We were well aware of Thailand’s famously spectacular beaches prior to traveling to Southeast Asia. The problem is that everyone else in the world is aware of this fact too. After our first experience on Koh Tao, an island that is considered to still be relatively unvisited but which contained some of the worst drunken, obnoxious…

There isn’t much to see in the actual town of Vinh Long. The place serves almost entirely as a place to launch a boat to tour around the fabled waters of the ‘Nine Dragons’, the nine main rivers that make up the Mekong Delta. We chose Vinh Long as an alternative to the larger and…

When I was writing the post on Hanoi, I realized that I would have to save some of my hyperbole about Vietnamese cities for the post on Saigon. The two big cities in Vietnam have some similarities. They are both marked by the Vietnam War and they both feature clouds of motorbikes zipping through their…

Our hasty departure from Ha Long Bay meant that we made it to Hoi An just in time for their monthly Legendary Night. The Hoi An Legendary Night is a celebration timed with the full moon that  aims to transform Hoi An back in time. Electrical lights are turned off and colorful lanterns are used…

Ha Long Bay was one of the few places in Vietnam where I had some sense of what it might be like to be there. Glossy images of bright green karsts jutting out of crystal blue waters danced in my head like National Geographic spreads as we planned how to travel from Hanoi to Ha…

From Sapa, we took the train to Hanoi, our first big city in a while. By the time we arrived there, we had been looking forward to getting back into an urban environment, and Hanoi did not disappoint at all. Unlike Bangkok, which really felt like a Western city with Asian details, Hanoi felt entirely…

After being delayed for what seemed like forever, we crossed the border from Vietnam to Laos on the second of February. It was a great relief to finally be making some forward progress in our trip and we were excited to see the next country on our itinerary. We felt a little rushed since our…