2015 happened and like every year before it I look back on it now and see only a blur. All of the joy and excitement and pleasure of one of the best years of my life (so far) has dissipated into the ether. It’s over and the only proof I’ve got that it happened at…
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Can Tho is a stop on most Mekong Delta itineraries. If you go to Can Tho expecting a rural Vietnamese town, a sort-of Hoi An Old Quarter retreat with picturesque cycle routes and souvenir-selling street vendors you’re going to be disappointed. But if you go to Can Tho expecting a thriving, modern city full of…
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If you’re not very organised and plan your trip around intuitive inconsistencies like ‘what feels right at the time’ or you go for practical ease like ‘where’s the nearest place to here’, eventually you’re going to end up somewhere you don’t particularly want to be. And the reason you’re not particularly going to want to…
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I’ve heard it said that once you’ve seen one Chinatown you’ve seen them all. Wrong. One of my favourite things about going to a new city is finding Chinatown, if there is one, and there nearly always is. Another one of my favourite things at the minute is to find attractions I intend to visit…
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I was going to type ‘is Dalat Vietnam’s biggest exporter of flowers?’, a quick, lazy search to find out whether I had any grounds to say that it was, but I didn’t get round to actually doing the research. As soon as I typed in ‘is Dalat’ Google’s auto-fill search function finished off my question,…
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When you travel, just as in everyday life, you miss what you can’t have. Reality is a bitch and no matter how exciting it feels to leave all of the comforts you’re used to behind, embracing all that is adventurous and wild and free, there may come a time when roughing it loses its appeal.…
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Sometimes you can go to a new place without any expectations. Nothing but a name, the place is an empty vacuum until the moment you step into it, breathe its air and look around. Hoi An was not this. Hoi An was a place I had already vividly imagined, a collage of postcards and adverts…
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My waterproofs were used. They stank with the unmistakeable sour tang of wet and muddy fabric left to stew in its own nasty bacterial heaven like the very worst of festival tents. I slipped the trousers over my legs and held my breath as I pulled the hoody-shaped bag over my head. I suppose I…
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