Buddha Birthday Buddha Purnima and Buddha Jayanthi are two different terms for the same happening, the birth anniversary of Lord Buddha. This auspicious day has several names for it. Beside Buddha Purnima and Buddha Jayanthi it is also called Saga Dawa, Vesak, Vaisakh Purnima, and many more names in different …
Ha Long Bay Location One of the wonderful places to visit in Vietnam is Ha Long Bay. Vietnamese write the words separate, like Ha Noi, Sai Gon and Viet Nam. It doesn’t matter how you write it, everyone knows what you mean if you write and say it as one …
Rules of Hotels & Apartments in Vietnam Some of the most strange things in Vietnam are related to hotels and apartments. They have this obsession with your passport. If you don’t hand over your passport, there will be a big chance they won’t let you stay. If you’re lucky, they accept …
Visa run to Moc Bai border Vietnam In another post there is info about visas for Vietnam. Here more about the infamous border run or Visa run to Moc Bai border Vietnam. When you have a three months tourist visa and it is going to expire while you are in …
One of the biggest tourist attractions within the city of Hanoi is the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh was the big man behind the independence and reunification of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh is called ‘uncle’ or ‘uncle Ho’ by the Vietnamese people. Officially it is still not allowed …
Hoa Lu Combined with the Tam Coc – Ninh Binh boat tour, of which more in another post, is the tour to Hoa Lu. As soon as you have finished the boat tour, you will be brought by bus to Hoa Lu, the first capital of Vietnam. To be more …
Tourist bus When living in Asia, or travelling in Asia, you will always have some adventurous journeys instead of luxury ones. So is the tourist bus between Vientiane and Hanoi. A ticket for the daily tourist bus might look cheap and a good alternative for flying. The price being charged …
Sapa Sapa is located around 320 km northwest of Hanoi and near the border with China. It is a village in the Lao Cai province with the same name as the district. The town has a small size of 25 km2 and a population that doesn’t exceed 10.000, although the …
Saigon Saigon is the biggest city of Vietnam, although it’s not the capital. The numbers are somewhere around 3,4 million people living in the inner city and 10 million including surrounding areas. The weather in Saigon can be from real hot, around 40 degrees in summer, to very wet during …
Hanoi A lot can be said about the differences between north and south Vietnam and about Hanoi and Saigon. Overall it’s the Americans that like Saigon most and Europeans that like Hanoi most. Maybe this is related to the history of both cities. If you prefer a dynamic, noisy, polluted, …