Category: Big Trip 2012

Quite well rested we arrived in Vietnam’s capital at around 5 AM. Unfortunately our stay started a bit unpleasant as the meter of out taxi was manipulated. So after 4 USD we stopped the taxi driver, yelled at him and walked the last kilometer to our hotel. One positive...

It was time to say good-bye to Hoi An – what a pleasant stay it was. Again the train was our chosen mode of transportation and so we boarded the 2 o’clock train to Hue. The three hours train ride passed some beautiful scenery including coast lines and an...

At 8:30 the next morning we arrived in Da Nang and a short car ride later we were in the small town of Hoi An. The very new and nice Sunshine Hotel was our home for the next four nights. After a nap (that’s one of the best parts...

A five hour bus ride brought us from Ho Chi Minh City to the beach town of Mui Ne where we stayed at the brand new Windflower Hotel with its nice pool. The hotel was a bit outside the main strip which was okay for us as we devoted...

After a 6 hours bus ride from Phnom Penh (including a river crossing by ferry and a hassle free border crossing) we arrived in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City as it’s called today). The Saigon Zoom Hotel would be our home for the next three days. It was...

It was time to leave Siem Reap towards the Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. A quite comfortable six hour bus ride brought us to our destination. By coincident Hazel’s Brother’s girlfriend Elaine was in town for business and so we bunked in with her and spent a nice evening...

We arrived at 9h30 in the evening at the very new airport of Siem Reap. There were ten immigration officers (no kidding) issuing and handling Kevin’s visa on arrival (basically 3 taking the passport, 3 putting the visa in it, 3 stamping it and 1 returning it). They don’t...

We had another two nights in Manila before leaving the country and booked a nice hotel in the old part of the city called Intramuros (because it’s a walled city within the city). Manila – a city of more than 11 million people – is one of those cities...

Once we had arrived in Manila we headed straight for the bus terminal to get our tickets for the ride to Banaue in the Cordilleras region of Luzon. The few hours till our night bus left were killed in a nearby shopping center. The number of people frequenting the...

We left El Nido by mini-van which was slightly more expensive than the big Roro-bus we had taken to get to El Nido but was also about twice as fast. About five hours later we arrived in the little town of Sabang. Besides two luxury hotels there were plenty...