At first it felt like a logistics nightmare attempting to work out when and where is best to get visas, before we left or on the go? After researching the requirements for every country we thought we might visit, we […]
Crossing the Pacific Ocean by Cargo Ship
It took 15 days at sea to cross the Pacific from Xiamen, China on Saturday 2nd December to Los Angeles, USA on Sunday 16th December. Our double day was Saturday 9th December 2017. We travelled with CMA CGM on the […]
Amoy Ahoy
Xiamen is a coastal city of 3.5 million people but I had not heard of it until we were told of the quicker route to cross the Pacific. This made it our last destination in China. After briefly researching the […]
It looks a million Patacas
I have never felt as seasick as I did on the ferry to Macau. Rosanna felt the same way. It was called the “turbojet” and it makes the trip from Hong Kong in 50 minutes. They were 50 long minutes […]
One country, two systems
Hong Kong (or Xiānggǎng in Cantonese) was the name of a small fishing village and the island that it was located on. In 1860 it expanded to include the Kowloon Peninsula and then in 1898 it expanded again to include […]
From Hanoi to Hong Kong
It’s possible to travel overland from Vietnam all the way to Hong Kong within 24 hours. If you plan ahead, it is only a matter of two trains and then two metro lines taking you to Kowloon. One train to […]
“We have a booking”
A bit later than I thought, we’ve finally booked and paid for the cargo ship journey across the Pacific Ocean – eee! Before our trip began we trawled the internet to find out how on earth we book a cargo […]
Quá lâo, Vietnam.
We’re about to get on a train out of Hanoi which will take us overnight to the Chinese border and then on to Nanning. Because the gauge is different in Vietnam, this train uses its own special track laid from […]
The gateway to Indochina
The purpose of our visit to Kunming was to get our Vietnamese visa. Judging by the people we met in the hostel, this seems like a fairly typical reason to visit. Kunming is positioned in a convenient location to travel […]
Good morning Việt Nam: how to cross the border from China to Lào Cai
Yesterday we crossed the Chinese border into north-west Vietnam. It was a long day for me, having taken our first malaria tablets the night before, I was experiencing side-effects of stomach pains. Both of us hadn’t slept well and had […]
