Adventures

Day 7 - Tu Lan Experience

When planning our trip we hardly booked anything from home. The only thing besides our flights and the first hotel that we booked beforehand was the Tu Lan Experience with Oxalis Tours. That was because even then the one we initially wanted to do (2D1N-Trek with a night in the jungle) was booked out and so we decided to go with the one day trip.

BEWARE: There will be pictures of spiders in this post ;)

FYI: Our information and opinion about this tour is our own, this is no sponsored post whatsoever, just our personal review of our experience.

We were picked up fairly early in the morning at our hotel, and drove to the Tu Lan Caving Center, which took about 1.5 hours. At the base camp we first got a briefing about the route we would be and some safety information. Then we checked what we wanted to take for the days trip. Those things we gave to our guide Tha, who carried them in a watertight backpack. Everything else we left securely locked at the base camp.

The first part of the trip was a 20 minute walk to the first cave. Right in front of it we had to cross a river, about hip deep - for me anyways. With camera in hand we were a little bit insecure at first, but going with the flow of the river we all crossed savely and made our way to the first cave, still dripping water and mud from shoes and pants.

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Day 6 - Hue and a bus ride to Phong Nha

We only had half a day in Hue because of the additional Day in Hoi An. The Bus we had booked with Hung Than Travel was scheduled to start to Phong Nha at 4:30 pm. That meant we had to skip all the Kings Graves and sights further out of the city, and instead just took a look at the citadel, which was within walking distance. That way we also got a short look on the city of Hue by daylight before we had to take off again.

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Day 5 - Driving from Hoi An to Hue via Hai Van Pass

To get from Hoi An to Hue we had initially wanted to take the train, but then decided renting a motorbike was in the end cheaper, easier and gave us a much better opportunity to actually see something on the way. It is also a bit more risky, because technically it’s illegal to drive a motorbike without a vietnamese drivers license. The Vietnamese don’t care though and rent you one anyways and I guess make a good amount of money with it, because we saw loads of other tourists on scooters.

The day before we had signed up for the bike at Motorvina and when the taxi dropped us off at the Hoi An Office we were immediately shown the 135ccm scooter we had booked. Read our review of Motorvina and why we chose them at the end of the article.

By now I had decided that I am only young once, no risk no fun, so after I told Tim once again to drive extra carefully we finally took off. And in the end I think it must have been one of the best decisions we took and probably was one of our best days in Vietnam. The weather was absolutely perfect - and we had a whole day to drive and explore the country.

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Day 4 - Resting at An Bang Beach

Today was our “day off” - we knew when we planned the trip that we would mostly be on the road, so we decided to take this day “off” for real, just going to the beach and doing nothing really. In the end it was a good decision because I also wasn’t feeling a hundred percent well and lying at the beach sounded a whole lot better than being on the road again.

We had decided the day before that we were going to risk renting a scooter one-way to Hue tomorrow, so we took the opportunity to rent a scooter for the day so Tim could practice driving in vietnamese traffic. We rode out to An Bang Beach and tried to find a nice and quite spot. We went to the far end of the beach, but due to the lack of shade anywhere else we stayed where there were parasols and lounge chairs. And then we did nothing. For a whole day.

Day 3 - Visiting Hội An

Since our Homestay was located a few minutes outside of Hoi An, we used the free bicycles provided to get into and around the city of Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The bike ride took about 10 minutes, leading through rice fields until we got to the city, there we continued on to the old town, located down by the river.

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Day 2 - Strolling through HCMC and moving on to Hoi An

On our second, and last, day in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), we were on our own for further exploring. We decided to just stroll around the city and take in as much of it as we could before we would have to catch our flight to Hoi An in the evening. First we just randomly walked through the area where our hotel was located, watching people live their everyday lives. Or sleep on their motorbikes. And watched the crazy traffic. There's just so much to take in.

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Day 1 - Getting to know Ho Chi Minh City from the rear seat of a motorbike

Beware: this is going to be a long post. We also had a million pictures we wanted to share and quite some trouble blogging because we didn't take a laptop with us - but here's what we came up with.

