I first ventured to Hanoi last January, and was greeted by some pretty chilly weather. “It’s so cold, even water buffalo are freezing”, the lady at my hostel told me. That’s pretty damn cold, let me tell you.
Cold? In Southeast Asia? It wasn’t meant to be like this! I whimpered to myself.
So it was with reluctant feet and a several layers of clothing that I set off to explore Hanoi. Within 10 minutes, I was so glad that I did.
Before I knew it, I’d been wandering for hours, happily lost in the backstreets and marvelling at the masses of motorbikes, breathing in the scent of scrumptious street food and overwhelmed by the beauty of the French architecture.
Hanoi is a truly wonderful city. In fact, it deserves a big High Five! So here are five of our favourite things to do in the City of the Soaring Dragon.
Jump into beautiful and bustling Hanoi
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Spring has sprung and it’s looking beautiful here at STA Travel Bath! So I was in a good mood, happily tapping away at my keyboard and piecing together a lovely itinerary, when who should (not) stride up to my desk and take a seat but the one and only Charlie Sheen?
That Charlie Sheen, he sure gets around! | Image by duncan
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Nothing gets the week going like a bit of friendly, travel-related competition. So let’s have some! The Gauntlet is the Blog feature that pits one of our customers against a member of our staff, as they both take on five questions that will put their travel IQ to the test.
Want to take part? Yeah you do! Just drop us an email, and we’ll get back to you with a set of questions of your very own.
Right, let’s meet this week’s brave contenders.
Facing up to The Gauntlet this week, we have…
Our very own Jamie Nugent, Travel Expert at our store in Reading. Here’s Jamie in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, where he also picked up a pair of genuine ‘Ray Bons’. Of the photo, Jamie says, “It’s fresh cocoa I’m tasting. Nothing else.” Great, thanks for clarifying, Jamie!
Jamie enjoying some cocoa in Uzbekistan
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Welcome back to the Spotlight, the feature that gets to the bottom of what really goes on on our amazing group adventure tours. This week, Erin Rigg, Round the World Expert at STA Travel Portsmouth, is ready and raring to tell us all about a 9-day tour that will take you the length and breadth of Japan called, appropriately enough, Japan Express.
Fresh sushi at 5AM, warm sake at 5 PM, perfectly marbleised grilled Hida beef, okonomiyaki, taco yaki(octopus balls) and wasabi ice cream! Oh yes, I love Japan.
Then there’s domesticated deer sniffing their way through your backpack, trying to scoff up your coffee-flavoured Pocky; black hard-boiled eggs, cooked in the sulphur pits in the shadows of Mt. Fuji; and gothic Lolita girls hanging out in trend-tastic Harajuku. All a little bit weird and wonderful, and just a few of the sites you’ll see on the Japan Express tour.
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Give me a Gaunt. Give me a Let. What have you got? The Gauuuuuuuuntlet! That’s right, travel junkies, we’re back for another week of the internet’s favourite quick-fire-questions-to-an-STA-Travel-Expert-and-a-traveller style feature.
In just a few sentences time, you’re going to be submerged into the murky depths of The Gauntlet [insert echo], where we pitch five of the very same questions to two randomly picked travellers. One from inside the company, and one from over the border, in our bubbly travel community.
Don’t be a spectator your whole life! If this sounds like something you’d like to take a shot at, get in touch now! You never know, you could soon find your rosy red cheeks staring right back at you. Which we imagine to be kind of freaky.
Facing up to The Gauntlet this week, we have…
Travel enthusiast, Oli Brown, from London a student at York university. Strike a pose, Oli:
Here's Oli, taking it easy in the slow lane of Chiang Mai
We quizzed Oli about this photo, and he told us “the picture was taken in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We were checking out the local markets and temples on two wheels, albeit two wheels with flat tyres and no brakes!”
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