Our next day at the Farmstay was just as exciting, though significantly less life threatening than the day before. We ate breakfast before piling into two vans, each with one tour guide, and set off for Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. You’ll never guess which tour guide was assigned to our van…none other than my fellow survivor Benjamin. As soon as he saw that I was in his group, he became “fearful” that my bad luck would strike again and our van would run off the road or something. Thankfully, no such thing happened. After a short ride through the village, we passed the Hollywood-esque sign for the park positioned on the side of a mountain in large letters. We then drove through a gate highly resembling the one from Jurrassic Park and found that our ... read more

We arrived in Hue, a city north of Hoi An and highly recommended as a "must see" by The Lonely Planet (our guide book), in the early morning of November 30. A staff member from our hotel greeted us at the bus stop and got us a taxi to the hotel, leading the way on his motobike, the common term for moped in these parts. There we were greeted by a friendly staff who brought us cold, wet towels and fresh lemonade on the spot before sitting us down with a map of the city and giving us suggestions for where to go and what to see. They then showed us to our room, which was quite nice but for some reason was filled with an unpleasant smell coming from the bathroom...we shyly informed them of ... read more

When we left the resort in Phan Thiet on November 22, we took a taxi a few miles north to the adjacent beach town of Mui Ne. We'd booked two nights at the beachfront Mui Ne Backpackers Guest House to give us a few days to regroup and plan our next move, while still enjoying the beach. We arrived and were greeted by John Jenkins, a delightfully enthusiastic ex pat from Australia who ran the guest house with his wife, a native of Vietnam. He was skyping with his grandkids in San Fransisco at the time of our arrival, but said "no worries," he could call them back later. He was thrilled to see that we shared a name when he looked at my passport, but I had to woefully inform him that Jenkins was no ... read more

Hello friends and family! You probably know by now that we made it to Vietnam! Hooray! Here's a brief recap of our 30 hours in transit... On the morning of Wednesday, November 14, our friend Ed was kind enough to pick us up at 4:30 a.m. and drive us to the Charleston, SC, airport (Thanks Ed! You rock!). Once there, we were informed that our first flight to Newark, NJ was having luggage issues - in other words, if we took the flight our luggage may or may not make it to our final destination...not good. Thankfully, the woman helping us was nice enough to put us on a different flight that went through Houston instead. Relieved, we took the Houston flight, which, though slightly longer, went smoothly. However, when we got there, we realized that ... read more