Lang Son Travel Tips, Vietnam Attractions
The city of Lang Son is connected to Hanoi by a broad, flat highway, and is more or less a sleepover stop after the stunning ride from Cao Bang, before you make your way back to the capital. Dining and…
Discovery Bac Can, Northwest Highlights in Vietnam
About a 6 hour ride past the Hanoi airport north on Route 3, and north of Thai Nguyen, you’ll pass through some areas of terraced rice farming that are a harbinger of the stunning mountainous scenery to come. From the…
Things To Do And See in Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam Attractions
The town of Dien Bien Phu itself is just a wide avenue lined with Soviet-era construction. There are a few decent hotels, but mainstream tourism is far from overrunning Dien Bien, a town whose greatest moment in history was, in…
Son La-Undiscovered Land with Great Tourist Potential, Vietnam Highlights
Son La is a small city set in a narrow valley at the foot of low hills. A short walk up to the town’s famous hilltop prison or to one of the viewpoints in the hills above gives you a…
Mai Chau Visitor Guides, Vietnam Attractions
Mai Chau makes a good overnight after the shakedown cruise from Hanoi (about a 5-hr. ride). The town center is a rather dull strip of small shops and a few pho and com stands (noodle soup or rice), but there…
Northwest Loop in Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam Highlights
Tired of tourist trails? Here’s a great opportunity to get off the track and into rugged terrain that is little affected by tourism or the world economy. In an area along the border of China and Laos, rugged roads traverse…
Highlights in Hai Phong Province, Vietnam
Cat Ba Island I first time came to Cat Ba in 1998 on an overnight tour by boat from Halong city. At the time, the little bay of Cat Ba was choked with beat-up old fishing junks, and the quiet…
Phnom Penh, Charming Capital of Cambodia
Founded in the mid-l4th century by the Khmers as a monastery, Phnom Penh replaced Angkor Thom, a city at the Angkor temples, a century later as the country’s capital. The city has long been a vital trading hub at the…
Getting to Know Cambodia
The Lay Of The Land About the size of Missouri, some 181, 035 sq. km (69, 898 sq. miles), Cambodia’s 20 provinces are bordered by Laos in the north, Vietnam in the east, Thailand to the west, and the Gulf…
Smilling Cambodia
Cambodia is unpredictable but that’s the allure for many travelers who come here. Traffic is chaos. Corruption is law. Poverty is endemic. Less than half of Cambodians have access to clean water and sanitation facilities. Children suffer from malnutrition and…