galmc2Report

As we sit here on our lovely cruise ship in Ha Long Bay (yes, somewhat aware I have not blogged in a bit, apologies to the reader), I see that we have hit the one month away milestone. Our plan was to enter softly, with an easy familiar first stop in Bali and Gili Air.…

We love taking cooking classes in the places we travel. The people are always interesting, we learn a lot about the area, the culture and lives of the people who live in the area. Our class in Hoi An was everything we could have asked for! It began first thing in the morning with a…

When we arrived in Ho Chi Minh, we were dropped off near our hotel at about 6 pm (in the wrong alley which, as we later realized, isn’t surprising as it’s easy to get the alleys confused). The taxi driver tried to convince us that we owed him 500,000 VND (350,000 more than the meter…

This one took a while. I’m of a vintage where I can recall a bit of the Vietnam War happening in real-time, and then see it reflected in pop culture over the last past 40+ years in movies, music and television. Like visiting Columbia and Cambodia ten years ago, coming to Vietnam is an opportunity…

So one of the things we have heard about Vietnam is the challenging nature of successfully crossing streets. We here at the galmc2report.ca thought we would take some time on our first day in Ho Chi Minh City to assess this situation and report back to our faithful reader on how successful Heather will be…

(There’s a semi-famous opening line from another classic film set in Vietnam, Apocalypse Now, that I thought of using here- anyone?) Last trip we had Vietnam on the list of places to visit. It didn’t happen as our hopes of a visa collided with the Lunar New Year, and we decided instead to visit Laos.…

A few helpful tips if you’re thinking of travelling around here: The little hose beside the toilet and the garbage nearby have functions that should not be ignored. The waste management system is delicate and toilet paper does not go in the toilet – ever. Give yourself a little cleaning spray and dry off with…

As anyone who knows Paul can attest to, my darling husband has a slight tendency to overheat. As it has been being very hot and humid here in Ubud, he has had some interesting sweat patterns on his shirts the past few days. This evening, being our final night in Indonesia, I decided to check…

Last time through Ubud we stopped at the famous Monkey Temple. Cool right? Who wouldn’t love seeing multitudes of cute monkeys doing their thing right up close to you? Even maybe jumping on you? Every once in a while I think to myself, “what did we learn today Paul?” Well, on that day I learned…

We never know what to expect when arriving at the next destination. If we’ve been there before and really liked it, there is always the concern that it will have changed too much. If we’ve never been but have heard loads of people rave about it, maybe the bar is set too high and no…