Travel Blog | May 18, 2012 | 5 Comments
From the Imperial City of Hue we made our way down to the Vietnamese coastal town of Hoi An with its beautifully preserved historic buildings, good beaches and some amazing food. The journey from Hue is short at only four hours by coach. We could have taken the train to Danang and then caught a […]
Vietnam: Huế for Buddha’s Birthday
Travel Blog | May 9, 2012 | 3 Comments
More Vietnamese Train Journeys We’d seen a little of Vietnamese mountain life in Sapa. Now all that stood between us, and our first real glimpse of the historic temples and tombs of Hue, was a twenty four hour journey consisting of two trains and a bus back down the mountain to Lao Cai station. We’d managed to […]
Visit Sapa in Vietnam, Scams and Sights
Travel Blog | May 6, 2012 | 4 Comments
Visit Sapa – How we got there Before our trip to Halong Bay, we’d visited Hanoi train station to book our tickets for the eight hour journey to Sapa. After waiting patiently in the booking office, clutching our queue ticket number, I think queuing is a quintessentially British reserve, we eventually got to the booking window. We quickly […]
Travel Blog | May 3, 2012 | 2 Comments
How long in Halong Bay After our first few days in Vietnam we turned to planning our first tour here, Halong Bay. Halong Bay is on the ‘must do’ list if you are visiting Vietnam. Therein lies the problem, the choice of tour companies, agents and types of trip (one day, two day, three day […]
Travel Blog | May 2, 2012 | 0 Comments
Flying China Southern to Hanoi We said sayonara to Japan, and boarded our China Southern airplane for Vietnam, via Guangdong. We were apprehensive on our Japan departure, not because we were worried about what we would find in Vietnam, but because we had booked our flight with China Southern airways and let’s say the reviews […]
Flashpacking Travels in Japan & Tokyo
Travel Blog | April 28, 2012 | 3 Comments
We were woefully under prepared for our visit to Japan. Arriving from the Philippines, we’d spent our last day in Manila running round malls trying to extract as much cash as possible from as many different ATM’s to obtain our Japanese rail passes, cash only! We just about managed to pull it off, but it […]
Yudanaka: Onsen, Ryokan and Snow Monkeys
Travel Blog | April 20, 2012 | 3 Comments
We were getting a little travel weary from our Japanese explorations, not that we were bored, it’s just our ageing muscles we’re throbbing from the long hours of walking and hiking that we’d been enjoying. We decided a couple of days recuperation and relaxation were in order, before we headed back to Tokyo to complete our visit […]
Kanazawa, Shirakawa-go and Takayama
Travel Blog | April 16, 2012 | 2 Comments
In our last travel blog post, we visited some amazing Japanese temples and experienced the annual cherry blossom spectacular. In this update, we decided to travel into the countryside so we set off in direction of the Japanese Alps. We would be traveling to Kanazawa by train then by local buses through the mountains to Shinikawa-go before ending up […]
Japanese Kindness in Kyoto & Nara
Travel Blog | April 14, 2012 | 2 Comments
Having looked at the price of accommodation in Kyoto and Nara (staying overnight in either of these places is nearly double the price of cheap digs available in Osaka) we decided that Osaka would be our base for the next few days as we explored a bit more of the Kansai region. With our Japan […]
Travel Blog | April 11, 2012
Traveling from Osaka to Hiroshima Our first journey from Osaka took us to Hiroshima, and gave us our inaugural ride on the bullet train. A mere hour and half after stepping on at Shin-Osaka we were in Hiroshima, 306km away. We had hurtled there at over 180kmph through tunnels and along the Shinkansen high speed track. We […]
India Car Rental and Driver Hire
How to Rent a Car and Driver in India We’d like to share our experience, and a few of the stories we learned about renting a car and driver from our two week tour of Rajasthan. Like arranging other things in India, it is not always as simple or easy as you may first imagine. […]
Photo Flashback – Kerala Kathakali Dance
We are not really ones for the cultural shows that you regularly find in travel destinations. Often they are a thin representation of the actual song or dance traditions of a community, overpriced and leave you feeling a little bit cheated. This was certainly the case in Waitangi doing the Haka with some actors. Sometimes […]
Goa Retirement, Revamps and a bit of Home Cooking
We hang about in Goa for our remaining time in India sampling foods from home and join the large expat community and retired folk enjoying what is on offer. We had decided in Udaipur that it was time to invest some time doing some work on the blog. Our traffic has been growing steadily over […]
Udaipur And A Break From Travel Blogging
For those arriving at this travel blog post hoping to find out detailed information about our experiences and things to do in Udaipur, leave now, as you’ll need to look elsewhere instead. The hectic schedule of our last two weeks on the road with our driver had wearied us a little. The thought of seeing […]
India Rajasthan and Golden Triangle Itinerary
Two Week Itinerary for Rajasthan and the Golden Triangle You can get to see some of the top sights in Rajasthan and the Golden Triangle in India in fourteen days or less, it will not be a restful experience, but you will gain a lifetime of memories and images from the magnificent Taj Mahal to […]
Jodhpur and the Road to Udaipur
Jodhpur – The Blue City It was a long drive to Jodhpur, our second to last destination in Rajasthan, before waving off our driver. The three restful days in Jaisalmer and our separation from each other had allowed driver and passenger relations to be restored to more friendly less tense mood levels. So we set off […]
In our last travel blog post I mentioned that I had done another diving course. I’ve included some underwater photographs and videos taken whilst I was on this course. We stayed in Bohol, longer than anywhere else in the Philippines, because of the excellent diving sites at very reasonable prices. Bohol is a magnet […]
A delay in this post has been caused by very slow internet connections throughout the last part of our travels in the Philippines. Apologies. However, it now means you have a fun packed bumper blog of travel frustrations, cute monkeys, the chocolate hills and a small slightly disappointing beach. Weather Retreat Given the weather we […]
Donsol, Whale Sharks and Legazpi
Reluctant as we were to leave the beauty of Saud beach we had a lot more Filipino treasures to explore. From the relaxing, serene shores of Saud beach, we headed south towards Donsol in search of some whale sharks. The weather proved challenging, but the wildlife made it all worthwhile. From Pagudpud we reversed […]
Ilocos Norte, Pagudpud and Saud Beach
The ‘Borocay of the North’ is the strapline trying to attach itself to this beautiful part of Ilocos Norte in the Philippines. While I cannot make the comparison yet, I believe Saud Beach in Pagudpud really is a little hidden gem that may eventually give its more famous southern cousin a run for its peso. We […]
Manila and the road to Pagudpud
We arrived in the Philippines on board another Jetstar flight at around 8pm on a Saturday. Having left Bali we had a brief layover in Singapore before our arrival in Manila. The immigration, customs and baggage pick up went like a dream and we were out of the airport within half an hour of touching down. This […]