Travel Thursdays : Ha Tien, Vietnam

Ha Tien is a smaller beach town in Southern Vietnam that is on the border of Cambodia. My dad has friends there who we went to visit for a few days.

Here we all are enjoying a day on the beach under these straw huts. 

Mini crab holes all over the beach.

My boyfriend enjoying the beach side hammock during sunset. 

The beautiful landscape of Ha Tien from on top of a small mountain. 

At the top of one of the mountains we went up, people tie straws and mini plastic bags to tree branches and twigs. They believe that you tie your negative energies to the tree and it will be carried off by the wind and taken care of.

Stair fail. 

This gate is the border of Cambodia. We just stepped into Cambodia for a few minutes.

Downtown Ha Tien at night. 

The following two pictures are from the night market.

Both times I’ve been to Ha Tien, we always go to this restaurant. It’s so peaceful and pretty.

Vietnam is big on iced tea, they usually serve this instead of water at restaurants.

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Travel Thursday : Saigon, Vietnam

First things first, Happy Thanksgiving! Let’s all take a moment to be grateful for all the wonderful things that we all have and the important people in our lives. Life moves by so fast and it’s so easy to take things for granted and to forget to really take things in.

I have been overloading you guys lately with St John, because it is so breathtakingly beautiful and I have so many pictures to share still, but let’s switch gears and switch locations this week to Saigon, Vietnam.

There are many things I am grateful for, one of them being that I am Vietnamese. Both of my parents are Vietnamese so I still have a lot of family members in Vietnam. (My mom is one of 6 and my dad is one of 8!) And I’ve been lucky enough to go back to Vietnam multiple times in the last few years.

To say that it is an eye opening experience is an under statement. There are so many things that are different here than over there. I’ll be sure to post about those throughout Travel Thursday, but let’s start with one major difference: the traffic!

The main mode of transportation in Vietnam is by moped. There are also people who walk, and ride bikes. There are cars as well but the taxes on cars are up to 100%! So cars are few and far in between, but they are there. The population is somewhere between 87 and 91 million people (there are varying numbers online.)

But the traffic there is quite overwhelming. When you are crossing the street you just go and the mopeds will go around you, it’s crazy! The traffic patterns are a bit confusing with people darting in front of you all the time, but somehow it works for them. But that’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of accidents. I had a bit of a spill with one of my cousins one of the years I was there, but I was lucky to walk away with just a small scar on my left knee.

Travel Thursday : Bocce Ball in St John

 

With such a fantastic party house we had to take advantage of it. So at night we played (light up!) bocce ball in the sand in the yard.

Travel Thursday : Catamaran Ride in St John

I have so many pictures from the St John trip, you might be seeing those pictures for a while in the weeks to come. We were there for a week so there were quite a few opportunities to capture the beautiful island.

The bride and groom had such a fun week of activities planned for their guests, including a sunset catamaran ride. It was as you would imagine, fantastic.