Our first afternoon in Sydney was spent wandering the neighborhood around the hostel and down to the harbor to get a view of the famous opera house and explore the city a little. For the first time in a long time, we ate at an Italian restaurant and we had noodles that weren’t fried with soy sauce. Our accommodation in Sydney was certainty an interesting place. The bed had a fitted sheet with cigarette burns and a top sheet with mold, which we…
We loved Hoi An. Here were our top favorite activities: Food Food Tour By far our favorite part of Hoi An was the food. We did a food tour on our first day which was excellent. We were led by Pearl, a local who has a passion for food and was genuinely excited to show us all of the foods of Hoi An and the proper ways to eat them. We tried a total of 10 different items over the course of…
Ha Long Bay is advertised (at least by our selected cruise company, Ocean Tours) as one of the “New 7 Wonders of the World.” I was not familiar with that category of world wonders but it certainly is stunningly beautiful. Over 1,000 towering limestone islands surround one bigger island (Cat Ba), rising above the turquoise water. It’s a magical sight to see. Our 3 day/2 night cocktail cruise began with a 2 hour bus ride from Hanoi to the coast….
After having a great experience trekking in Myanmar we booked a 2 day/1 night trek in Sapa, a small town in northern Vietnam, through Ethnic Travel. We had very little information on the details of the trek prior to leaving Hanoi and were unsure of what the mileage would be, what size the group would be, etc. All we knew was that we had to arrive at the company’s office in Hanoi at 7:30pm for our night train to the north….
The first afternoon after arriving in Yangon, Myanmar, we sped over to Shwedagon Pagoda, arguably the city’s most important and well-known sight, to check out the hype. The pagoda is beautiful and serves as both a religious monument and as a community center of sorts, with lots of locals hanging out, praying, and spending time with one another. As we were walking around, we were stopped by a smiling monk who asked us where we were from. We chatted for a few…
We spent three nights in Ao Nang, one of Thailand’s west coast beach towns in the Krabi area. It was beautiful. We spent most of our time living the beach bum life, relaxing on the beach and then reading by the hotel pool. One highlight was chartering a long tail boat to visit Tup and Poda Islands which are about 30 minutes from the mainland. It’s hard to put into words how beautiful it was, so we’ll just share some…
Busan We arrived in Korea at the very southern end of the Korean peninsula in the city of Busan after a 3 hour ferry from Fukuoka, Japan. The ferry ride was mostly smooth and uneventful despite some 3 to 4 foot swells in the Sea of Japan. For those of you that like facts, Busan is the second largest city in Korea and the 5th busiest port in the world. My traveling philosophy is that the bare minimum language you…
The “glass half full” observation of the morning we planned to hike to see the famous snow monkeys at Jigokudani Snow Money Park was that we got to see Japanese rain for the first time in our lives. Luckily, after a couple of rounds of Phase 10 under our heated table, the rain let up enough for us to begin the walk to the monkey park. Shortly into our 30 minute walk the rain stopped completely for what ended up…
After our whirlwind day in Tokyo and our previous urban stops to begin our adventure we were ready to get out of the city and see a little bit of countryside. We took a Japanese Rail (JR) Shinkansen Train, or “bullet train”, to Nagano before transferring to a local train to Yudanaka. From there it was a quick bus ride that got us within a 5 minute walk of our accommodations for the next 2 nights, Nozaru Hostel. Luckily, there are…
We arrived in Japan after a longer than expected travel day. We had imagined arriving at the airport and quickly getting into the city before grabbing some sushi for dinner. As it turned out we landed around 9:30 and we still had a journey of just over two hours including walking to the train station from our terminal, buying tickets, asking for help since we didn’t understand our tickets, and transferring before getting to our stop. We finally got to…