Rucksacktravel.com …backpacking the smart way!

Arriving early at the Da Nang airport I had plenty time to search for an accommodation in Saigon. It didn’t take long until I discovered a Lonely Planet “Our Pick” guesthouse called  “Miss Loi’s Guesthouse”. I was to discover the next morning that the editors at Lonely Planet ...

Wow, that was quite a day! At 8 a.m. I was picked up for my first scuba diving experience, something I actually wanted to do for a very long time. The last time I tried to go scuba diving was when I was about 13 or 14, but the diving school did not let me due to my age. Arriving at the Hoi An pier, we took a 1-hour ...

Note: Not me, but pretty close I remember this day, because it was the day I hit the beach and came back to my hotel to take a shower, only to realize that I’d gotten the worst sunburn of my life. And before my fellow readers say: “Well, you should have used sun lotion.”, believe me, I did. But ...

For the morning I organized a half-day trip to My Son. Surrounded by jungle, the My Son temples were constructed between the 4th and the 14th century A.D., which is older than Angkor Wat. But don’t expect too much, as the complex is only about 100 square meters and most of the temples were destroyed by the ...

Because I couldn’t go to Bach Ma, as described in my previous post, I had time until 2 p.m. at which point my bus would pick me up. So I was on my way to get some breakfast, when an older Vietnamese guy asked me where I’m from. After some hesitation I replied: “Germany!” After hearing ...

As I arrived at the Hue train station I got offered a hotel with apparently no strings attached. I was sceptical at first, but the guy offered to drive me to the hotel for free, to take a look at the rooms and if I didn’t like the hotel, there were no obligations. The guy also conveniently mentioned that the ...

In morning after my arrival in Ninh Binh I setup a tour with my hotel to see the Tam Coc area, which turned out to be one of the nicest tours during my time in Vietnam. The mode of transportation was on the back of a motorbike – the best way to experience the scenery around Ninh Binh. One thing I ...

It was time to head back to Hanoi to travel onwards to Nihn Binh. That meant traveling all day from 8 a.m. – 10:30 p.m. via bus, which was pretty exhausting. So there was not much to report on this ...