Travel

“Nice place, eh?” I never saw the fellow before but his accent was familiar and we were both headed from the beach up to the bar. “Where you from?” I asked as the bartender dipped the rim of my margarita glass into a plate of salt.

Two landmarks — one old, the other new; one yin, the other yang — mark the entrance to the Scandinavian waterway known simply as “The Sound” — or Oresund.

For those of us who are old enough to remember when Ho Chi Minh City was called Saigon the name will forever be linked to the Vietnam war or, as the Vietnamese call it, the American war.

London and the trials of transit: One may tire of the journey but there is lots of life in the capital

By Jack Christie My first brush with the Pan-American Highway was in the 1980s. It was just north of Powell River on the Sunshine Coast.

By Jack Souther The coastal town of Hoi An embodies the very best of both old and new Vietnam. Unlike Hue and so many Vietnamese cities that were devastated by bombing, Hoi An was miraculously spared the destruction of war.

For those of us who are drawn to far away places, the lure of distant lands and different cultures is an irresistible urge to travel. If everything goes well each trip ends where it began – back home.

The couple with whom we shared our four-bunk compartment were prone to startling bursts of snoring that drowned out even the clatter of the rails. I finally gave up trying to sleep and rolled out of bed in search of a morning coffee.

In 1944 Halong Bay in Northern Vietnam was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in recognition of its unique geological significance.

I walked into the Vietcombank in Hanoi with a hundred U.S. dollars and came out a millionaire. No I didn't rob the place — at an exchange rate of sixteen thousand to one my hundred U.S. bucks became 1.6 million Vietnamese dong.