Before we left Germany, we looked for a guide to HCMC via Couchsurfing, so we wouldn't be too lost in this big city and foreign culture. We got in contact with Cuong, who agreed to show us the city and (very important to me!) introduce us to the local food. We could definitely not have found a better guide. We were picked up at our hotel by Cuong and his wife on their motorbikes (I guess I would call them Scooters, if I was in Germany, but here it’s used for both) and then had a glorious day exploring HCMC.

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Day 0 - From Frankfurt to Ho Chi Minh City

Getting to Vietnam took us a full day. We left Frankfurt Airport at 21:45, had a 1 1/2h stopover in Abu Dhabi, and landed in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) at 19:05.

The first hurdle was getting to the hotel. I had looked up our options before the trip and we wanted to take the shuttle bus into the city center. But as soon as we stepped out of the airport, one after the other of the Vietnamese taxi drivers stepped up and offered their services. Taxi-Ride into the city for 20$. It took a bit of persistence to shake them off, and in the end we found our yellow shuttle bus, Line 109, paid a fare of 40000 vnd (approx. 1,60 €) for the two of us, and got on.

It was raining when we got to Vietnam and it kept raining all evening. We walked through the rain to our hotel, 'Town House 23’, which is fairly central, close to Ben Tanh Market.

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Weekend Trip to Hamburg

Last weekend we went for a short trip to Hamburg. We drove there on Saturday morning and back on Saturday evening. The reason for the trip were tickets for a musical, "Ich war noch niemals in New York", we had gotten fairly cheap through a friend*. We would have liked to stay longer, but it just didn't work out. Saturday we mostly spent at the musical, then in the evening in the Schanzenviertel in search for food - we were so hungry we forgot all about taking pictures. We ended up eating at the "Taverna Romana", a restaurant with italian and greek food that is located in the rooms of a former 18th century distillery and wine shop.

We spent the night in a room found via Airbnb in the city quarter Dulsbek. For breakfast we went to Cafe May, a bakery chain in Hamburg. The Wandsbek one was really cute, and thinking about it I am really a bit sad that we forgot to take our cameras. They had different rooms with different furniture and decoration, mostly in a rustic antique style, it was just really nice and the prices were reasonable.

The rest of our time in hamburg we spent looking at the city. First of all we went to the Speicherstadt. Unfortunately the weather wasn't too good, but that part of the city is just stunning with the canals and the red brick buildings. Everything is so uniform and still so different.

We also took a look at the Elbphilarmonie, but it wasn't all to impressive, due to the weather. Afterwards we went to the "Landungsbrücken" and walked through the old Elbtunnel, also called St.Pauli-Elbtunnel. That was actually a cool part, even though I had been sceptical at first. I especiall loved the car-elevators. For anyone visiting that: Do it in the weekends because the tunnel will be closed for motorized traffic on Sundays. The road below is really narrow and I don't like the idea of having to share that with cars. Also the ambiente and I suppose also the noise level is much nicer with no cars around.

Yep, and that's already pretty much it. We went into the old town part of Hamburg at the end of our stay, but due to a triathlon going on, we didn't enjoy that too much. We couldn't reach the things we wanted to see and it was just overcrowded. Oh well, I guess we'll be back some other time.

#sk

*The Musical was OK. It's far from my favorite musical, but I had been really sceptical and it ended up being a lot better than I though. Music-wise at least. The story is...well...VERY shallow.

Istanbul - short business trip {throwback}

Back in 2014 I've been a few ( to be exact: 3 ) days together with a colleague in Istanbul. We went there to visit a customer of my former employer where we wanted to shoot a corporate movie. We went there during ramadan which made it even more interesting. During the trip we thankfully also had some time to take a short look at the city.

The difference to Mannheim / Heidelberg / Germany impressed my quite a lot. Especially the extend of the differences in terms of rich and poor left me thinking and it also showed me what luck we actually have to live in Germany.

We pretty much enjoyed the sundowns down there, as you can see on most of the images ;)