Good Night, Vietnam!

Ho Chi Minh City, known as Saigon before the National Liberation Front ‘liberated’ the city in 1975, was our last stop in Vietnam. Having arrived by bus late evening, we were greeted by ceaseless streams of motorbikes, which number is bigger in this city than 7 mln of Ho Chi Minh City population. Vietnam’s most

Muine in a Snapshot

Guerrillas in the Mist

I’m sitting on a bus to Dalat next to a cheerful Czech professor of construction who speaks perfect Polish. He’s travelling with his friend’s wife, ekhm. We go uphill and can finally breathe normally as the temperature drops suddenly; it’s a sign that Dalat, an old French hill station, is near. There are stretches of

Apocalypse Now: The Day After

We arrived in Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam, early in the morning and the moment we got off the bus, hotel touts started the fight for our wallets. This time we let ourselves be taken to one of the hotels, which turned out to be opposite doors with the famous Cafe on Thu Wheels,

When in Vietnam…

Studying hotel leaflets does not belong to my favourite activities while travelling, but sometimes you can find little ‘gems’ like the one below. It’s an excerpt from a longer article written by Amy Morison, also published on http://www.livehoianmagazine.com, presenting some characteristic Vietnamese traits, accompanied with my personal comments regarding our naturalisation process.

Balm for Body and Soul

There is a time during every journey when you are tired of… travelling. You wish you could stay in one place longer and stop packing up your stuff all the time. Your mind brings back the laziness of Sunday mornings together with the feeling of security and stabilisation you left at home. This is a

Ha Noi: Substitute for Coffee

Travelling around Vietnam after China is so easy that we sometimes wish it was more challenging. We miss the ambiguity lurking around every corner in China. In Vietnam there is no excitement when buying train or bus tickets as you can almost always communicate in English and the Vietnamese know what you need before you

Vietnamese Motorcycle Diaries

1/11/2011, 5:30am: our sleeping bus arrives in Hekou, a border Chinese town with a distinct Vietnamese influence. The Chinese-Vietnamese border opens at 8am, which means we have to kill some time in the early hours when everything is closed. Only elderly Chinese, or maybe Vietnamese, cannot sleep and do their morning jogging and stretching at