Long Time No See – And This Time I’m Not Alone

There has been some time of quiet here in this blog…you probably forgot over time, that you have a subscription here at all 😉 Welcome back!

But before we get too enthusiastic: It’s for 3 weeks. “Only,” you might want to think. Swallow it…it’s vacation this time, not time off. We are on our flight to Bangkok for a well deserved 3-week-vacation to Vietnam and Laos. And, yes, “we” is not pluralis majestatis, but means two pax: Nina and me.

Regular readers know that I’ve been to Vietnam before (the story starts here), but Nina has not. And none of us had been to Laos before. So it will be a very welcome mixture of the known and the unknown. We are on our way to Saigon (changing flights in Bangkok), will from there do Vietnam north-bound (wow…what a change…I did it in reverse direction two years ago ;)) and hop over to Laos from Hanoi. Three weeks aren’t three months, and that has restricted our itinerary a bit. One of the activities, we unfortunately had to drop, is diving. The plan lists locations like Saigon, Hoi An, Hue, Ninh Binh, Hanoi / Sapa / Halong Bay, then in Laos Luang Prabang, Plain of Jars, Vientienne. And a contingency day in Bangkok.

But again, we gonna organise the details on the way. Hopefully that works out…we won’t have much time for flooded railways, broken-down long-distance busses, closed airports in heavy monsoon rains and all of these common little disasters individual travellers might be hit by. But if so you’ll be first to notice…by missing reports on this site 😉

The trip pre-arranged so far goes as far as Hue: Right now we are sitting on an AirBerlin flight from Dusseldorf to Bangkok (for an unbeatable 700 EUR per person return!), will change there onto an Air France flight to Saigon (for another unbeatable 69 EUR for the two of us), have a hotel there, fly out the next day already (Saigon isn’t that great in the end…we just wanna see the Reunification Palace) with Vietnam Air to Da Nang, from where it is a short hop by taxi to Hue, a romantic little town with some French, Japanese, and Chinese heritage. And even I haven’t seen the beach there!

Experience made packing an easy deal. And the big advantage of being two persons is that a lot of stuff can be shared and hence reduces a person’s average load. Nina has already prebooked the empty space in our backpacks for…well…some people would call it “souveniers”, I certainly know better: it’s gonna be room decoration.

OK…that’s it for a warm-up. Let’s hope I find the time and leisure for updates about every other day or so, and also an internet connection. Stay tuned!

Just a question out to the world: Is there any hype on “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follet??? Or can anyone explain why I’ve seen the book thrice already today? Nina has it, in German by mistake, we’ve seen it in French already, and just a second ago I notice the man one row back across the aisle has a Spanish copy of it.

Today’s Lesson: “Pillars of the Earth” is in.

Categories: Asia, Ho Chi Minh City

Originally Created: 08/14/2009 08:31:19 PM
Last Edited: 08/14/2009