All of these hints are from personal experience of a recent (August 2009) round trip from Ho Chi Minh City through Mui Ne, Nha Trang, Da Lat and back again. We used one bike between two of us, a small-ish automatic, and covered around 1100km in six days.

Don’t take too much luggage. It increases fuel [...]

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My last day in Vietnam and the last proper day of my trip. A sad day, as ever, more-so due to some events back home over which I had no control, but that is for another blog.
To cheer myself up I hopped on a xe om up to the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation to catch [...]

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At one with the locals

I’m very late in typing this up and getting it posted but I’ve been really busy since getting back from Vietnam. This post is a brief overview of the trip I took with Thao. I’ll be adding more detailed posts for each day shortly and they’ll be linked from here.
The idea [...]

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Today we opted to spend a full day in Nha Trang and go on one of the popular boat trips. They’ve been $6 for years and this hasn’t changed, though it seems they’re adding other little charges now which weren’t levied before.
We moto’d to the pier area and parked up then selected “Number 4 Boat [...]

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We got up at 8am and the first thing we did after checking out was to hit the shops. I needed sun lotion, mainly as my face resembled that of a red superhero wearing a white Zorro mask. Not flattering, but at least I knew my sunglasses were working.
Our route took us back onto the [...]

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We set off at around 11:30 after going to Thao’s to repack our things into small bags. Thao had had a friend check out her motorbike and he deemed it satisfactory for our journey – no need to rent others so a huge money-saver!
Aiming for the 1A main road, we zoomed east for about an [...]

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In the afternoon, we headed back to our resective homes (Thao her place, myself to the hotel) to get changed into something more comfortable. Well, for me that was just another shirt as I was all out of trousers havign ripped the crotch of one pair wide open getting onto her bike the night before.
As [...]

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My first morning after arriving in Vietnam was to be spent at the wedding of a friend of Thao, my kind guide. Only I discovered the night before that it wasn’t a wedding at all but an engagement ceremony / party. It seems here that more emphasis is put on the engagement than on the [...]

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Visit number five to Vietnam and number three to Ho Chi Minh City. This time was to be my first with a “local” guide in the form of Thao who I’ve been chatting to online for almost two years now, I think. She originally spotted my blog post about climbing Fansipan, which she was planning [...]

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I’m just about to shut down the netbook and go catch the Airport Express to Suvarnabhumi Airport once more. Another great visit to Bangkok, a city I really love. Quick waves out to all the lovely people I met here, especially Laura, Barbera and the lovely people at the TRSC centre and the HQ Hostel. [...]

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