After spending two final nights relaxing in Saigon, we left Vietnam for Hong Kong, and stayed for a 3 day layover. Hong Kong is a territory of China, but was only returned to Chinese rule in the late 90’s after being a colony of Britain for over 100 years. The result in a very interesting …
Day 3: Cần Thơ to Sa Đéc At the beginning of day three, we took off on a 20 minute boat road to visit a famous floating market, the Cai Rang Market, which is the largest floating market in the Mekong. The market is certainly organized chaos, with more emphasis on the chaos – around …
When we first started talking about this trip we did as we usually do and reached out to anyone we knew that was familiar with the area to get their perspective. As it turns out, Alicia’s Aunt Teresa & Uncle Doug have spent substantial time traveling throughout Asia and so were a fantastic resource during …
We arrived in Saigon (known more recently as Ho Chi Minh City) to a much welcomed 32° and pure sun. Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam but is actually not that much larger than Hanoi – 7.5M people in Hanoi and 8.5M in Saigon. Despite the relatively small change in size, there is a …
After our quick overnight in Hạ Long Bay we headed south to Hội An for a two night vacation-from-vacation. While the frenetic pace of the city can make for exciting travel, it was nice to escape to a smaller and more low-key destination for a few days to relax. Hội An itself has a population …
We were picked up by our tour guide Minh early on New Years Eve day and started the 4 hour bus trip east to Hạ Long Bay. We arrived at the Hạ Long Marina around noon to a tourist infested area filled with hundreds of overnight boats and literally thousands of tourists. Hạ Long Bay …
Coming from the order, conformity and lawfulness of Toronto, Hanoi is a mecca of chaos. Over 8 million people live in Hanoi, and together they own and operate more than 5 million motorcycles (we think all at once). The sights, sounds and smells of the city make it a vibrant and highly stimulating place unlike …
Our second stay in Tokyo was in Roppongi, a bustling area famous for its night life. We stayed in an awesome one bedroom apartment through Airbnb. Tokyo is so, so big that it’s really hard to get a grasp on all there is to do, but for these couple of days, the main attraction and …
We left Osaka and headed South into the mountains early on Thursday morning. Mount Koya is a really small, quiet town in the mountains; accessible by 1 train, 1 bus and 1 rather exciting cable car. The town is essentially run by Buddhist Monks. There are not really any standard hotels but the Monks open …
After our short stay in Kobe we arrived in Osaka, the second largest city in Japan with 19 million people. We stayed there for 4 nights, spending our time exploring covered open air markets, walking around and eating in busy neighbourhoods and taking a day trip to nearby Nara. Here are a couple of the …