Back in Nam.. Ho Chi Minh, Nah Trang & Hoi An

Vietnam was probably one of the top travel destinations on my South East Asia adventures. Not only did I get to meet up and travel with my brother again who I hadn't seen in 8 months! but I got to do a ton of things I've always been too chicken to do in the past. Three weeks seemed like a lot but I honestly could have stayed there for ages.

We started in Ho Chi Minh city where I had just taken an overnight bus to from Sihanoukville in Cambodia. The ride in wasnt the worst I had been on but super long, although when we realised the size of Vietnam, overnight bus rides were going to become the norm. I met my brother when his flight got in and we had to venture off to the market to buy him some slops and shorts because his bag hadn't arrived.. shame, the jeans he arrived in weren't going to cut it! We spent a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh checking out the War Museum, visiting the zoo, crawling through the Cu Chi tunnels and eating all of the food, seriously Vietnamese food has got it going on! I also did the first thing I'd always been too chicken to do, I got a tattoo! My brother had the idea of getting a brother sister tattoo sometime in Vietnam. I thought it was a dumb idea at first, I actually think the literal words that came out of my mouth were "no that's dumb, I'm not doing that", but fast forward a few weeks later and we were both sitting at a Saigon ink in Ho Chi Minh deciding on the exact design of our little idea and then half passing out when the very nice Vietnamese man started sticking needles in us. It was a terrible but pretty exciting experience to say the least but I now have a little reminder forever of our Vietnam experience:)

We continued on to Nah Trang from there, the first of the 10+ hour long bus rides.. We arrived in the pouring rain, got ripped off by a taxi and had our bags soaked through.. but still pretty excited to explore the first of the many beach towns we would visit. Nah Trang was a bit of a strange place. A complete beach town with massive hotel developments forming on the beach front and resorts all over but not full of just any tourists, the tourist population there is probably around 80% Russian. All the shopfronts and menus include Russian writing with Vietnamese and English being second to that. A bit of a culture wobble. We managed to go on a pretty great snorkel trip complete with the best lunch on the boat, because travel really is all about the food right?

After making some friends in Nah Trang and realising we were all going the same route we headed off to Hoi An. Turns out everyone we met was staying in the same hostel. Win! Hoi An is the sweetest little place. It felt a lot like real Vietnam. There were no massive buildings, overly priced shopping malls or fast food restaurants but there were still tons of people and a million scooter drivers everywhere:) Besides being the best place to get custom clothes made from the tons of dressmakers there, I got the best jacket and a dress and skirt made for super cheap, it was a real relaxing place to be in. Easy going days visiting the markets, trips to the beach, and cycling around town was pretty much the gist of it. Going out in Hoi An proved to be loads of fun too. One bar owner decided to draw people in by making all drinks $1... the entire night. Needless to say we had no problems with that :) Go Hoi An!

 

Beijing!

After a pretty fantastic time spent showing the family how I had been living for 6 months and exploring Seoul with them it was time to move on to our next destination together,  Beijing!

The trip didn't start out as smoothly as hoped for, well for me at least. Leaving the day Chuseok started in Korea meant pretty much everyone and their uncles dog was at the airport that morning. The rest of the family left from Gimpo, another airport in Seoul, so they had didn't have as much trouble leaving Korea. To cut a long story short, the delay meant I missed the connection in Shenyang in China and got on the next available flight to Beijing, which ended up being 9 hours later than expected :| Not ideal..

Even though we missed a day of exploring we still managed to visit a bunch of different sites. We started with Tienanmen square and the Forbidden City. It was great to see so much cultural history in one place. Mao's mausoleum unfortunately wasn't open for viewing in the square that day so no creepy old dictator dead body viewing for us but it was still a really interesting place to be at. The size of the Forbidden City was insane and the stories behind what happened there are never ending too. Its great to be able to be in a place and learn its history at the same time so I tried my best to understand the history of the different dynasty's throughout Beijing but jeepers the amount of information that goes with them proved to be a little more than my brain could handle in a day.

Starfish, taratulas, snakes, and cockroaches at Wangfujing night market

Our Great Wall trip included a visit to the Ming Tombs, lunch at a Jade factory and a trip to a silk factory too. The Great Wall was something else! It was pretty incredible to be standing on it and walking along it like its no big deal. We managed to get a day with perfect weather too! It really made the views from the lookout towers kind of postcard perfect. Blue sky and mountains for days. We got  to toboggan down the mountain on the way down too, so much fun!

Some other things we did included visiting the Yonghe, or Lama Temple as its known today, which was once home to a large number of Tibetan Buddhist monks. We got lost for a couple of hours at The Temple of Heaven and fitted in a whole day of shopping at the silk street market, because what would a trip to Beijing be without having shouting matches with shop attendants to get the best deal on sweet sweet cheap as chips knockoffs! Brother went home with about 5 pairs of shoes, no lies.

Throwing coins for luck at Lama Temple

All in all Beijing was really great. I mean don't get me wrong it isn't the cleanest city I've been to and yes it is true, mothers do let their babies poo in the streets (forever scarred) but the cultural history and the sights outweigh all of that! If sightseeing is your thing, and there is a ton to see, then Beijing is your place!

Some videos I made using Roadmovies:

Seoul tourist-ing with the family :)

A couple of months ago my Family came to visit me in Korea for a whirlwind week of catching up and taking on a slither of Asia together. They arrived just before the Korean holiday Chuseok which gives most people in Korea a nice 3 days off work during this time once a year. My family arrived on a Saturday and spent three days in Seoul where we did all the touristy things we could. It also happened to be brothers birthday during their time in Seoul too! I managed to get the Monday and Tuesday off work and then because of the lovely 3 days off that Chuseok gave us plus the weekend, we were off to Beijing for our first family trip overseas!

The first night they arrived Mom, Dad and Andrew quickly became acquainted with everyone and we took them to Hongdae to introduce them to some delicious Korean barbeque and the potent, cheap as hell soju. The night escalated a little from there, which probably wasn't the greatest idea when we had to wake up at 6 in the morning the next day to go on a DMZ tour. Needless to say we were all cursing the little green devil that is soju the whole of Sunday. Welcome to Korea family!

The DMZ tour was really interesting and a bit eerie in a way. To see such separation with two places that are technically one yet completely opposite in every way, is really hard to wrap your head around. We then wandered around Seoul for a while and made our way down to Ansan to see my humble abode and to show off a bit of Ansan station where we met everyone for Uzbekistan dinner. Our Uzbek dinners have become a pretty regular thing on a Sunday so it was nice to show the fam how our weekends end in our little city. Other touristy things we did included Gyeongbokgung Palace and lunch and shopping in Insadong. I had only ever been past the palace and seen its walls and the gates before. Its situated in the middle of Seoul so its surrounded by high rise buildings and tons of modern architecture. Being inside the palace gave you a completely different perspective, you forget that you're in the middle of a bustling city for a bit and get taken in by the peaceful quietness of it all. We also went up Namsan tower or Seoul tower as its sometimes known. We made our way up on one of the last cable cars of the day so we could see the lights of Seoul in full effect. I realised very quickly after arriving in Korea that Seoul is a lot bigger than I had originally thought but seeing it from up high like that and seeing how far the lights stretched it made me realise that its even bigger than that. Crazy big really. It was great travelling around Seoul doing all the touristy things I hadn't ever done before and even better to experience them with the fam :)