19 Sep to 26 Sep 2012 – I was back to Lai Châu province. I just visited this province a couple of months ago and it was my first ever visit to the 60thprovince of Vietnam in my list. When I was in Lai Châu last July, it rained all the time, so I couldn’t go to Mường Tè, although I already saw the bus going on the route. I decided I would go back on my next trip to the North West. Mường Tè was my priority destination on this trip. Whenever the Vietnamese say “Mường Tè”, it always means a place far away in the mountain which is very poor and remote, although it’s located only 620km northwest of Hanoi. The travel companion and I went to the bus station at 5:30am, but the ... read more

"Vietnam is the land of heat and noodles". That is what an American friend wrote to me in an email when he said he missed Vietnam. While in English, there may be only some words "noodles", "vermicelli" or "noodle soup", in Vietnamese, we have various names "Phở, Bún, Miến, Bánh đa, Bánh canh, Mỳ" to describe our noodles. The Vietnamese noodles have different colors (white, red, yellow), shape and thickness, depending on the types and regions. Each of the said noodles has one more word next to it, like beef, chicken or other material, or name of a location to emphasize their specialty. For example, Phở gà (noodle soup with chicken), Phở bò (noodle soup with beef), Bún bò Huế (Huế city's beef noodle soup), Mỳ Quảng (Quảng Nam province's noodles) etc. We often eat noodle ... read more

The photos in this blog were taken on my two trips to Đà Nẵng city in February 2011 and August 2012. Since my first trip to Đà Nẵng in December 1997 up to date, I have made more than 10 trips to the city. Sometimes I traveled to Đà Nẵng on business, other times I traveled for fun or transit on the way back to Hanoi from Pleiku. Đà Nẵng is the third largest city in Vietnam after Hồ Chí Minh City and Hanoi. It is also the largest city in the Central Vietnam. Possibly speaking, Đà Nẵng is right in the middle of Vietnam on the air route as it takes one hour for the flight from either Hanoi or Hồ Chí Minh city. On my different trips to Đà Nẵng I also visited other ... read more

This is Part 3 of my 7-day trip to the Central Vietnam (from 3 Aug to 9 Aug 2012). When I said “I would like to go to small island”, the local people on Lý Sơn island understood it was “An Binh island” as they often say so. Lý Sơn island district consits of two islands which are Lý Sơn island and An Bình island. While Lý Sơn island has two communes with about 21,000 people, there is only one commune on An Bình island and it has the same name An Bình. It is a small island with over 100 households, ie about 500 people. I heard that the landscape on this island is very beautiful, the beaches are clean and the locals use solar energy to supply power for themselves. One of my uncles ... read more

This is Part 1 of my 7-day trip to the Central Vietnam (from 3 Aug to 9 Aug 2012). On this trip I traveled with my parents, sister and nephew to Quảng Ngãi province and visited the village where my father was born. It has been a long time since my last visit, so things have changed. My father was born in a wealthy family in the Central Vietnam and many poor people in the village worked on my grandfather’s land. However, my grandfather was a good man and he followed the communist party. In 1954, when my father was 19 years old, he traveled on a Polish ship to the North for training, hoping he would go back home as a cadre two years later. The American war happened and it lasted 21 years (from ... read more