EC-Rider Travels

This morning we drove south from Hanoi to the ancient capital of Ninh Binh. Despite being 8am on a Sunday morning, Hanoi was buzzing with life. It is the flower capital and we saw a number of bicycles laden with the most beautiful flowers. We travelled for about an hour and a half through flat…

Horribly early start this morning to catch the 07.50 flight to Hanoi, but all ran very smoothly and we were in the capital city by 9am. Hanoi was the first capital of Vietnam under the Ly dynasty and remained so until 1802, when our friends the Nguyen dynasty moved the capital to Hue. In 1902…

Into a yellow bus this morning and across town, following the Houng or Perfume river so called as the water is said to be sweet smelling as it comes from the hills where there are many herbs. It is all nice and green along the river with a few pretty houses, reminiscent of the French…

We left Hoi An this morning and headed back up north to Da Nang which is where we flew into a few days ago. De Nang is on the coast and has apparently grown beyond recognition over the last few years. It is now a huge tourist town, with hotels being built everywhere and many…

We all decided to have a bit of a down day today, but headed in to town, early afternoon for a bit of shopping. I discovered a wonderful local market selling just about everything and full of locals rather then tourists. Beyond this, are three roads of pretty streets of old yellow houses which have…

We have had such a great day today seeing the more rural side of Vietnam…. on bicycles. Starting early, Ha introduced us to our guide for the morning, ‘Man’ who had come to our hotel to pick us up. We drove to his ‘HQ’, where he assigned us all a bike. Unlike the ones in…

It is not surprising it is so hard for the Vietnamese to speak English, as they have five tones for each of their vowels, so despite many of their words and names being short you can say them in five different ways which all mean something different. I think I have been calling Ha ‘open…

We made a decision to get up for the 5.45am sunrise, which was obviously overheard by the house gecko (bigger version than we usually see) who felt it was his duty to be our alarm clock. On the dot of 5.30 he came to life with his unbelievably loud call. It was a little cloudy,…

This morning we packed our wee knapsacks and jumped on our bus to head for the Mekong Delta. Despite being only 8am on a Saturday morning, the roads were crazier than ever. We headed South West, passing slums on the bank of the canal, and also Chinatown which had been part of Ho Chi Minh…

It was an early start today to get to the Cu Chi tunnels as early as possible. The restaurant (rows and rows of tables for the groups – like school) was full and there was a huge choice of the most disgusting looking things for breakfast, and thank goodness a banana. Norman, however thought it…