We had actually planned to stay in Singapore for a few days, but after a quick search for accommodation we quickly scrapped the plan. At least €60/night for a room in a dormitory, we take an early morning flight from Kuching to Singapore (so we save one night) and only stay two nights in the ...

The west of Borneo feels a little more “civilized” than the east, and in Kuching you notice that immediately. There are nicer hostels, the people are more open and there is noticeably more life in the city. The pretty promenade along the river through the city becomes a meeting point for the city (and the ...

The next stop after Sandakan was actually supposed to be the small Sultanate of Brunei in the north of Borneo, but here we give up on the complicated travel planning in Borneo. Flying is not only expensive, but you also have to fly out of Borneo and back to Kuala Lumpur. There are no buses ...

There is an incredible amount to see around Sandakan, and so we decide to book a tour – this is not easy either, as most of the tour operators are in Kota Kinabalu, where we have not found any offices, and so we book online and by phone… Sandakan in particular is surrounded by a ...

We somehow imagined it would be easier than it ended up being. Yes, Borneo is just a stone’s throw from Vietnam. Yes, the part of Borneo we are visiting is part of Malaysia with its good bus infrastructure. Yes, Borneo is an island, you can definitely take a short flight from one corner to the ...

Our last stop in Vietnam takes us by plane from Hue back to Ho Chi Minh City and then by bus to Can Tho in the middle of the Mekong Delta. Although the plane is a little late, the bus only takes 2.5 hours instead of the advertised 4 hours. There isn’t much going on in ...

In addition to the old imperial citadel, the imperial city of Hue also has several imperial tombs and memorials and one of the largest Buddhist monasteries in Southeast Asia. We start with one of the several tombs of the old imperial dynasty “Lang Tu Duc” of the ruler of the same name, just outside the city ...

The 17-hour train journey is quite unspectacular. We sit undisturbed in a seat compartment until it gets dark and then move into the sleeping compartment for the night, which we share with two Vietnamese men and their son. The “beds” are designed more for smaller people, but are still okay, just a bit hard in ...

Sand dunes in Vietnam? Never heard of them? Neither had we, so we thought we had to see it. It also came in handy as a stopover between Ho Chi Minh and central Vietnam with the lantern city of Hoi An  and the imperial city of Hue – both of which we really wanted to ...

Somehow we’ve been so busy with other parts of the world since the Covid era that we’ve somewhat “neglected” Southeast Asia. We wanted to change that and set off for Southeast Asia again, or to be more precise, we set our sights on the island of Borneo. But as we have four weeks to spare, ...