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Good Morning Vietnam
  • Paul and Nancy. We travel
  • Paul and Nancy. We travel

Good Morning Vietnam

Up the Mekong River without a paddle, destination Angkor Wat.
Then a short flight over to spend a few days in Bangkok Read more
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  • Trip start
    September 29, 2019
    Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    And we are off again, hitting the road

    September 25, 2019 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    It was a sign we simply couldn’t ignore, a sign at sunset one evening on the building across False Creek from our place, a sign pointing to South East Asia!

    Nancy! Paul! Go that way✅✅✅

    So we decided to hit the road again and we head off to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand this Sunday. The plan is to fly via Taipei to Saigon, spend a few days there then hop on a river boat and head up the Mekong River ending up at Angkor Watt. We’ll then fly to Bangkok to continue our trip through South “Eats” Asia.

    There should be lots of interesting new things to amuse us for almost three weeks, I’ll try to make some regular Find Penguin postings.

    Stand by for updates.    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    On the ground, ready to find Pho

    September 29, 2019 in Vietnam ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    Looooong day of flying, but everything worked on schedule to disgorge us into the mayhem of Saigon/HCMC traffic.

    Our hotel is very well located and we meet up with the rest of our crew tomorrow morning. Off to do some de jet lag walking and find some place to sample the local cuisine.Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel
    21

    More photos . . . Touring Saigon.

    October 1, 2019 in Vietnam ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C
  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    Saigon - Hustle, Bustle, Dine & Dodge

    October 1, 2019 in Vietnam ⋅ ⛅ 30 °C

    Saigon is a city of energy, on the move and movement means motorbikes, seemingly millions of them, everywhere and that means on the sidewalks too. It was once known as the Paris of the Orient and the city is modernizing with an impressive array of new high rise buildings that have some spectacular night lighting

    A great career choice in Saigon would be anything to do with motorbikes - buy, sell, fix . . . my personal choice would be Horn Repair Technician. Street crossing is a exercise in letting the motorbikes dodge around you. So far, no hits, no damage, no fouls!

    Elements of the Vietnam war are everywhere. We toured the Victory Museum and had a “Rest Stop” at the infamous Rex Hotel Bar where journalists covering the war had their Happy Hour after the daily briefings they called the 5 O’clock Follies. The hotel still operates across the street for the old US embassy where the famous helicopter extraction photos were taken.

    https://sites.google.com/site/coldwartreecutter…

    We toured a huge market and ended our day at a Vietnamese cooking school where Nancy demonstrated her special multi knife chopping skills and won the Silver Medal for her Spring Roll making abilities.

    For Day 1, our jet lag is quite modest and we sure hope that continues!

    Off tomorrow to tour the Cu Chi tunnels . . .

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Củ_Chi_tunnels    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    Leaving Saigon, heading up river

    October 2, 2019 in Vietnam ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Had a fascinating trip yesterday morning out of the city to the CuChi tunnels complex that were a big part of the Vietnam war. Those tunnels are damn tight!

    We had an afternoon an evening to ourselves and we wandered around Saigon avoiding motorbikes.

    They are everywhere, especially sidewalks.

    We are now packed up and checking out of our wonderful Reverie Saigon Hotel to board our ship and head up river . . . something about the Heart of Darkness or whatever.    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel
    1

    The Bedlam Canal . . .

    October 3, 2019 in Vietnam ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Saigon is situated on the Saigon River. To get to the Mekong, we had to transit the Saigon Canal, where the river boat skippers apply Motor Bike rules and the traffic is simply crazy. All shapes and sizes and speeds of boats and barges to entertain us, sometimes passing so close we could just about reach out and shake hands. Lots of little kids on shore waving at us and they got a real kick when we all waved back, especially if we did the Wave! They loved the Wave✅✅

    Our ship is really, really nice and the Forward Loung gets a fabulous breeze and we all enjoyed the show on the water . . . Lovely day!

    Today we board smaller sampans and explore various tributaries of the Mekong . . .    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    A day on and off the river

    October 4, 2019 in Vietnam ⋅ ☁️ 30 °C

    Fun day. We left our floating home on a local sampan and traveled up a series of side canals to visit a family farm/food factory operation. We were tempted to buy a bottle of Cobra eating a Scorpion but changed our mind. Our afternoon was a fun “high speed” tour by motorbike taxi up and down back roads and dikes with the driver going heavy on the horn to warn all the dogs, chickens, kids and local traffic that our convoy was coming through. A sometimes teeth rattling ride but lotsa fun

    We are in Choa Doc, right on the Cambodian border so this is our last day in Vietnam.    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel
    1

    Market Day . . .

