adventure.This was thru the new booking service that Thai Railway offers via email. You ... read more

At 8.45am the tour company for the trip and boat to Halong Bay picked us up. We were the first ones so got the best seats and then proceeded to pick up the rest of the people. The distance to Halong from Hanoi is only about 160km but it takes about 4 hours. This was slow as and seemed to be everyones complaint but I finally noticed on the return trip, a road sign which showed how fast cars, minivans, trucks and buses are aloud to go. It was 70k per hour for our van which explained the nanna driving. When we arrived at the port we were wisked to a section of the carpark amongst hundreds of other tourists and our guide met us and took us to the transfer boat. His name was Thai ... read more

From Hoi An to get on the train you need to travel to Danang. This is about a 30 min taxi drive and is only $12 in a private car. We had booked the same guy that picked us up when we arrived from Nah Trang because he was such a good driver. Well, apparently not everyday! Must have been having an off one. The coastal stretch along China Beach is seeing some major development. Greg Norman is even flogging some Golf Resort Complex and many other international chains have started big projects. They all llok five star and really it is not surprising. There is an international airport at Danang, the beach is awesome and famous and Hoi An is only 1/2 an hour away. A winning combination on all fronts. We will be back ... read more

So Lyndon ended off with us in HCMC and from there we were to go to Dalt which is inland and much cooler. We had read the bus trip was very scenic but also very windy. We had even looked at the expense of flying to avoid it, however, we had met people in Cambodia that had said that if we were going to go to Sapa, give Dalat a miss. Everyone had been saying how great Hue was so we changed the schedule and cut off Dalat and and added in Hue. This gave us a more streamlined path of travel and an extra day in Hanoi for shopping. We had wanted to go to Nah Trang by sleeper train but it was all booked up as the month of June is school holidays for ... read more