Views from our hotel, Phu An River, Vietnam Nov 28-Dec 2, 2009. The most powerful website in the travel industry must be Tripadvisor.com. We, and many others don’t make a booking without researching and this is likely our first line of defense. Hoteliers beg us to review them positively. And the Midas kiss in the […]
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Travel
Nov 25-28, 2009 The Citadel in Hue As fascinating and mind blowing as Vietnam can be, it`s a spender`s nightmare. From any street corner to decent hotel, this country shops, sells and hawks as good as any. Yet it`s not always a relaxed experience. It`s a safe assumption that as a traveler, […]
Nov 21-23, 2009 Halong Bay if you believe the Vietnamese, is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It has a UNESCO stamp to back it up, plus there is nary a soul anywhere who will tell you that its overblown and overrated. The 2000 drop-dead gorgeous limestone pinnacles rise from the emerald […]
Presidential Palace Temple of Literature Hanoi, Nov 14-21 and 24 Well before one lands in Vietnam, you are forewarned and buried with redflags and alerts about touts, scams, thieves, annoyances, dangers and cheats. Indeed we saw evidence of this immediately after hitting the arrivals area when teams of young men plied us with questionable offers. […]
(NOTE: THIS ENTRY SHOULD PRECEDE “THE ROAD OUT OF CHINA…..PRAGUE”) Nov 5-7, 2009 Kunming as capital of the province of Yunnan, and our last major city, is the gateway to our last region of China. It’s hardly worth noting except for the pix that show some of the seemingly wanton destruction of the past and […]
NOTE: THIS ENTRY SHOULD APPEAR AFTER THE “DESTROYING THE PAST….KUNMING” ENTRY) Kunming to Lijiang to Tiger Leaping Gorge to Kunming Nov 5-14, 2009 When we were at the Forbidden City in early Oct, we thought half of China had followed us. Now we’ve learned where the other half were–waiting for us in Lijiang. Lijiang is […]
Grasshopper Delight Yangshuo to Longji Nov 3-5, 2009 We have to force ourselves to leave Yangshuo, but not before a day of cycling in the Yangshuo countryside—alongside rice farms and families harvesting their crop, and the lazy Yulong River. Our […]
Oct 25-Nov 1, 2009 Now in Yangshuo, the land of surreal, karst-like limestone peaks rising out of nowhere and everywhere. Our digs (River Retreat) are set in idyllic rural and poor China, outside of the town, overlooking the […]
Hong Kong Oct 19-24, 2009 For Wayne, Hong Kong is like that first kiss, or staring down that bully in grade 1. It’s filled with romance and larger than life dreams that have been upsized with each telling. He didn’t tell you that it took 25 hours to get there from Huangshan, involving a […]
Oct 19-24, 2009 Objective: Ascertain viability of long term living in HK Risks: Pollution, poverty, Trish killing me The best way to see HK is either after or in between China. Having done this now twice, I (Wayne, here) am deluded with romantic notions of it. I crossed into it after the Tiananmen Sq massacre, […]