    October 5, 2019 in Vietnam ⋅ ☁️ 31 °C

    Think of a market, like Granville Island👍👍

    Then take away the refrigeration for the meat and fish
    Then add a wet and sometimes muddy floor and very narrow isles
    And throw in a very low ceiling, no circulation and a very hot day
    And just for fun throw in motorbikes with horns beeping away like crazy
    And you get how we started our day today.

    It was a total hoot!    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    Phnom Penh . . . AM Culture, PM Beer

    October 6, 2019 in Cambodia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    So we crossed over into Cambodia overnight and had a morning of visiting the King’s Palace complex and a Cambodian Archeological Museum. Both quite interesting but the highlight of the morning was our transport by Cyclo cabs. We each had our own “cab” driver and wove through the traffic like a green worm.

    Out afternoon was a very relaxed Tasting & Tour at a local brewery and it was very enjoyable.

    Off to the Cambodian National Holocaust Museum and visiting the Killing Fields. Expectations are that it will be a very sobering day.    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    Cambodia, we compare and contrast

    October 7, 2019 in Cambodia ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Last night, we were visited by some children from an orphanage that is supported by Avalon, our cruise company.

    They kids were delightful, they performed dances for us,

    Today we visited one of the main prisons where the Khmer Rouge gathered political prisoners to torture confessions from them before taking them out of town to be one of the approximately 3 million victims of the Killing Fields.

    Cambodia will take some time to process.

    We are moving again, heading up river to Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor Watt.    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    Weather & stuff

    October 9, 2019 in Cambodia ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    We have been very lucky on this trip with very few weather impacts. There have been some late afternoon and overnight rain periods but our daytime activities have been just hot and humid . . . Temps in the low/mid 30s.

    I measure the daily heat and humidity by how many shirts I use. Most days are “2 shirt days”, but yesterday, we visited a Buddhist monastery in the morning and a village school in the afternoon and it was a 3’r! The humidity was terrific, we were like walking drip factories.

    Can’t imagine being on a bicycle tour through this area!

    But this morning we had our first real tropical rain blast. The sunrise was interrupted by dark, then almost black clouds, the wind whipped up, lots of lightening & thunder and it was like our ship went through a car wash for an hour.

    And then it just stopped like someone turned off the tap.    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    And so we leave the Mekong.

    October 9, 2019 in Cambodia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    After our days exploring the Mekong and some of its tributaries, we have docked again in Phnom Penh where we will leave our ship and fly to Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor Wat. Wat is the Cambodian word for temple,

    Our last day started off with the crazy weather, but by the time we left to visit a local farm and then a family silversmith operation, the rain had slacked off to just some showers as we rolled out in an Ox Cart Convoy.

    It was quite the trip.    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    Bangkok beckons . . .

    October 12, 2019 in Thailand ⋅ ⛅ 30 °C

    So we have ended the group tour portion of our Far East trip, said our goodbyes to a wonderful group of very nice travelling shipmates and have flown on from Siem Reap to Bangkok.

    Quite the city on 1st impression, should be fun. Our hotel is an old King’s Palace, built in the 1920’s and is the antithesis of our prior very modern accommodations. More to follow on the hotel. . .

    The only access is by hotel shuttle boat!

    We are settling in and will head off for dinner and spend the evening getting ready for a day of exploring tomorrow.    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel
    1

    Bangkok . . . That's a wrap

    October 14, 2019 in Thailand ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    So we have sweated and eaten our way through Bangkok and have enjoyed every minute. This is a city you could spend weeks in and just experience the “big” stuff.

    But every trip has a last day and this is ours. We are bringing our “South Eats Asia” experience into the station at the end of the line.

    Pack up in the morning and off to the Bangkok airport BKK . . . then 4 hours to Taipei then 11 hours back to YVR.

    Some images of our travels around Bangkok, a city we would certainly come back to.

    If only they could fix their heat and humidity problems😂😂😂    Read more

  • Paul and Nancy. We travelGood Morning VietnamPaul and Nancy. We travel

    Our Bangkok home for a few days

    October 14, 2019 in Thailand ⋅ ☁️ 31 °C

    We have been staying in some very modern swish new hotels on this trip when we were not on board our ship. In Bangkok, we opted for an older classic style hotel, the Praya Palazzo.

    It was originally built in the 1920’s as a King’s residence on the banks of the Chao Phraya river and then converted to a hotel. We have to use the hotel’s shuttle boat to get back and forth to the city, they provide a small cell phone for guests to call and they come and pick us up at the nearest water taxi dock N13, about 3 minutes away.

    Being right on the river has some excellent night scenery. We can sit out by the pool and watch the world float by.    Read more

  • Trip end
    October 17, 2019