Hi Friends!

It’s been a while since I’ve gone on a trip out of country. My last trip outside of Canada/US was in 2016 when me and Emily travelled to Costa Rica and Panama for 2.5 weeks. I’ve been spending a lot of my spare time hiking over the past few years, so last year I decided to stay local for a year and did some traveling around BC and Newfoundland instead.

But I’ve been itching to visit Asia since I moved to BC 4 years ago and I decided to finally make it happen this year! Seth and I have decided to visit Vietnam as a bit of celebration of him finishing up with his thesis. Vietnam has been on my bucket list for a long time and I’m really excited to explore part of the country.

We’re going for just under 3 weeks, and while we are traveling the whole length of the country and doing lots of really awesome stuff, I still feel like we have to skip so much.

We’re flying into Hanoi and spending some time in the north. We’re going to visit the rice terraces in Sapa and go on a cruise of Bai Tu Long Bay. It’s a little ironic because the main reason I wanted to go to Vietnam was to visit Ha Long Bay, but I’ve since learned it’s super overcrowded and polluted, so we’ve decided to visit nearby Bai Tu Long Bay instead in hopes of escaping the crowds. I do have a bit of trepidation about skipping Ha Long Bay, but Bai Tu Long Bay looks pretty gorgeous as well. (They’re both part of a series of islands whose towering cliffs extending up out of the water makes for a dramatic landscape).

After that we’re starting our journey south with an overnight train ride to Phong Nha Ke-Bang National Park. Phong Nha is known for it’s karst topography and intricate caving system. It has some of the largest caves in the world, and while we’re not visiting these, we will be doing a lot of caving and boating in the river!

Next we’re planning to see some cultural attractions with stops in both Hué and Hoi An, with a little bit of birding for Seth in between. We haven’t totally nailed down our itinerary for this part of the trip, but we’ll probably be visiting some pagodas and touring the historical centres of both cities. I’m hoping to fit in a trip to the beach in Hoi An and cooking class or food tour.

For the last leg of the trip, we’ll be flying to Ho Chi Minh City as a home base and doing some other trips from there. We’re planning to do a 2 day tour of Cat Tien National Park, which looks to have some really cool wildlife, and a day trip out to the MeKong Delta.

As usual, I’m going to try and do some travel blogging along the way, which I’m really excited about since I haven’t done it in ages. I may try and get in the habit of blogging more about my hiking adventures, because I do get a lot of joy out them, but we’ll have to see whether that’s manageable on top of the book blogging. In any case, I got a fancy new camera last year with bluetooth and I’m pumped to not have to use crappy hostel computers to upload photos anymore. I hope you’ll come along with me for the journey! Here’s a photo of me and Seth in Peru circa 2013, back when I still wore glasses and he still had hair (shhh)!