Travel Newsletter - 2 October, 2020
The Pattaya Monorail, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Ko Pha Ngan then and now, a well-travelled cat, a Soviet half boat half plane, and more travel reads.
Greetings from Ho Chi Minh City and another edition of the Nomadic Notes Travel Newsletter.
This week I’ve posted my monthly update of where I’ve been and site news, and I realised that I only posted one article during the month. I’ve been travelling inside the Vietnam domestic travel bubble, so I will have more posts coming soon.
Now that it’s safe to travel again in Vietnam I’ve booked some more trips. My friend Michael Tatarsky wrote an article for The Telegraph on how Vietnam crushed its second coronavirus wave (read via Pocket app if you can’t read it). Hopefully your country of residence can crush the virus soon as well.
I’m still blogging every week at Living In Asia, and I have been working my way through the big transport infrastructure projects of Southeast Asia. This has been a good way to dream about future travels while being unable to visit.
Despite the lack of travel options there are still things to read about, and I enjoy compiling these travel reads every week. Consider it your travel fix while waiting for travel to get back to normal.
Where I’m At: October, 2020 – Saigon edition
My monthly summary of where I’ve been and site news.
Where I’ve been
Saigon
At the start of September Vietnam was still controlling the latest outbreak in Danang, and by the first week it appeared that the virus had been contained again. Now we are nearly one month without a reported local case. There are though still imported cases happening every day from those returning from other countries, so it’s not a complete Covid-free zone.
International travel is still not on the agenda, and getting back to normal is not happening anytime soon. I think the only way forward in the short term is for tight travel bubbles. Thailand-Vietnam is a good candidate for a travel bubble, and there are talks of resuming flights to Thailand.
With consecutive days of no local cases recorded, domestic travel has at least rebounded. With the virus under control again in Vietnam I have restarted my travels. After over two months of not travelling anywhere I made an impromptu trip to Phan Thiet.
Phan Thiet
While Vung Tau may be the most accessible beach to Saigon, Phan Thiet has a better stretch of beach, and Mui Ne (next to Phan Thiet) is the first big resort area outside of Saigon. It’s about four hours by train or van from Saigon to Phan Thiet.
I’ve been to Mui Ne before but I’ve hadn’t spent any time in Phan Thiet city. This trip gave me a chance to have a beach break to wash away two months of inertia. I spent a night on the beach before going to the city side.
At the moment all of my travel decisions are guided by what content I can create for Living In Asia. I’m still keeping Nomadic Notes updated, but at this point web traffic is still at a trickle compared to pre-pandemic days. This system allows me to continue building Living In Asia while still keeping Nomadic Notes active.
My reason to visit Phan Thiet was to explore the coastal region on either side of the city. There are some new hotel developments in various stages of planning, some of which may not be built after Covid-19. There is no coherent reporting on what is going on here, so I rented a scooter and rode around to look for myself. I was most curious about a new urban development called Thanh Long Bay, and I’ve already made a report on that. Stay tuned for my city report on Nomadic Notes and a guide for new developments in Binh Thuan Province.
[The Medium Pineapple, Binh Thuan Province – not as famous as The Big Pineapple in Queensland.]
Ha Long City
Anyone who has even considered visiting Vietnam has heard of Ha Long Bay, but did you know there is also a city of the same name. I visited Ha Long Bay on my first trip here, and as we were flying over the bay I was wondering why I wasn’t going again. This was another Living In Asia project trip as there are lots of developments happening in the city. Most people go to Ha Long Bay straight from Hanoi, bypassing Ha Long City completely. The city is adding attractions to try and retain visitors. Of course no one is travelling now so the tourist side of Ha Long was a ghost town. I will have a trip report coming soon.
Sapa
After two failed attempts in two years I finally made it to Sapa in Northwest Vietnam, and even then my trip didn’t go as planned. My original plan was to get the overnight train from Hanoi. This was part of my quest to ride all the rails of Vietnam for my Southeast Asia railway guide. It turns out though that the rail service still hasn’t been fully restored and it’s only running on the weekend. I found this out after I booked everything, and I was not going to be there on the weekend. This perhaps turned out to be a good thing, as I saw Sapa without with hardly any tourists. By all accounts Sapa was buckling under the strain overtourism. Here, like so many other places, businesses related to tourism are struggling.
Lao Cai
To get to Sapa from Hanoi you must go via Lao Cai on the Vietnam-China border. This was another place I was supposed to go to two years ago on one of my failed Sapa visits. I was trying to get the train from Hanoi to Kunming, which requires crossing the border at Lao Cai and getting another train. On that trip I didn’t get my China visa in time, so I put it off for another day.
