When I wrote about the first stop on our trip, Ho Chi Minh, I casually mentioned the “frenzy of traffic”. In Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, it was just out of control. You know things are a problem when on the “Hotel information” sheet left in your room, point number one is “How to cross roads.” “How…
Tag: Travel
Bay by Bay
Ha Long Bay is one of the most visited and photographed natural beauties of Vietnam. You would have seen pictures of rugged rocky islets jutting from emerald water, tranquil lagoons, hidden caves and communities of fisherfolk living and farming the waters on bright floating villages. You probably haven’t seen images of rubbish floating in these…
The Last Sapa
We arrived in Sapa exhausted after an 11-hour train ride on the Lotus Express to Hanoi and then a 6-hour ride on an awful bumpy sleeper bus being yelled at by a grumpy driver “NO FOOD” who was watching Vietnamese YouTube music videos the whole way. Sapa town was nothing as we had expected. I…
Show me the Hue
In my research on Hue (pronounced H-way), I did not read anything about it being a university (and therefore party) town. I read about the historical citadel, imperial history and countryside royal tombs, but nowhere did it mention that there would be streets teaming with young people out for a beer, a thumping nightclub and…
The City of Lanterns
The check-in of our beachside homestay five minutes from historical Hoi An was a flurry of confusion. Two old ladies showed us photos of various breakfast foods while ushering us up to our room in the traditional timber bungalow that would be our home for three nights. We decided to stay a little out of…
Good Morning Vietnam!
There’s nothing like a heady dose of a chaotic South-East Asian city to remind you you’re alive: the frenzy of traffic; the clash of glittering Cartier shopfronts manned by uniformed security guards vs. elderly squatted women wearing “non” (conical straw hats) selling cigarettes and bottled water; the heavy humidity lifting scents of rubbish, then BBQ…
Lake Annecy
When we were investigating places to stop on our journey between Paris and Venice, a lot of the names of French towns were new to me. I had never heard of Annecy but thought, yeah, we’ll give it a go for three nights. It is one of the prettiest places I have ever visited. The…
The Jewel of Singapore
Singapore’s Changi Airport is astounding. An adventure in itself. After a very early morning and the 8-hour flight from Sydney, we were happy to have an overnight stop before continuing on to Paris. I love the mini-quests that go along with travel. Getting off the plane and navigating the 4-terminal, multi-story, Skytrain-linked maze of Singapore…
“Le cheval mange une orange”
“The horse is eating an orange”. I have turned to Duo Lingo these past 2 weeks, cramming in as much French as I can before our next trip to Europa. Looks like comms are set to be a breeze, especially when we spark up conversations around equine or citrus content! It’s been 3.5 years since…
Back to Reality
Well we’ve been back in Australia for just over a month now, hearing two of my most disliked phrases “back to reality” and “looked like the trip of a lifetime” over and over again. For me, travelling is a natural part of our lives, not a “ONCE in a lifetime” experience. And what IS reality?…
Auguri da Venezia!
While it’s a bucket list dream for many to see in the New Year on Sydney Harbour for one of the biggest NYE fireworks displays in the world, Venice was our choice of party city to celebrate the start of 2020. “Get down to Piazza San Marco early” warned Frederico our apartment owner “or you…
La Serenissima
I’ve already written about the way I feel about Venice from our last trip to La Serenissima (the most serene Venezia) in 2013. I’ve always trained in from Treviso in the past, but this time with New Year’s Eve and Cam’s 40th birthday set to fall across our Venice days, it seemed like a great…
Bella Venezia
I can still remember the emotions I felt when I walked down the steps of the train station in Venice towards the Grand Canal for the first time 20 years ago. I cried then, and on these, the 5th and 6th times descending the same stairs, I did again. It’s overwhelming. Venice is one of…
“We make savings fun and easy, whatever the amount…”
“Your dollar might go further in a Dollarmite Account”. When I was a kid singing along to that jingle, with Commonwealth Bank and advertising execs rubbing their hands with glee, I never knew that A/ it was a play on words, with the “Dolomites” being a mountain range in Northern Italy, or that B/ I’d…
Innsbruck
I’ll admit it. Before planning this trip, I could NOT have told you where Innsbruck was. I might have guessed it was coldish (they DID host the winter Olympics twice), but I might have popped the pin in at Switzerland, Sweden or The Netherlands. Wrong. It’s in Austria. And now that I’ve visited I feel…
Germany Day 1
We decided to lease a car for our trip via a scheme put together by the French government to get their back-log of new cars on the road. On paper, we’ve actually bought the car, and after 7 weeks, they buy it back from us. It all looked very professional and well put together, but…
The Token Traveller 