HERE AND THERE

We're staying in Central Vietnam but moving south from Hue to Hoi An. It's a comfortable drive of about 160 km — comfortable, that is, if...

We travelled by train — overnight — from Hanoi to Huế (pronounced hway ). When Vietnamese is spoken, it has six tones, almost impossible...

It's 180 km from Hanoi to Ha Long City. The drive is through low plains, rice paddies and a lot of standing water — unsurprising as the...

The modern history of Vietnam is very complicated. But here goes. The Spanish may have colonised Central and South America, but it was...

We're in Hanoi in autumn, a fine time to visit the north of Vietnam. We've had a bit of tropical rain but even more sunshine, with daily...

Our last stop on this trip is the Everglades, north and west of Miami. The Everglades are a subtropical marsh that stretches more than...

The Florida Keys are a coral archipelago, a chain of small coral islands called keys. All over the Caribbean region these small islands...

Our last stop in the Caribbean is Jamaica. Another small island, but one that packs a big punch. We docked at Ocho Rios, on the north...

Cozumel is a small island (there's a theme here) off the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. It's a tourist destination. The Caribbean Sea is...

Off to Honduras, or more accurately, an island called Roatán to the north of Honduras. Our ship's daily brochure tells us that Roatán is...

Another George Town! George Town, Penang is one of our favourite cities. How will George Town, Grand Cayman stack up? The Cayman Islands...

Belize is the second smallest Central American country (after El Salvador) and has a population of 400,000. It has a strong environmental...

Our cruise itinerary that we had booked was rudely disrupted by Hurricane Ernesto. For safety reasons, the cruise line decided that...

Little Havana is the hub of the Cuban community in Miami. The main street in Little Havana, Calle Ocho (8th Street), showcases Cuban...

We're here at the southern point of Florida for a few days before we start our Caribbean cruise. Oh, the bliss of being in a warm place!...

Mount Gower, the tallest mountain on Lord Howe, is 875m tall, takes eight hours to hike/climb, involves a total walk of 14km, and...

Lord Howe Island is a tiny island off the east coast of Australia. It's so small that I've had to draw in the approximate dot on this...

We tried a different route on our most recent road trip to Adelaide. Our pre-Adelaide destination: Robe. South of Adelaide, Robe is a...

And back to Athens, when we started and ended our Greek island journey. We spent our final couple of days in Piraeus, the port area of...

Still in the eastern Aegean Sea, and travelling north-east from Rhodes, we visited Bodrum in Turkey. According to our guide Demir, Bodrum...