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 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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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 ;)

London - Sights And Markets -  Day 1

After both having started new jobs at the beginning of this year, in May we finally managed to take a few days off for ourselves to have a little trip. Since I have a friend there that I really wanted to visit for a while, and it had also been on our list of "want-to-go-places" for quite some time, we decided for a short trip to London.
Our trip started early in the morning, when we got up at 2 o'clock to drive to the airport and catch our flight. The good thing about flying early is that you still have the whole day ahead of you. And we used it well.

With my friend as a guide we explored the city. Our first stop was the Borough Food Market, a wonderful place where you can not only buy all sorts of fresh vegetables and fruits, cheese and deli, but also great varieties of street food, freshly prepared for the passers-by.

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Day 17 - The scenic Denali Highway

The beginning of our trip to the Denali Highway led us up the Glenn Highway, a route we had taken before, up to Glennallen. From there we followed the Richardson Highway to Paxson where we finally took a turn onto the Denali Highway. Just getting there had already swallowed up 6 hours in the car, and we were determined to drive at least half of the Denali Highway that day.

The craziest thing though was actually the process of gassing up. We knew we’d have to gas up again before we went onto the Denali Highway, but didn’t want to gas up as early as Glenallen. We had a map that showed a gas station in Paxson but I really didn’t want to take the risk of taking the very last possible gas station. Turned out it was a good decision, because Paxson ended up being something like a ghost town. The lodge advertised in our brochure was abandoned and the gas station was nowhere to be found...

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Day 13 & 14 - Weekend

This weekend we didn't do very much, but instead used the time to regenerate and plan our next trip. Next week we'll be going up to Denali National Park where we'll hopefully get to see Mt.McKinley and a lot of other beautiful landscape. Maybe even some bears?

Other than that we visited church with our hosts and had a nice barbecue with the host family and some of their friends. For that I even made as a side dish: original german "Käsespätzle". Other than that we had some delicious alaskan salmon and reindeer bratwurst. All truly alaskan, and even the salad we had was home-grown in Anchorage.

Since we didn't take any pictures over the weekend we decided to just show some photos that didn't make it into our earlier blogposts...

P.s. In the next few days we're probably not going to have any access to the internet. So expect some bigger delays. ;)

SK