Viet Nam
Back in Colombo after an exhilarating 2 weeks in Viet Nam. It’s been a while since I took some time out of the country and South East Asia has long been on my exploration list. The preceding months were pretty hectic at work so R did most of the planning and I didn’t really have time to get excited about the whole thing. The Lonely Planet (LP) for Viet Nam is pretty decent so we had a rough idea of how we wanted to spend 15 days - but most of the planning took place on the final few days of browsing Thorn Tree and other internet traveler forums for up to the minute tips and information. Two weeks felt like too short a time to see the whole country so we decided to stick to the North and Central parts. Saigon and the Maekong Delta would have to wait for a combined trip with Cambodia some other time.
The basic plan was something like this.
Arrive in Hanoi - 2 nights
Halong Bay - 1 night
Sapa - 1 night (plus 2 nights on overnight sleeper trains from and to Hanoi)
Ninh Binh - 1 night (plus overnight sleeper to Hue)
Hue - 2 nights
Hoi An - 2 nights
Danang - 1 night
We didn’t make any bookings which left us with the flexibility of adding a couple of nights here and there in places that caught our fancy or completely changing things based on information on the ground. The day before departure we called up a spot that sounded inviting as per the LP description - they sounded nice on the phone so we had a room for the first night plus an airport pick up. That was all we needed. Backpacks packed, right foot forward - to Viet Nam.
