After my second day on the Koh Tao freediving course, I had lunch with some fellow students. I was craving pizza, and as luck would have it, that was on the menu. As we ate, some cheeky birds came and watched, daring to come close and steal a crumb. We were all talking about what…
Whilst wandering around Sairee Beach to find a good dive shop, I stumbled upon two Freediving schools. I’ve been interested in Freediving for a while, but always assumed it was out of reach, and that you had to be some kind of superhuman to be able to do it. Stumbling across the schools here in…
Koh Tao is an island in the Gulf of Thailand. It translates as “Turtle Island”, not because of the turtle population there (there are quite a few) but because the island is shaped like a turtle. I was told whilst on the Koh Tao that the island’s many diving centres issue 6% of all the…
Before I had decided to take the time to “get this travelling thing out of my system”, failing horribly in the process, Duncan and I had discussed a diving trip – possibly to Zanzibar. In fact, my original itinerary included a couple of weeks in Zanzibar at the start of the trip, followed by Tokyo.…
Bangkok has the longest official name of any place in the world. I remembered hearing about this from a friend who had been reading his Guinness Book of Reccords, so I asked our lovely guide in Vietnam, Wanida, who is Thai, to recite the full name: She is saying: Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya…
I left Saigon on a short flight to Bangkok. I flew with Turkish Airlines, which was surprisingly good. For some reason, Manchester United’s football squad was presenting the video safety briefing. I’m not 100% sure of Wayne Rooney’s reasoning capacity, so I found it a little strange to be getting advice from him. The flight…
One of my last stops in Vietnam was to visit the Mekong Delta. It’s where the enormous Mekong River empties into the sea from it’s origin in Tibet. It produces fish and shrimp for export and half of Vietnam’s rice as well. The Delta is vast – it covers an area slightly larger than Wales…
We took a bus out of Saigon to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were used by the Viet Cong during the war as a place to live, supply system, weapons storage, hospitals and of course, a place to hide when things got really nasty. Our guide was the wonderful Pham Van Hai – probably…
Hoi An is well known for having an abundance of tailors – close to a thousand. Since we were there for a few days, a group of us figured it would make sense to visit a tailor and get measured to allow enough time for the suit-making to be completed. We went to a tailor recommended…
During the division of Vietnam, Hanoi was the capital of the North, and Saigon the capital of the South. Saigon fell to the North in 1975 and was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, after the founding father of Vietnamese independence who did not live to see his country reunited. I’m still going to refer to…
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