A short hop south of Hanoi and Halong Bay, Ninh Binh province is blessed with breathtaking natural beauty. ...Which, once we'd recovered from our epic and rather successful typhoon escape, we rather enjoyed. Ninh Binh itself is a rather industrial city, but a good base for exploring the quintessentially Vietnamese limestone scenery.We biked it out (with drivers...such a good idea, as it is a long way and a hard drive) to the nature reserve, through what can ...

Well, we'd planned to spend three days in Son Trach -- the gateway to Phong Nah-Ke Bang National Park, and an hour and $25! away from Dong Hoi train station -- trekking and exploring its vast selection of caves...however... This was not to be our fate...What? Another Typhoon?!Casually going across road to the only backpacker style restaurant in sight, to find out about excursions, we were refer to the local trip expert. We eagerly laid out exactly what we ho...

There's no shortage of poetic pairings to describe Hue (pronounced 'hway', which has caused David no end of confusion). An Unesco World Heritage site -- full of sights not dissimilar to those looked after by our National Trust, making David and I feel right at home -- this evocative capital of the Nguyen emperors still resonates with the glories of imperial Vietnam even though many of the buildings were destroyed during the American War.But never fea...

This ancient yet graceful town is delightful. Once a major port, it boasts the grand architecture and beguiling riverside setting that befits its heritage, with little-to-none of the 21st century curses of traffic and pollution. It's bursting with gourmet Vietnamese restaurants -- although we'd more than recommend Bale Well, a very reasonably priced local place (down a little alley near the famous well) that serves only one dish of barbecued pork skewers ...

This unassuming, and slightly backwater, seaside town is a little more out of the way. On arrival, we found it rather lacking in its set up for western tourists. It's not all that surprising that this is merely seen as a convenient place to break the journey between Nha Trang and Danang; at first glance, the town offers very little apart from a collection of small coves dotted along the coast (nice to explore IF it doesn’t rain, constantly!).However, af...