Here's the calendar of our itinerary. You should be able to click on it to see where we're going to be, what we expect to be doing on any given day.
For the first time, we worked with travel professionals. Whoo-whee. They sure do write nice. It's quite easy to read their write-ups & say, "Charge it!". Of course, they never quite mention the cost unless you directly ask.
During this trip, we decided to take some private tours just to ease the getting around. We're not bicyclists. The Vietnamese don't appear to drive between the lines (and I don't think they recognize the international driver's license). Train service does not appear to be as well meshed as we've found in Europe and the idea of 8 hour bus rides is not appealing. Getting around was one of the things which we felt intimidated by during this first trip to Asia.
Our dear friend, Jacky Paillard, is a travel consultant and helped us with our planning: where we wanted to go, what we wanted to see, when we wanted to go, which direction. He arranged the bulk of where we were going to stay, what we were going to do and then turned us over to the travel company, Exotissimo, for booking. Mr. Quoc Minh Pham has been my contact with Exotissimo. Both people have been extremely patient with me & my planning, questions, and changes. I'm a compulsive reader, an internet junkie, forum / bulletin board addict, and in my past life I'm sure I was a research librarian. I've always planned my own trips, including transportation before. I was a burden to both these gentlemen, but they endured. This is Exotissimo's write-up of our itinerary. It just makes me drool to read it. They use present tense and action verbs, historical references and surprising images.
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3 comments:
Andrea,
Wish you and Dave have a good time in Vietnam. The trip seems well planned by you. That is exactly lik you. :-) Enjoy!
There is possibly no good Sushi in Vietnam. Vietnamness' food is spicy and hot. Vietnam produces the best fish source in the world. So you possibly want to get one bottle from there. Oh, talking about fish, Vietnamness eats a lot of sea foods and bizzard foods. You should watch the program, Bizzard Foods with Andrew Zimmern, on the travel channel. There is a special episode for Vietnam. Here is the travel channel link.
http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Bizarre_Foods
For communications, be sure to bring your AT&T phone. If you don't want to pay the international roaming charge, ask the AT&T Mobile service representative to unlock your phone so that you can use the international SIM in your phone. In Vietnam and most of Asia Countries, you can get a SIM card very cheap and easily.
If you want to have a truly good Sushi, you should stop by Tokyo Airport to transfer Airplane. The Sushi shops in the Narita airport are better than most of Sushi restaurants in the states. Plus you can find a couple of things you will never find in the States.
That is it for now. Have fun!
ohhh, I'm not falling for that old trick, "Just bring your AT&T phone." People will be able to call me then!
What about phone cards & phone booths? You know if there's a lot of them there?
LOL. Agree that it is not a good idea to bring a cell phone with you this time. :-) The public phones will be another choice. But I don't know how widespread of public phones in vietnam that can use the IP card. When you get off the flight in Hanoi, you can check out the airport for the IP card. Of course, if you just make the local calls in Vietnam, you possibly can pay the cash.
BTW, I also agree that engineers can never live without Acronyms.
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