Jan 23, 2018 | Rach
Hello from Chiang Mai! We have spent the last seven nights in Thailand’s second largest city and one of the most visited Northern cities by tourists. It is also home to 300 Buddhist temples and basically felt like a smaller version of Bangkok. Prior to arriving, I had heard great things about Chiang Mai from several friends who had lived or studied abroad there so I was really looking forward to it.
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Jan 16, 2018 | Al
Hello from Thailand! Rach and I have been touring around Bangkok and the Thai islands for the last week or so. From Siem Reap, Cambodia we took an eight hour bus ride to Bangkok. It was a pretty uneventful bus ride other than crossing the Cambodia-Thailand border. We waited for an hour in the Thai passport control line. For US citizens, you do not need to get a visa for Thailand in advance.
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Jan 5, 2018 | Rach
Happy 2018! We have spent the last four nights in Siem Reap, Cambodia exploring the ancient temples of Angkor, sweating like crazy, dodging tuk tuks, and ringing in 2018.
After a quick two hour flight from Hanoi, we arrived at Siem Reap airport. The visa on arrival process took a little over an hour. Once we finally got through we found Mr. Poouri, our tuk tuk driver waiting for us. We hopped in his tuk tuk (just a motorbike with a carriage attached) and he drove us to our hotel ‘Rosy Guesthouse’ - which took 45 minutes or so since there was heavy New Years Eve traffic.
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Dec 30, 2017 | Rach
In the last week and a half, we have been busy bees and have been moving around A LOT, wrapping up our time in Vietnam. We spent 1 night in Hanoi, 1 night in Halong Bay, 1 night on Cat Ba Island, 2 nights in Hanoi, 4 nights in Sapa and 1 night in Hanoi again. We experienced another bustling city, a touristy but picturesque bay, and a cold but cool mountain town.
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Dec 24, 2017 | Al
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! It’s Alex again, we’re a little delayed in this update because we’ve had a busy few days. We’ve slept in a different place for each of the past five nights. Leaving Hue we headed to a town called Phong Nha (FUNG-YA). We heard about this place from a German girl in our first hostel in Saigon. She said that there was a National Park there and that she recommended going there.
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Dec 16, 2017 | Al
Rach told me that since this is “my kind of people’s” continent and it’s about time I write one of our trip updates. Just kidding! You all know that Rachie would never say something like that but this is Alex writing the update.
Even though we had a quick turn around and only stayed in Hue for three nights, we’ve had a couple of awesome experiences in the last few days.
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Dec 13, 2017 | Rach
Well a lot of my prior opinions and feelings about Vietnam have made a 180 degree turn. We have spent the last six nights in a small, ancient town on the central coast of Vietnam called Hoi An (used to be a big shipping port). Several people had told us about this town as being one of their favorites and it’s easy to see why.
To start, we decided to spend a little more money and take a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang (40 minutes from Hoi An) instead of taking a 17 hour bus ride (and very happy with our decision).
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Dec 7, 2017 | Rach
Well we wanted culture shock and we got it! I am still processing the last six days and everything we saw/ate/heard/felt. I am going to do my best to relay it all so this might be another long one…
After around 21 hours of travel (our flight from Taiwan to Ho Chi Minh City was delayed) we finally arrived at Ho Chi Minh airport (formerly Saigon). We were told prior to coming to Vietnam to be patient and have a “go with the flow” attitude as things don’t always go as expected.
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