Valparaiso is a riot of brightly painted boxes, perched precariously on the city hills, creating a vibrant patchwork of colour. This mountain city by the sea doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s evident in the next level street art that decorates every surface. The scene in Valpo is boho meets urban cool meets hipster, […]
Oah’u is the verdant tropical paradise of your vacation daydreams. It’s vertical fluted green mountains drop into the Pacific where golden sand separates the volcanic land from seas of every shade of blue imaginable. The landscape is punctuated with the biggest versions of every vivid tropical flower, while long thin waterfalls plunge hundreds of feet […]
Kyoto. A week too late for the cherry blossoms, a week too early for the azaleas. It didn’t matter. Kyoto was magical even without the blooms. From the mystical geishas tiptoeing off to entertain the evening’s guests, to magnificent temples, shrines and palaces – and magical alleyways filled with hidden restaurants waiting to be discovered […]
The air is still. It is steaming under the shade of the stilt house where we slept last night in a room filled with mattresses on a shining teak floor, protected by mosquito nets billowing under the fans. Our village, a traditional ethnic Thai village 150 km northeast of Hanoi, is a little island of […]
Hanoi was busy, dirty, loud and crowded. We had been dropped right into the old town, which in every other city would have been full of charming architecture, tourist conveniences and a touch of culture. In Hanoi, it’s not. Instead, we found ourselves right in the middle of a busy market selling every disposable […]
Close your eyes. Imagine Vietnnam. No, not the images of bombs exploding over rural villages. Open your eyes and close them again. Picture vibrant green rice paddies, farmers in conical straw hats, bent over tending their rice with wooden tools. Picture water buffaloes refreshing themselves in a muddy winding river, with karst limestone mounts rising […]
We arrived at the little organic farm that housed the open air bamboo cooking school laden down with all of our stuff. A big backpack and day pack each, plus a rugged little rolling suitcase. They looked at us as though we were insanity itself, but were polite enough not to say anything. We were […]
Hue is a popular spot in the tourist guidebooks. They’ve all been here. Frommers, TripAdvisor, and of course Lonely Planet. How do I know? Every restaurant and guest house in town has their @mentions printed on a sign out front. That’s all well and good, especially if Hue delivered the goods. But in my mind, […]
Hoi An was one of the “bucket list” stops on our travels through Vietnam. A busy trading port until the 19th century when the river silted up, the old town is a colourful warren of wooden trading houses whose designs were heavily influenced by the Chinese and Japanese merchants that set up shop here for […]
Recent Comments