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vietnam

Travel

Recharging Batteries | Phu Quoc | Vietnam

We did it. We had our time off on the little island we where dreaming of since we plant our TATW. This was we have been working for seven days a week almost the whole past year. Just chilling, relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

We left Vinh Long by bus to via Rach Gia and one day later we crossed over to Phu Quoc by boat. Even Carmen was afraid of the water trip (due to the last one during the thunder storm) we had a pleasant ride with the very comfortable “Super Dong III”.

Phu Quoc is a little island in the Chinese Sea which has a lot of origin Villages as well as growing tourism. People say it’s like Koh Samui 25h years ago. You find a lot of very quite and peaceful places without any touristic touches. On the other hand, there are a lot of new Restaurants offering western food along the main beach close to capital Duong Dong.

What we did?

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Travel

Exploring Mekong Delta | Vietnam

Hello out there.

It is now over a week that we have been traveling the world and we love it. We get so many impressions, smells and meet a lot of friendly people. Its true: you get a smile from everybody on every corner. Mostly its an “Hello” included too.

We left Vung Tau on Thursday with the Russian express boat to go to My Tho via HCMC, known as the gateway to the Mekong area. It was not meant to be a long trip but due to local buses, non-english speaking taxi driver who “knows the way” and lotsa traffic we ended up on the road for 8h. Puuhhh. We spend the night at a little hotel close to the river and decided at dinner to leave early morning for the village Cai Be, known for the oldest floating market in the area.

Although the friendly Motorbike-Boat-Renting-Mekong-River-Tours-Guy said there is no bus going to Cai Be we found ourselves the next day sitting in the back seats of a local bus heading there. We must have had the best seats in that bus, because we would not have loved to stand 2h in the middle of approximately 30 pupils as this bus had just 25 seats and school was out right after we entered. Even on a ride like this you see unimaginable things compared to back home. A woman with a baby had no seat so she just handed her girl over to an old stranger to have the baby seated on his knees. A few minutes later the kid slept almost sucking the mans thumb ;-)

In the centre of Cai Be we met Huong. She is running the CB tourist office and we immediately trusted her and the way she offered us her service. There are no B&B, Hotels or Guesthouses in CB but something they call Homestay. Nothing special about this actually but staying at a local families house. Maybe like people back home are renting out rooms and apartments for guests. She brought us to her “Sister” by motorbike separately and it was beautiful. A very big room just above the floating market and super clean. A very nice and friendly woman too, no English though, so unfortunately no big conversation after Huong left.

Time for a photowalk.

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Travel

A Few Random Shots | Vietnam

Hallo alle zusammen!

Diesmal ist der Blog-Eintrag auf Deutsch, weil wir versprochen haben uns abzuwechseln :-) If you want to read it in English, check out googles translate tool right here ;-)
Die Tage in Ho Chi Minh City waren sehr ereignisreich und wir haben uns einiges angesehen und sind viel rum gelaufen. Von China town, zu den alten Sehenswürdigkeiten, bishin zu den modernen Neubauten, eine interessante und pulsierende Stadt im Wachstum! Besonders mitgenommen hat uns der Besuch im “War Remnants Museum”! Die Bilder und Informationen über den Vietnamkrieg sind erschreckend und lassen einen die Grausamkeiten des Krieges nochmals bewusst werden. Fast jede Familie musste Verluste erleiden und immer noch sind 6% der Bevölkerung durch Kriegsfolgen behindert (vorallem durch Agent orange). Unglaublich!

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Travel

First Impressions | Ho Chi Minh City | Vietnam

It has began! We started our trip around the world (TATW) Thursday evening from Munich. The flights were quiet and even Carmen did “enjoy” them somehow :-)
The taxi drive from hcmc airport whereas was marked by traffic jam. How come that we stuck in TJ’s again after this season :-) but this time we got to see a lot more interesting things than on the A8. The traffic is crazy! We probably saw a million scooters and motor bikes. We never saw a traffic like that before even though India is louder here are much more people on the street.

The hotel is very nice, clean and the crew is super friendly. Our room does not have window but we are not spending much time in there anyway. We ended the tripday with some beer just next to the hotel.

Today after breakfast we went out for a photowalk. No special targets besides the market so we were walking blind in downtown enjoying the city and taking some pictures. We like this city a lot already, its modern, clean and people are very friendly. Lotsa things to see.
Here are some shots from our photowalk today and do not miss the special assignment we had ;-)
All the best from Vietnam
Carmen and Ingoman

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