I had always wanted to go to Vang Vieng. When I first heard about a place with peculiar rock formations scattered among valleys and vast paddy fields, I knew I was gonna be heading there sooner or later. And true enough, when I finally set foot in Laos – the very last country in ASEAN that I went to – I decided to go there after Vientiane the capital city and Luang Prabang the UNESCO town. After spending the first…
INLE LAKE – I first read about it on an in-flight magazine and my curiosity had prompted me to put it on my list of “Places I Must See before I Die”. Instead of the popular choice of going on a tour in a group, I decided to book through the hotel a tour where I could have the boat all to myself. I know, it sounds quite kiasu but USD18 sounded quite reasonable to me since I got to…
Climbing up to the crater of Mount Ijen – the active volcano in the farthest east of Java island – was certainly one of our top priorities when we traveled to the Indonesian island of East Java. To make things easier for us, we asked the guest house – the Arabica Guest House – to arrange the transportation to the foothill of the mountain and it turned out to be so hassle-free. We left very early, at 1.30 am so that…