Cao Bang is Jurassic Park. It's like the geography of Thailand beaches, but instead of rock formations bursting off of flat ocean water, they're bursting off of flat, bright green grassland and rice fields. Our homestay was located in a little village called Khuoi Ky (pronounced Koh-eye Kee). The home was made of stone, two hundred years old, with wooden floors inside. It had a lovely outdoor stone patio and was surrounded by 5 or 6 other stone homes in the village. A small pathway made of cobbled stone ran between the homes and led to a small bridge which crossed over a river. On the other side of the river there was a dirt road which led to the...
Although the town is small and relatively random, there is one thing that drew me in about Bac Ha and once I’d learned of it, I couldn’t turn back: The Bac Ha Market. People come from all over Vietnam, both locals and tourists (mostly locals) to visit Bac Ha Market which happens only on Sundays. Gets set up the night before and broken down on Sunday evening. You know I luvvv a market, so this was a must. I told Alex I was getting up at 7am to get there when it starts. When I got to the market they were selling harem-ish style pants with embroidery from local tribeswomen. I tried on a bunch of pairs to find the right...
Heeey what up fam! I’m writing from….. the flight to Portugal. Meeting my family for vacation. Eeeek, a month in Vietnam really blew by. Can't believe it's already over. I wanted to write throughout, but I kept feeling like writing was taking me away from being entirely in the moment. So now that I'm stuck on a plane, I’m gonna cover a month's worth of shit right here. I feel like I’m writing a final paper the night before it’s due... which is how I write all literal and metaphorical final papers so this is perfect. Well lots happened in Vietnam. My stop-by-stop route looked like this: Hanoi Round 1—> Sapa (city center) —> Hau Thao (village 30 km from Sapa) —> Bac...
Greetings from the Sydney airport, where the time is 6:48am (Wednesday) and my flight to Hanoi is apparently now at 2:15pm (Wednesday). I'm here 8 hours early. I was originally booked on flight departing Sydney on Tuesday at 10:10pm. My itinerary was booked as: SYD --> 3 hour layover in TAIPEI (TAIWAN) --> HANOI (VIETNAM). Some of you may have heard that Typhoon Maria is hitting Taiwan at the moment. I've learned a decent amount about climate and natural weather phenomena from traveling. For example, I learned the actual definition of a monsoon while in India. Did you know the only thing that distinguishes a typhoon from a hurricane is the region in the world in which it occurs? But yeah, Typhoon Maria is supposed to be pretty...
