franniestravels

After living in Singapore for 7 months, my parents and one of my brothers decided to make the trek around the world to visit me and see where I've been living! And, of course, while they were here we had to go on a trip, and where better than Siem Reip in Cambodia to see Angkor Wat! Travelling with my family was a different experience that travelling with fellow students... we stayed in a HOTEL instead of a HOSTEL! The luxury! We also had a tour of Angkor on our first day, which was a great experience! Our tour guide was a professional photographer, so in the process of seeing the site we also learned a lot about photography, which was a great bonus! We were in Cambodia for 3 days and spent one day in ... read more

Vietnam was one of my favorite places that I've been to so far this year, and likely its because I saw so much while I was there! I was in the country for 7 days, but I went to enough places that I felt as thought I'd been travelling for a month by the time I got back to Singapore! I flew into Hanoi from Singapore directly and started the trip with a bang as we headed directly to the train station to hop on the night train heading to Sapa! One thing I didn't expect, NORTH VIETNAM IS COLD! Like needed to borrow a winter down coat cold. Brutal. But minus the bone-chilling temperatures Sapa was incredible. We arrived just before the crack of dawn and got on a bus to take up into Sapa. ... read more

Jan 8th - 10th: Kathmandu, Nepal Kathmandu is the largest city in Nepal, and you can really tell. Compared to Chitwan and Pokhara, Kathmandu is crowded, busy, dirty - but also really amazing in itself. We spent most of our time here just wandering around and taking in the city and eating (a common theme). Kathmandu was really interesting - its the closest city to Mt. Everest, which meant that it was a major tourist hub - basecamp is now on my bucket list. Kathmandu, and all of Nepal, is known for having some of the nicest people in the world - and it was true!... read more

Jan 3rd - 5th: Chitwan Chitwan, Nepal was nothing like how I imagined Nepal would be... When I thought of Nepal all I could picture was mountains - and Chitwan is nothing like that... but it was amazing. We had a packed 3 days that included boat safaris, jungle walks, elephant safaris, bird walks and visits to elephant breeding centres. It was amazing. On the boat safari we went directly over crocodiles in a tiny dug-out canoe and the Elephant Breeding Centre is the second largest in the world! The weirdest thing about Chitwan... finding out the elephants are actually very dangerous creatures... and that there are flat grass land areas in Nepal - who would'a thought?... read more

Dec 5th - 10th, 2011: Hong Kong! Hong Kong was the first stop on my whirl wind of trip throughout December - and I must say was definantly a highlight! It was a busy trip, full of sight seeing (buddahs), shopping (ladies market!), eating (can you say dim-sum, street food, and the BEST (and cheapest) Michelin Star resturant), and just wandering the city. The week began with a visit to the light show on the water - which was made even more extreme by the Christmas lights that decorated all the buildings along with the regular ones that flashed and danced to music! Big Buddah and Ten Thousand Buddahs were definant highlights of the week due to the extreme nature of both locations! We travelled around some of the islands, visited old fishing villages and ate ... read more