We hit up the perfume river near Hue before our last stop of Hanoi in Vietnam. Again, the weather wasn’t the best for the perfume river tour, but it was an interesting boat ride up the river in a rowboat, followed by a decently long hike up to a cave where some forest nymphs or something interesting was supposed to live. I’m making this up because I honestly can’t remember what the significance was. But (more…)
We took an overnight train from Nha Trang to Hue as the flights were somewhat expensive and there wasn’t a better alternative. Our first class cabin had 6 beds (we had the bottom bunks on each side) and over the course of the journey between 8-10 inhabitants. Turns out the other four beds in the cabin were booked by a family of four, with the extended family (and frequent visitors to our cabin) in the (more…)
I’m calling this entry Luang Prabang, and not Laos, as our only stop in Laos was the city of Luang Prabang. We were shooting for the highest per day visa and transport expense, so any other places in Laos were out of the question! (joking). Since we didn’t relish a day long bus ride for $50, we opted for a one hour flight on Lao Airlines for $150. The airport in Luang Prabang is a (more…)
Our first stop in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh City, or HCMC for short. Don’t make a mistake of calling it Saigon! We used Marriott points for a free night at the Renaissance Riverside Hotel Siagon. The free breakfast (from my Marriott status) was amazing and was an international buffett of quality french, chinese, vietnamese and continental food. It was well worth the points. The city has some of the craziest traffic I have ever (more…)
There is no more iconic destination in SE Asia than Angkor Wat. Even though we’re not usually drawn to old ruins, we felt it was compulsory this time. This was our only sight in Cambodia, along with a stay in Phnom Penh to obtain Visas for Vietnam. We were in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh for two nights each. We contemplated a trip to the beaches but feared a long, bumpy bus ride and a (more…)
We didn’t know much about Kuala Lumpur upon visiting, but since we were flying through a number of times during our month in SE Asia (it’s an Air Asia hub), we decided that we should stop and stay a few days between flights. We were surprised to find out in short order just how metropolitan and western it was! There are sky scrapers like the Petronas Towers, huge malls, scads of business professionals running about, (more…)
We hopped an AirAsia flight from Bangkok to Bali (Bangkok we’ll be back!). After reading some discussion online about how crowded, tacky and expensive the main tourist areas around Denpasar and Kuta are, we opted for a more laid-back atmosphere at the Legong Keraton Beach Hotel about 25 min shuttle from all the action. Our hotel was simple, but clean. The views from the lawn of the pounding surf was fantastic, although the beaches in the area were (more…)
Our first stop in our SE Asia tour was Bangkok, one of the hubs of all travel in the area. Flights from the US seem mostly to arrive real late at night – which seems convenient for the city’s hotels – and ours was no exception at 11pm arrival. Following a nice snooze, we hit the ground running the next morning. Since this trip was sort of celebration of Mayne’s leaving the public accounting world (more…)