Articles from this Category
30 May 2011
We had planned on exploring Vietnam’s old capital Hue and its surroundings by ourselves, including on bicycles. It became too easy when our hotel offered a USD10 (per person) bus tour which included a buffet lunch. This would cover all the sights we had planned to do over two days … compressed into one day. […]
29 May 2011
Above: Typical bar/cafe. We flew Jetstar Pacific’s Boeing 737-400 at 1040 today, reaching Danang at 1155. We wanted to get to Hue but its airport was closed while the runway was being resurfaced. We travelled from Danang to Hue by public bus. The driver collected the money before we departed … soon after, I saw […]
28 May 2011
There’s actually not much time for pure relaxation on Halong cruises. Travelling time between stops is short and the days are filled with excursions. This morning we stopped at Vung Vieng fishing village. This is a collection of floating homes tucked between some islands. We were taken around on sampans for 45 minutes around the […]
27 May 2011
I skipped the Tai-Chi at 0615 and went for breakfast at 0700 so that we would be ready for our excursion at 0800. We transferred to a smaller boat, the Bhaya Spirit with only two other people. The crew to customer ratio was 1:1 on this smaller boat, with the captain, the cook, attendant and […]
26 May 2011
We had decided to go a bit upmarket for our Halong Bay experience because we have friends who didn’t enjoy their budget outings. We were collected at 0800 for our 3.5h transfer to Halong City’s port. We took a stop a handicraft centre en route for a break and shopping (for the gullible). We departed […]
25 May 2011
We visited Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum this morning. The queue was a couple of city blocks but it was very orderly and moved at walking pace for most of it. To be honest, he didn’t look very different from Lenin. We then taxied to the Temple of Literature. This Confucianist temple is a quiet oasis […]
24 May 2011
Singapore’s Tiger Cub Check-in in around 0730 at Singapore Airport’s Budget Terminal was a surprise to me. It was much smaller than KLIA’s LCCT … and the place was more like a quiet hospital … whereas KL was like a busy bus station before Hari Raya. It became obvious that Tiger Airways is not of […]
27 April 2011
We woke early and counted the hours till we would fly out to Invercargill. It had been cold and wet in Stewart Island, especially in the place that we had been hosted in. Our flight to Invercargill departed at 0830, with a leisurely connecting time for our flight to Christchurch where we would connect to […]
26 April 2011
Peter operates the ferry from Golden Bay to Ulva Island, where there are various nice nature trails … the bird-song here is pretty amazing. You can see and nearly touch tiny Fantails, chubby Kererus and clucking Wekas. If you scuff your shoes on the ground, some birds will fly down and try to look for […]
25 April 2011
The day started off miserably … it was very cold (for us anyway), and it kept raining on-and-off. We tried hard to stay warm. Fortunately the sun came out to play later in the day and we were able to walk to Oban and grab a couple of delicious meals (for lunch) at he wonderful […]