Lao Cai is the capital of Lao Cai province (where Sapa is also located). It’s not a tourist destination, but I like visiting provincial capitals, and I’m making a point of visiting every provincial capital while I am in Vietnam.
I also wanted to visit because it’s on a border. I booked a hotel to be as close to the border as possible, and I end up getting a room with a view of China. If I can’t travel internationally I can at least look at another country from a safe distance.
Like most unassuming provincial cites there is always something to see if you look hard enough, and I will post some of the points of interest in another blog post.
Hanoi
I had two stays in Hanoi this month, going to and from Sapa. There are buses that go directly from Sapa to Hanoi Airport, bypassing the need to stay in Hanoi another day, but I will always make a stop if I have time.
COVID-19 and travel (or lack thereof)
Inside the airline industry's meltdown
“Coronavirus has hit few sectors harder than air travel, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs and uncountable billions in revenue. While most fleets were grounded, the industry was forced to reimagine its future.”
Singapore Airlines to launch stationary A380 plane restaurant
This is a better idea than the flights to nowhere that some airline are doing. Meanwhile Singapore are going to allow visitors from Vietnam and Australia (ex VIC). I’m tempted, but it would have to be reciprocal and without 14 days of quarantine in Vietnam.
The rise of the 'half-tourist' who combines work with a change of scene
“Covid-19 has accelerated the decline of the office, but not everyone wants to work from home. We look at travel firms catering to the growing number of nomadic workers.”
The pandemic has propelled digital nomading into the mainstream, though no one has come up with a better phrase than digital nomad. You’ve probably heard a “real traveller” saying they are “a traveller not a tourist”. Does that mean we are “half-travellers and not half-tourists”?
Travel news
American could face prison in Thailand after posting negative reviews of a resort
The big travel news in my part of the world (big enough to be in the NY Times), was the about the man who is facing jail in Thailand for leaving a bad TripAdvisor review. Here is a more detailed breakdown from the Travelfish newsletter.
Can a no-frills revolution entice travellers from planes to trains?
“The travel debate: Mark Smith, ‘The Man in Seat 61,’ warns of poorer service. Simon Calder, travel correspondent of The Independent, commends innovation even at the expense of comfort.”
Trans-Europ-Express renaissance proposed
“A network of international long-distance high speed passenger services spanning much of western Europe could be launched by 2025 if proposals announced by Germany’s Federal Minister for Transport Andreas Scheuer at a virtual conference of Europe’s transport ministers on September 21 are taken forward.”
Assorted travel reads
Pattaya Monorail – Linking the high-speed railway to the beach
“The Pattaya Monorail is a proposed railway that would connect the future Pattaya high-speed railway station with the popular beach area of the city.”
Inside “Peace Village,” the ghost town on the border of North and South Korea
I also saw this article about the secretive hotels of North Korea, which is from the website Hotels of Pyongyang. This is what could be called a hyper-niche or ultra-niche site. A niche site is a site on a specific topic, like “Travel in Pyongyang” instead of a general no-themed travel site. A hyper-niche site goes even deeper than the niche site (a topic within that topic).
Another example of a hyper-niche site is Bangkok River, which only features information about sites near the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. (Found via the niche Bangkok Podcast.)
The British town with a third ‘nationality’
“Berwick-upon-Tweed has long existed on the borders of change between England and Scotland – a predicament that’s led to the creation of an altogether different identity.”
Ko Pha Ngan: Thailand’s tropical refuge, then and now
“A look at Ko Pha Ngan from the 1940s right through to today. Based on original interviews with Thais and foreigners. What does the future hold for this iconic island?”
The art & origins of running across Paris rooftops
A coast-to-coast train trip restored my faith in travel
“During a cross-country train trip in the time of the coronavirus, Richard Morgan takes a look at America and finds lots to be hopeful about.”
“Handmade noodles are a trademark of Ban Pong district in Ratchaburi province, and Tia Tiem Heg Huad is one of only eight legacy factories left since the business started six decades ago.”
Gbadolite: The Versailles of the jungle
Why are all Swedish cottages painted red?
The cat who hitched a lift on a worldwide tour
Man’s hilarious hotel requests go viral
I saw this on Twitter and thought I was watching a preview for a B-grade near-future dystopia movie.
This is an Ekranoplan, stranded in the Caspian Sea.
Wow.
Maps
THE 2020 fall foliage prediction map
[click the map for larger view.]
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