After the south coast we headed inland to the high country, in search of slightly cooler weather and tea! Sri Lanka is famous for its tea and we were keen to learn a bit more about it and try some too. There are many large tea factories you can tour but we found a little,… Read More Time for a cuppa
One of the big things to do in Sri Lanka is go to on a safari. The most popular national park, Yala, features leopards, which sounded very cool but they are notoriously hard to spot. After a bit of reading about which parks have what and when is best to go we opted for Udawalawa… Read More More elephants
Whale watching tours are pretty popular in Sri Lanka but not all are created equally. Like the turtles, whales have a long history of exploitation so we tried to go with an ethical tour, although it’s not always obvious even after you’re on the boat. The first downside was the early start – 6am tuk… Read More A whale of a time
For Christmas day we decided to take a surf lesson! None of us had ever tried surfing before – only the occasional boogie board – so we thought it’d be good to do something physical and that we were all beginners at. We went with a place that got excellent reviews (& we found out… Read More “Duuuude, just keep on surfin’ through life”*
On the southern coastal town of Mirissa we had a few ocean related adventures, including snorkeling with turtles. Who would have thought that just under those waves would be turtles? Turtles nest along the southern coast of Sri Lanka and there are some protections in place, but there’s also a lot of not-so-great stuff. There’s… Read More “Worrying? That’s so un-turtle-like”*
Our last (😱) major stop in our adventures was the teardrop isle of Sri Lanka, where rice and curry reign. They’d had a bad cyclone (Ditwah) come through in couple of weeks earlier and we weren’t sure we should even go but after following some social media groups it seemed like things would be reasonably… Read More Rice & curry and silver
We used Hanoi as our base and did a few ventures out to Ninh Binh, Halong Bay and Pulong as well as eating well. In the end, we stayed in Hanoi three separate times and were lucky enough to catch up with an traveling relative and her friends one night for a food tour and… Read More Hanoi hangs
Train street is one of the top tourist things to do in Hanoi and, therefore, I was a bit cynical about how much I would enjoy it. We ended up going one night after a food tour to check it out. The idea is that you sit and have a drink on this narrow street… Read More Choo choo 🚆
The last night of our tour was an overnight cruise on the famous Halong Bay. We had two nice cabins, each with a small balcony. Plus a light up spa bath and fancy meals, it was definitely a step up from our usual standard of accommodation! Our activities included a kayak into a karst island… Read More Halong Bay
We’d decided to keep our Vietnam adventures to the north, due the cyclone damage in the centre of the country and we were trying not to fly too much. So we based ourselves in (rather smoggy) Hanoi and ventured out from there. After a long time of having to plan everything ourselves, we caved and… Read More Ninh Binh
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