August | 2014 | See It Do It Live It

Sneak Birthday

Graham is going to turn 35 on Friday, but we are going to spend most of the day on a bus. I thought the (soon to be) grumpy old man deserved some celebrations for the big day so we had a surprise Sunday birthday instead. The day started with delicious croissants from a French Patisserie, followed by Vietnamese style coffee (good coffee with a tonne of condensed milk thrown in). We then headed to an amazing swimming pool bar, and spent the afternoon there. In the evening we had the…read more

Thanks a lot, Uncle Ho!

Originally our plan was to spend a couple of nights in Hanoi, whilst organising a trekking tour to Sapa in the north of Vietnam. So far, we have just been booking things a couple of days in advance and it has been fine. However, in this case, we hadn’t accounted for a country about to celebrate ‘Uncle Ho’s’ birthday. The whole of Vietnam takes a holiday in order to celebrate the birthday of Ho Chi Minh, meaning there were no seats or beds available on any trains for the next…read more

Tu Lan Caves

After the success of the National Park tour, we decided to also sign up for a one day tour of the Tu Lan caves. These caves are situated outside of the national park, about a one hour drive from Phong Nha town. We had a Vietnamese guide for this trek, Phuong, who had grown up in the local area before going to study English at university. Also in our group were Charlotte and Hidde, a Dutch couple, and a porter who was introduced to us as Chicken. Chicken (or Mr…read more

National Park Tour

The Phong Nha-Ke Bang National park tour is quite costly at £35 for a one day trip, however it is worth every penny. In fact, if you only do one thing in Vietnam, I would highly suggest that this is the activity you choose. It involves visiting two caves in the national park, Paradise Cave and Dark cave, as well as a temple. The guides are very knowledgeable about the area, and the free lunch is excellent! Our tour had two guides, Josh from Cornwall and a Vietnamese guy. The…read more

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park is a UNESCO world heritage site, created to protect one of the worlds largest karst regions which contains more than 300 caves. In 2009, the worlds largest cave was discovered here by a team of British explorers. Travelling from Hue to Phong Nha town involved a 3 hour minibus journey. The bus itself was quite luxurious, and as well as giving us the usual free bottled water, this one also had free wifi. The journey started our smoothly, but it swiftly became apparent that we…read more

The Forbidden Purple City

I have read quite a few novels which use the Forbidden City as their inspiration. It is a very old palace and full of stories of mystery, intrigue and scandal. So when I read that Hue, a city which is situated in the middle of Vietnam, was the home of the Citadel and the Forbidden Purple City it was quickly added onto our itinerary. When we arrived in Hue and paid our $5 entrance fee, it swiftly became apparent that I didn’t do enough research! The city I wanted to…read more

It’s not Same Same!

In Thailand I saw a western man wearing a t-shirt with the words ‘Its not Same Same‘ on the front and ‘Its totally f***ing different!‘ on the back (excuse the language). I now wonder if he’d had a similar experience to us at some point… To back-track a bit: we’d bought two sets of tickets in Saigon: Saigon to Phan Thiet and our overnight onward journey – Binh Thuan to Hue. The ticket office lady, with a casual wave of her hand, had assured Kylie that Phan Thiet and Binh…read more

Street food is the best. Pho’ sho.

My optimism that Vietnam has lots to offer was almost instantly rewarded! Once I had recovered from the food poisoning, we flew from Phu Quoc to Saigon. We have made a new rule (thanks to the influence of Simon Sawyer!) that all accommodation we book should have a hostelworld review of over 90%. With this in mind, we booked into a dorm room at the ‘Town House 50’, which is listed as one of the Guardians Top 10 places to stay in Saigon. It really is very nice, and I…read more

Tour de Phu Quoc

Posted by Graham in Asia, Trip, Vietnam

(In the absence of a camera, I have substituted thousands of rambling words for the few pretty pictures I would otherwise have taken. Aren’t you lucky!) They have a saying in Phu Quoc: “Maps, road signs, mirrors, indicators, right-of-way, helmets and speed limits are for pussies. Ain’t nobody got time for that!” Okay – well they should have a saying like that in Phu Quoc. Combine all those challenges with 100% humidity, a glaring sun and the constant threat of a tropical thunderstorm and the obvious plan is to walk…read more

Sick note

Apologies for the lack of photos. We kept forgetting the camera battery was still in the battery charger and not in the camera! From Phnom Penh we headed south to Kampot. This is a sleepy little Cambodian town with a river running through it. We spent a night at the excellent Mad Monkey hostel which has clean, spacious dorm rooms, a lovely pool, a great bar with good food and costs about £3 per night. From here we got the bus to the Vietnamese border and passed through border control….read more