Into the world

After Bangkok, Chiang Mai is the second biggest city in Thailand, and is located in the northern part of the country. The differences are enormous though — while Bangkok is a chaotic metropolis, Chiang Mai is more clean and quiet.

On Wednesday we drove straight north in a minivan, from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang is a city near the Mekong. The ride in the overheated minivan was twisty, but the views on the Laos jungle made up for the discomfort.

Driving from Vientiane to Vang Vieng should take 3.5 hours. However, when you include a lunch and wee stop, in reality it’s rather a 5-hour drive.

Thursday evening, we flew from Hanoi to Laos. At the airport, we could choose between a 30-hour bus ride or a 1-hour flight. The price difference was remarkable, but we decided to travel by plane.

I won’t be telling a long story about Hanoi. Not that we didn’t enjoy our stay here, we actually ended up not doing much. We mostly took our time to plan our further travels and strolled around in the city — i.e. drinking coffee during the day and beer in the evenings in the nearest […]

In Hoi An we took the bus to Hue. From there, we traveled in a minivan to PhongNha. A whole day of traveling, but it turned out quite fine.

We arrived at the airport of Da Nang, where a taxi was waiting to bring us to our homestay in Hội An — a 30km, or 45min drive. Our homestay was run by our host and his familiy. Our host was a governmental engineer by day, while before and after office hours he invites guests […]

Due to heavy rain in central Vietnam, we ‘had to’ stay a little longer in the south. Cần Thơ (pronounce as ‘can təh’) is a major city in the middle of the Mekong delta. This river is responsible for generating highly fertile soil, which is also one of the reasons why there’s so much industry […]