Adventures

Day 15 - First impressions of Bangkok

We had arrived in Bangkok in the evening, and by the time we had managed to get from the airport to the hotel* with the Airport Rail Link it was already pretty late. So when we got up early the next day to explore the city, we didn't really know what to expect. Many people we know had been to Bangkok, and many of them liked the city very much. We on the other hand somehow got off on the wrong foot. Maybe it's because we didn't read up enough before coming here. We got tricked and cheated almost everywhere we went, and there just weren't enough good things about Bangkok to really make up for it. But let's start at the beginning.

One thing we had read, was that taxi scams where as common here as in Vietnam, so we tried to avoid Taxis and TukTuks as much as possible. Instead we took the metro to the old town part of the city. But the metro doesn't really go anywhere near the old town, so we walked through most of chinatown. On the way we got stopped once by a guy, offering us advice on the sights and trying to hail us a TukTuk. We declined, explaining that we wanted to walk to take in as much of the city as possible, and quickly walked away.

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Day 12 - First impressions of Hanoi

Hanoi is our last stop in Vietnam and because of that we came there with a bit mixed feelings. During the last two weeks we experience so many things, and we weren't yet really ready to leave.

We had tried to set up meetings with Couchsurfers beforehand, but due to us only staying in Halong Bay for one day, and therefore being ahead of our schedule, we went out to experience the city on our own.

Our hotel was located close to Hoan Kiem Lake, so we headed out and started walking first around the lake, and then towards the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Presidents Palace. We knew that most things wouldn't open later in the day, but we ended up being really really slow anyways, just taking in the city and all the people living in it. We probably spent an hour at the train tracks running through the city, because that is just one of the craziest places we've seen - it is so fundamentally different to Germany.

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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 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 ;)

Uppsala

We used the Monday after Valborg to explore Uppsala. We were really lucky with the weather, because the sun was shining brightly and it was warm enough to even take of the jacket and enjoy the sun. While the trees had been mostly bare when we arrived we could now see the buds on the trees. Spring really had arrived with Valborg.

First of all we went to see the Domkyrkan, Uppsala's Cathedral.

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Leuven - Short trip to Belgium

A few days ago I've been visiting Leuven for a short business related trip. Unfortunately I didn't really have the time to see much of the city. Nevertheless I've took a short stroll through the beautiful city centre before I headed to the trainstation back home. First thing i recognized: Everybody is, like in the Netherlands, cycling like a maniac in Belgium. That feels like a big contrast to Germany, where cycling isn't that popular I guess.

Another big difference to Germany is the still existing historical part of the city and all those tiny shops everywhere. I think that's probably mainly because Germany has lost a huge part of it's architectural history due to WWII which is quite sad. It creates such a cozy feeling which I experienced way more in cities in the Netherlands and now also Belgium.

Next time i visit I will try to find some more time, so I can also taste some of those > 1000 beers they have there ;)