Our guide here learned English in a buddhist school, which he attended for four years. His parents are illiterate, as they grew-up during the French colonial period, when only the elite were allowed to go to school. During the Vietnam War, Laos became the most bombed country in the history of warfare. The US droppedContinue reading “Days 10 & 11 – Luang Prabang, Laos”
Tag Archives: indochina
Days 7, 8, and 9 – Cambodian Temples
Cambodia. We arrived here on April 10th, and we spent that afternoon, all of the following day, and the morning of the third day exploring the temples in and around Siam Reap. It’s a country of about 17m people; before Pol Pot’s “cultural revolution” and the killing fields (I re-watched the film on the flightContinue reading “Days 7, 8, and 9 – Cambodian Temples”
Day Six – Vietnam War-era Tunnels and an Exhilarating Saigon Experience
Not a tale of two cities, but a tale of two completely different experiences in Saigon. Our morning was spent visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 1 3/4 hours outside the city. This is a sequence of over 75 miles of tunnels that date to the French War and that were used extensively by theContinue reading “Day Six – Vietnam War-era Tunnels and an Exhilarating Saigon Experience”
Day Five – Immersion in Saigon
It was a relatively early morning in Saigon when we took our rickshaw ride to see how the city wakes up; the population seems to be somewhere between 10m and 15m (it was about 3m in 1975 when the Vietnam War ended), making it the largest city in the country, with something like 6m scooters/motorbikes. Continue reading “Day Five – Immersion in Saigon”
Days 3 & 4 on Ha Long Bay
We started out around 8:30 a.m. on a two-hour drive east of Hanoi to Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that sits in the northern part of the Gulf of Tonkin. The Bay is made up of over 1,900 islands, jungle-covered limestone formations – named karsts – that, in some cases, appear toContinue reading “Days 3 & 4 on Ha Long Bay”
Fred's Travel Blog 