We had a full day today! After a very nice breakfast at the hotel (probably the nicest breakfast buffet so far), we met the group at 9 am. Susan was feeling much better today and seems to be over her stomach bug. It was a rainy morning, and unlike other days, it has rained on and off all day. Generally just a light rain, but kind of annoying. What can you do, it's the rainy season and no point complaining about the weather. Generally we've been really lucky with the weather. And the forecast for Halong Bay on Friday is for sun! We hopped on the back of motorbikes and whizzed off for our tour. It was quite exciting riding through the streets of Hue on motorbikes. We headed out to the countryside, which was very ... read more

We've had a nice relaxing day so far in Hoi An. It's about 5 pm and we have some time before meeting the group at 7 pm for dinner (and to celebrate Michelle's 32nd birthday). I didn't mention the drive from Danang to Hoi An yesterday. We were picked up at the Danang railway station in a mini bus and It took about 45 min or so to get to our hotel. There are really beautiful beaches in the Danang area and there are lots of expensive looking resorts along the beach. After I did the blog yesterday afternoon, we showered (it sure was nice to shower after the long train ride, and we were pleased to have both decent water pressure and hot water). We met the group for a late lunch and walk around ... read more

Day two in Saigon (it seems locals call the city Saigon rather than Ho Chi Minh City). Today was our day tour with Intrepid's Urban Adventures "Mekong Discovery". Susan and I had booked this day tour from Vancouver for today, which is a free day. Eight of our tour group joined us and we had lots of fun. We got picked up from our hotel this morning at 8 am, and we headed out to the Mekong Delta, about 2 1/2 hours drive. We were pleased it was a sunny morning. The countryside outside Saigon is quite pretty with lush green rice fields. But much more developed than rural Cambodia. After an hour and a half or so, we stopped at the "Mekong Rest Stop" which is a very pretty tourist rest stop, with bathrooms, gift ... read more

Today was a difficult day, as expected. We had breakfast in the hotel this morning, then met the group at 8 am to head out to the Choeung Ek Memorial at the Killing Fields, about an hours drive from our hotel. There is a memorial here to the estimated 3 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge. The memorial stupa is made up of an estimated 8,000 human skulls and marks the site of the infamous Killing Fields. This wasn't the only location where Khmer Rouge victims were killed in large numbers; such places were located all over Cambodia. On the drive to the Memorial Sovann told us about the history of the civil wars in Cambodia and the political situation over the years, and how the Khmer Rouge came to power. His mother lost her ... read more

Another fantastic day! We were up at 3:45 am to meet the group at 4:30 am to get out to Angkor Wat for the sunrise. It was lightly drizzling when we left and unfortunately there really wasn't much of a sunrise because of the heavy cloud cover. However, it was still quite magical to see the towers of Angkor Wat emerge from the darkness. There were big crowds waiting for the sunrise and we had to hold our ground against other overeager photo-taking tourists. Sovann calls these pushy tourists "VIP's" which stands for "very impolite people". VIPs refer to Korean, Japanese, and Chinese tourists. We bought two watercolours from a vendor artist at Angkor Wat. There were lots of people selling stuff, taking advantage of the big sunrise crowds. There are numerous children selling to tourists, ... read more