BELGIUM
april 2019 BELGIUM
Posts
SINGAPORE
21 DEC – 27 DEC 2018 Singapore is more of a home for me (Gretchen) and not exactly a place for exploration. I lived here for 3 years and most of my family are still here. So to make Christmas a little less lonely, we decided to spend it where it hits close to home. I had a little over a week to show Guillaume around which also involved Christmas shopping for my nieces and nephews. We headed right into the touristy places.
VIETNAM
27 DEC – 10 JAN It didn’t start really well in Vietnam, with rain and cold temperatures for our first stay in Hanoi. Too bad, because despite this, we enjoyed the atmosphere there, and wished we could have explored more. Ninh Binh Ninh Binh is famous for being the inland Halong-Bay, with its hundreds of limestone cliffs set in rice fields and rivers.
LAOS
7 DEC – 18 DEC 2018 Luang Namtha & Muang Sing Luang Namtha was our first stop in Laos, and set the vibe for the next 2 weeks of our trip. Laos is a lot less developed than Thailand, and the experience was much more wild and authentic. The infrastructures are very limited or being constructed by the Chinese neighbors (which were basically everywhere we went to, and seem to have their hands on all the dams…), and the accommodation and restaurants are quite basic. It also felt somewhat depressing to see all those people doing nothing all day on the roads, or being drunk at 9 am. But at the same time, we appreciated the remoteness, the slow pace, and overall the wild scenery of the country.
THAILAND
23 NOV – 7 DEC 2018 Bangkok Bangkok was more a stop over than anything else, as it is the case for most people. However, I was quite excited about experiencing its famous street food markets, a first for me. So we decided to do one of the biggest temples first: Wat Pho , famous for its giant reclining Buddha. This being done, we could skip the rest of the temples, which basically all look the same.
Annapurna Circuit Trek | High Pass: Nepal Part II
24 OCT – 13 NOV 2018 So here we are after months of planning and a little bit (to none) of training for the Annapurna Circuit Trek. We narrowed down our option to this trek since there were couple of other options to do in Nepal but this, they say, is one of the most stunningly beautiful treks and the most captivating among others. We also decided to do it ourselves without a guide and porters since we wanted the trek to be flexible, meaning: we could stop whenever and wherever and for how long we wanted on a certain spot. I (Gretchen), was not exactly sure I could finish it at first since, for the record, this is my first trek ever in my life and the difficulty of this trek is from moderate to hard! But here we go! :s
