Site Map

Site Feeds

Pages

Monthly Archives

Categories

Top 20 Tags

All Articles

Relaxing in Hoi An

Relaxing in Hoi An

| 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

Vietnam: Huế for Buddha’s Birthday

| 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

Visit Sapa in Vietnam, Scams and Sights

| 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 […]

Halong Bay Storms

Halong Bay Storms

| 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 […]

Hello Hanoi

Hello Hanoi

| 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

Flashpacking Travels in Japan & Tokyo

| 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

Yudanaka: Onsen, Ryokan and Snow Monkeys

| 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

Kanazawa, Shirakawa-go and Takayama

| 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

Japanese Kindness in Kyoto & Nara

| 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 […]

Hiroshima and Miyajima

Hiroshima and Miyajima

| 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 […]