Travel without Turbulence a TripHash Travel Blog

The Maldives. Yes, the water in the Maldives really is really blue (but we will get into that in the coming weeks).

Having just exited customs, which includes a cursory x-ray scan of your belongings (illegal items that this cursory check may or may not detect include alcohol, dogs, pork products, pornography, “materials contrary to Islam” and so forth) Read More →

You settle comfortably into a chair at Vietnam’s Da Nang International Airport after riding in a small car from Hoi An (110,000VND). Sitting at your gate, the power for the entire airport drops out. Read More →

Hoi An is quite well-known for its colourful lanterns, its historical downtown and a bit for its beaches. However, the heart and soul of Hoi An didn’t seem to be exactly where cut-rate trousers are hawked to tourists. Rather, it seems to live in the rice fields and water bodies where grains are harvested and fish is caught. It seems to live in the extremely hard-working locals who drag wooden carts, slosh in swamps and row their little fishing boats out into the sea for a day of fishing. Read More →

The train comes to a stop in Da Nang, a clean, modern-feeling coastal city between Hanoi and Saigon. You step off the train without any good option to get to Hoi An, a historic town approximately 30 minutes by car to the south. Read More →

Back about a year ago, coding and planning on the site began. It has been a mountain of work putting all the pieces together from conceptualization to coding to content but has been well worth it thus far, with a functioning site humming along. In the coming year, I hope to include a bunch more countries into the high-level travel guides section and certainly get a bunch more visual content up. Thanks a bunch for checking out the site. Read More →

She looks down at her boarding pass and up at the sans-serif placard above your seat, pops the latch of the overhead bin and delicately places her two bags inside. On a nearly empty Vietnamese Airlines plane, she sits down in the adjacent seat.

“Hello,” you put forth with a slight nod and smile. Read More →

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Just a quick note that Hong Kong, Cambodia and Myanmar are now part of the travel guides section.

The coconut-laden ship pulls up to the overgrown-bank. Back and forth, the bare-chested workers tangle their fingers around the stems and scramble up the embankment. With a toss, a couple more coconuts are added to the pile. You watch this from a riverside cafe, after having first befriended a tall iced-coffee. A journey around Can Tho through photographs. Let’s continue… Read More →

Barges full of bananas, pineapples or coconuts pass down the river leading from Can Tho, the largest city in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. You arrive by Phuong Trang (FUTA) buslines from Chau Doc. The bus pulls into a dusty lot east of downtown. You give the name of your hotel to a dispatcher at a wooden desk, and then board a minivan which provides door-to-door service. Read More →

The Cambodian coastline flashes by at nearly 30 knots from the port side of the Superdong I, a high-speed morning ferry from Phu Quoc to Ha Tien, Vietnam. After an hour and a quarter, the engines pull back and the ferry is docked at Ha Tien. Read More →

You are greeted each morning to the cacophony of Saigon’s streets: the puttering and wheezing of tired motorbike engines as they weave through crowded streets; pre-recorded messages of bicycle vendors that blare from speakers mounted onto handlebars; and clouds of dust kicked up from the street activities. Read More →

Specific Fruit in Vietnam – Part II

In last week’s edition, we looked at several minor fruits and discussed Vietnam’s fruit industry as to whether heirloom produce and old-school farming methods should really be considered inferior to the developed world. We will run through some of the more prolifically produced fruits and try to figure out what fruits to eat in Vietnam and when to eat them.

Should you really spend $10 on a small box of sad looking imported raspberries when you could try something exotic that is grown fresh nearby?

Let’s start with one we all know. Read More →

A General Vietnamese Fruit Overview

You are walking down a narrow street and will inevitably pass a Vietnamese fruit dealer of some sort, or perhaps one passes you by, wearing the traditional nón lá hat (those conical hats many equate to rice paddy workers) and pushing some rickety cart full of Read More →

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What better way to kick off the third edition then by going wild with fruit juices in Vietnam, along with fruit smoothies and whatever else is all the rage these days. Whereas these cost a firstborn child, two bags of gold coins and an arm in Manhattan, they cost about 15,000-30,000VND (.75USD-$1.50USD) per hit here in the downtown sector of Saigon. While soul-sucking juice-bar chains are pushing up rents in Brooklyn, there are a number of juice joints here in Saigon, Vietnam that are gritty, full of unique character and blend perfectly with the city’s vibe. Read More →

Food in Ho Chi Minh Vietnam

Vietnamese Foods for the Week

Very well executed food can come out of any quarter in this fine world of ours—Michelin-starred dining establishments, low-key fish shacks, your grandmother’s kitchen and gritty, grotty alleyways. What really draws you to Vietnam’s cuisine is the excellent execution of balance and the complexity achieved through seeming simplicity. Dishes here tend to marry sugars to acids with great play while the salty, pungency of fermented fish sauce disappears into a plethora of dishes and sauces with miraculous results for the taste buds. Read More →