The town of Dien Bien Phu itself is just a wide avenue lined with Soviet-era construction. There are a few decent hotels, but mainstream tourism is far from overrunning Dien Bien, a town whose greatest moment in history was, in…
Son La is a small city set in a narrow valley at the foot of low hills. A short walk up to the town’s famous hilltop prison or to one of the viewpoints in the hills above gives you a…
Mai Chau makes a good overnight after the shakedown cruise from Hanoi (about a 5-hr. ride). The town center is a rather dull strip of small shops and a few pho and com stands (noodle soup or rice), but there…
Tired of tourist trails? Here’s a great opportunity to get off the track and into rugged terrain that is little affected by tourism or the world economy. In an area along the border of China and Laos, rugged roads traverse…
Cat Ba Island I first time came to Cat Ba in 1998 on an overnight tour by boat from Halong city. At the time, the little bay of Cat Ba was choked with beat-up old fishing junks, and the quiet…
Founded in the mid-l4th century by the Khmers as a monastery, Phnom Penh replaced Angkor Thom, a city at the Angkor temples, a century later as the country’s capital. The city has long been a vital trading hub at the…
The Lay Of The Land About the size of Missouri, some 181, 035 sq. km (69, 898 sq. miles), Cambodia’s 20 provinces are bordered by Laos in the north, Vietnam in the east, Thailand to the west, and the Gulf…
Cambodia is unpredictable but that’s the allure for many travelers who come here. Traffic is chaos. Corruption is law. Poverty is endemic. Less than half of Cambodians have access to clean water and sanitation facilities. Children suffer from malnutrition and…
Angkor Travel Information Most visitors to Angkor arrive by air as the large number of international and domestic carriers servicing the country make flying a comfortable and viable option. Local as well as long-distance buses from Vietnam and Thailand provide…
The single largest religious monuments in the world, Angkor Wat literally mean “the City which is a Temple”. Built during the 12th century by King Suryavarman II (r.1113-50), this spectacular complex was originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, the…