Let's go wild!

Hoi An was the last destination on our trip through Vietnam. We wanted to go all the way down to the south of the country but didn’t have enough time. You really need to spend a month in Vietnam to see everything it has to offer. Hoi An had the most authentic architecture we've seen in Vietnam, which was very well taken care of. No wonder Hoi An is one of the UNESCO cultural heritage sites. It was full of old temples, pagodas, community houses, dragons and... loads of tourist...

I can’t hide… From the very beginning when I’ve started writing down our memories from the trip to Vietnam, I was impatient to get to this part. Phong Nha was our favorite part and I am very happy we had even 5 days to explore it. It was the only place that we had in our trip planned and booked well in advance because of the expedition to the caves. Phong Nha National Park is well known for enormous amount of caves, one of them being the largest cave in the world. But let me start from the beginning.

Two wonderful days in Sapa got us impatient to see the rest of Vietnam. After having some discussions of where to head next: Ha Long Bay, Bai Tu Long Bay or Cat Ba island, we favored the last one. It seemed to be more interesting because of jungle trekking options and was easier to reach than Bai Tu Long Bay, which is situated a bit more to the north of Vietnam.

After spending two hectic days in Hanoi we finally got on the train heading North. Sapa, we are coming! We wanted to visit Sapa because of the distinguishing landscape and rice fields, even though we knew it is a highly touristic destination...

It has been a month after the trip and I am still thinking how to put our experiences in lines. 16 days in Vietnam is just too much to put in one blog entry. I guess the most natural way of dividing our story is by places we’ve visited, so let me start with Hanoi. Hanoi wasn’t high on our “must see in Vietnam” list, by far. But it was the starting and the finishing point of our trip due to the flights we had. We only planned to spend there several hours in the beginning of the trip before we catch the first night train to Sapa and the final evening before flying back home. But the Gods of Travels (with the help of Aeroflot) prepared us a bit different plan…

I noticed that our trips have a tendency to be influenced a lot by external forces, like out of our choice dates or flight options. The same happened this time. Having 3 days without our girls and Ryanair announcing sales, we ended up getting flights to Ibiza for less than 25 euros (two people, both ways), and a crazy idea to make a round tour in Formentera island, without a tent or any booked sleeping place. It ended up being quite an adventurous and intense hike full of new experiences.

Life is full of surprises. When we unexpectedly got a chance to get away for few days and do something, we very soon ended up with a fun plan: biking a part of EuroVelo route No 6 from Vienna to Budapest. We had 5 days which had to include travelling so the challenge seemed to be quite crazy. Not to mention that at that moment we didn’t have bikes, nor did we think that autumn in other countries is harsher than in Spain. But being crazy enough, we first bought the flight tickets and then started resolving everything else.

It all started as a crazy dream, that didn’t seem to be real until I finally was packing my backpack. Looking back it again seems like a crazy dream than only happened in my sleep. If it wasn't for the photos in my computer I might not believe it...

Planning holidays for this year was not an easy task. Very limited time for planning, very fixed dates and never ending super important things on the way ended up in us being at Chamonix- Mont Blanc (France) with a bare book of the Chamonix to Zermatt route (that was supposed to be studied a to z before coming, but had only few glimpses instead), no proper map and a desire to finally go out into the wild...