(Originally posted 6 December 2015) The great travel plan has been a little vague, and intentionally so. We want to have some level of spontaneity on our travels, but flights still need to be booked, and visas still need to be secured (As South Africans, there are very few places we can visit that don’t require visas, and many of these have to be applied for in advance from South Africa).
Earlier this month, we booked the flight to our first destination – Vietnam. The country has been on our bucket list for some time, mainly due to rave revues from other travellers. We were ready to click ‘buy now’ on Expedia but hesitated when we realised we knew very little about where we wanted to go and even where we wanted to start in Vietnam.
The easiest way to get a quick overview of the must-see sights was to look at some package tours. Although we want to explore the less travelled paths on the trip, we certainly don’t want to miss the iconic sites.
After researching a little, we have decided to start in Hanoi, explore the northern areas, including the mountains and lakes, and slowly make our way south over a month to Ho Chi Minh City. After Vietnam, we want to head to Cambodia, Nepal, and India.
(Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/floating-market-vietnam-cantho-city-5104723/)
We will arrive in Vietnam just in time for Tet, the Vietnamese new year, with 2016 set to be the year of the monkey. This could mean that an ordinarily bustling city is very quiet as families take the time to have a holiday together. We, therefore, wanted to make sure we got there two days before and secured a place to stay.
So, for now, we have only booked our flight in and the first two weeks’ accommodation through Expedia and will slowly start to plot the rest. We got a great deal through Expedia when booking our accommodation due to the discounts offered when you have booked your flight. We also used some of our loyalty points to get this deal, but it remains to be seen if our $6 per person room is anything close to what we saw on the net.
Featured image source: https://pixabay.com/photos/sapa-lao-cai-vietnam-1015835/