As we walked through the old quarter with our friends, a light rain began to fall.  Our first instinct was to stop and find some breakfast while we waited for Flamingo Travel to open but we had a hard time finding an open cafe. The only open restaurant seemed targeted toward tourists and as such […]

It was sad to say our final,difficult goodbye to our bikes upon leaving them on the loading platform; we’d had such a great adventure on our scooters in Vietnam! Without our own wheels our mobility was limited so we spent the rest of the evening hanging out at the local park in Lao Cai.  We […]

Pulling out of our lovely Lai Chau hotel, we weren’t exactly sure what our last day on the motorbikes would bring us. We knew that we were heading straight into Sapa, one of the most touristy places in Vietnam and had heard reports of constant barrages of sales pitches and overcharging tourists. Since our last […]

Once on the road again, conditions quickly deteriorated into loose gravel, and then into large rocks.  After riding about 20 minutes over really rough terrain, the conditions were not improving.  Having already gone through several fairly deep mud puddles and been rattled to pieces, we suspected that we might have taken a wrong turn and […]

Morning couldn’t come fast enough, though I slept well enough in the safety of our net-shelter.  The bird had quieted overnight and was nowhere to be heard.  We strapped our bags onto our bikes with the rubber straps provided to us, fueled up at a nearby petrol station, and hit the road.  We were glad […]

We hardly took time to look around our room after our arrival, basically just dumping our bags and heading out to town. We checked out the local grocery store to pick up some water and some juice and then sought out some pho. This particular rendition was full of some really tough duck meat that […]

It is amazing at how many kids we see running around this place.  Whether riding bikes, walking home from school in large groups with matching blue and white uniforms, or playing shirtless and shoeless in the street, kids are everywhere.  They seem particularly excited to try out their English on native speakers and as such […]

We had seen images of outdoor barbers in Vietnam, entailing a mirror hung up in the street with a chair right on the sidewalk.  Thinking that this was a relic of the past, we were delighted to see such an operation just across the street from our guest house as we rolled into Son La. […]

A half hour after our scooter incident, the heavy fog began to burn off and the roads dried out. With the weather having shaped up for the rest of our days ride, we carried on through the dusty villages and towns on our way to Son La. [split_gallery show=”1-8″] Now three days into our visit […]

We woke up too a cool morning in Mai Chau well before the sun came up as usual.  After laying on the extremely firm mattress for several hours, we decided to get an early start to the day.  We made our way downstairs where we were met by the hostess.  She offered us a breakfast […]

Mai Chau is a delightful little town surrounded by a steep limestone karst which seems to epitomize northern Vietnam.  The people are incredibly friendly, and have surprisingly good English.  I suppose that even though this little town isn’t a big tourist destination, it is close enough to Hanoi that there is enough opportunity to interface […]