Crystal Pond Travels

Have I mentioned how dirty our Sukiita was after our adventure in the National Park?? Well... it was quite disgusting hahah first ride and this already happened! And while we were getting ready to hit the road, the uncle washing our bike for us! Isn't it nice? Aw!! After leaving the house of that lovely family, we had quite a distance to do to catch the brother in Buon Ma Thout. However we ended up having to stop a few times obviously, long rides are exhausting. We stopped for coffee, at a mechanic to fix our luggage rack that was a bit destroyed after the jungle adventure haha..And also lunch, rest, etc…  Watch the short video of our ride to Hoi An here :) Then instead of staying in Buon Ma Thout we had to go up to Pleiku as Viv’s brother had already left the town since we were running late. It kinda felt like cat and mouse, if that’s how you call it haha The ride wasn’t the greatest after the 3h and not that pretty either, but at the end we ...

Viv and I arrived first by bus at the terminal from Ho Chi Minh City and waited for the free shuttle van to take us to our hotel.  Checked in to our hotel, which we were gonna stay together, the 3 of us. We stayed 3 nights at this place called Pizza Tet and paid about $15 per night for the room. Quite good considering the room was huge, 2 queen beds, balcony, good bathroom and very clean. Staff was lovely too! And also they had pizza there!!! Hahaha Winning. We all went to the night market there is near the fountain where they close roads and have all these beautiful clothes and delicious food. It was actually quite cold in there, I guess because it is kind of up in the mountains a bit. And we walked a lot. Like a LOT. haha Viv’s brother killed his phone somehow and he had to buy a new one, which was good as the price wasn’t bad at all. We finally found a motorbike for us, our Sukiita, a Suzuki Hayate 125cc, which worked out really well to carry both of u...

From the Philippines we decided to go to Vietnam. I’m glad we looked up visa requirements 1 week before arriving in Vietnam as they require an invitation letter, and then visa on arrival is available. So we found this random website which we paid $3aud each for them to write this invitation letter. We didn’t even know if it was going to work, if it was some legit company or just a dodgy one.  In the end it was legit. We arrived at the airport and next to the immigration lines there is the visa on arrival counter. So you just need to go there and give your printed invitation, fill out the visa form and give the passport and a passport photo . You pay $25usd and then just wait a few minutes and they will call your name so you can pick up your passport with the visa on it and head to the immigration line. Actually, I have just remembered something at the airport in Manila, Philippines where we were checking in to go to Vietnam. At the check in, the lady ...

Coron  We decided to splurge a bit and visit the famous Coron island and I can say that you will enjoy snorkeling there, but you will love if you can dive. Since there’s a huge diversity of diving sites. But there are also many sites in El Nido which is quite good too I’ve heard. I actually heard from 2 girls that did a diving tour in El Nido and also in Coron and for some reason they found El Nido a bit better… But I guess it is their opinion haha I can’t say as I don’t dive, unfortunately.    But one thing I noticed when snorkeling in Coron, were all the many bleached corals, quite sad to see it so lifeless, but still could see some nice colourful ones. For me the winner is still Port Barton as we didn’t see much bleached corals. Oh...This is another thing you should do that I haven’t mentioned yet. If you enjoy swimming and snorkeling and wish to dive, the Philippines is probably one of the best places to learn since is much cheaper and the div...

El Nido What a cute town. We spent 4 nights there and I believe it is enough so there’s not much rush… It is super touristy actually, but you can also escape the crowd if you have time! It is also the most expensive place compared to the other islands we had been. Tandikan - our room/balcony view We stayed 1 night in town at this place called Marikit Pension   ($15aud)  which was all right and relatively cheap and the next day we moved to Tandikan Beach Cottages ($25aud) which is beachfront and just great! Loved the view, so we had to move. haha Both of them had wifi and hot shower.  Still sometimes the town runs out of power but it doesn’t last very long, at least it didn’t while we were there.    During our time there we went 2x to see the sunset at the Republica Sunset Bar, haha I know… it is really beautiful tho. But the second time was actually to meet up with an old teacher of mine that was there at the same time, coincidentally!...