Pornography and the purveying of the same is illegal in Viet Nam and until recently I hadn’t seen any real evidence that the market place for it existed. I mean hell, in Bangkok you are constantly approached by individuals who have a sly but smug look on their faces and ask you if you want […]
Just a section of the bike park in the Tax Supermarket cnr. Le Loi & Nguyen Hue taken this morning.
Last night we walked over to our favourite bia hơi on Vo Van Tan St to have a few beers with Hoang who has been our main xe om (motorbike taxi) driver for the past two years. We sat and drank draught beer and ate a marvelous curry with fresh crispy banh mi (bread) and […]
Well… the removalists have come and gone, the house feels very empty and we still have 3 more days before we leave. To be perfectly honest I would like to leave today, right now. Staying around here is kind of agonising and as we don’t enough time to do all of the things we would […]
I will be taking the Vespa back to Australia so I had a few things done to get it up to scratch. A new paint job (same colour as before), new seats, completely reconditioned motor, added indicators, mirrors, ignition lock and a decent horn as well as a new front glove box and a chrome […]
Over the 3rd and 4th days of Tet Lisa and Mimi and I travelled south to B?n Tre province to spend a couple of days with Ms. Tam and her family. Ms. Tam has been in our employ now for about the last twenty months and she has been a total delight to have around […]
I’ve been reading the weblog of Mat at Upside Gone: Down in Saigon who has been teaching English here but seems to have now left S?i G?n, which I think is a good thing. Mat is a talented writer and a bit of a wit, in fact I was chuckling along with his most recent […]
In 1997 we flew to Japan with friends for a holiday to visit Japanese friends and during the 10 hour flight we talked a lot with the Japanese couple sitting next to us. At one stage I was idly leafing through a copy of Lonely Planet’s guide to Japan and looking at photos of Japanese […]
This is an image of my new computer mascot Nguyen Thi Cat sitting waving his little paw at me for all he is worth. We purchased several of these little guys yesterday because we have seen them all over this part of Asia and think that they are so kitsch but cute at the same […]
The Lunar New Year or Tet celebrations are once again nearly upon us and the pace of this city, in fact I guess the pace of the entire country is hotting up. Last night we drove into Nguyen Trai Street, a significant shopping strip here, and went for a stroll through the very up-market and […]
Between us Lisa and I must have taken something in the order of 2,000 [make that about 3,600] images during this trip. It will take us a long time to sort through them and to post them to the image gallery on royby.com, (a task which is long overdue for many of our trips). I […]
Undertaking a long motorbike trip such as the one we have recently taken from Ha Noi, west to Dien Bien Phu and then up through the alps to Sa Pa and Lao Cai is not a thing to be taken lightly. Months of rigorous training were involved prior to the trip with new and innovative […]
We are back in Ha Noi after catching the surprisingly comfortable new first class sleeper carriage on the night train from Lao Cai. I say surprisingly because all previous trips by long distance train in Viet Nam, even the exclusive Victoria Express, have been uncomfortable because the rolling stock has been of very old design […]
We are spending tonight and tomorrow in Lao Cai and will catch the overnight train back to Ha Noi at 9pm tomorrow night. We decided that, because it was so cold and foggy up in Sa Pa that it would be more enjoyable to be back in the Song Hong (Red River) valley once more […]
Saturday was my birthday and the first present that I received was to wake up just before sunrise to discover that the overhead cloud had cleared and that the sun was lighting up the clouds deep below in the valley and casting a magnificent glow on the mountain peaks high above. It was almost as […]
We only managed to travel 30 Klms today because the weather has turned very damned cold and we were riding in what amounted to sleet. Becuse the edges of the roads are all dirt the trucks and other four wheeled vehicles drag it all onto the bitumen which means that there is a trecharous muddy […]
I have run out of words to describe the beauty of the country that we have been passing through over the last 5 days, in fact the seemingly endless breathtaking scenery is almost making me blaise about what my eyes are registering. I’m not quite sure what I expected to see on this trip but […]
