Hanoi Gray

Hello and xin chào! My time in Vietnam is rapidly coming to an end, but I managed to fit in one last trip while I'm here. A week and a half ago, I made a quick one-day trip down to Vietnam's largest city, Saigon. (Saigon's population is 8.6 million, compared to Hanoi's 7.8 million.) I flew down after class on a Tuesday night, and I flew back very, very early on Thursday morning (more on that later). Officially named Ho Chi Minh City, it's still called Saigon by nearly everyone in Vietnam. It was a fascinating contrast to Hanoi—as Vietnam's commercial hub, Saigon is far more modern and cosmopolitan. Overall, I left with a pretty mixed impression. As an expat, I loved all the trendy cafés and bars, but as a tourist, I was pretty underwhelmed. At the end of the day, it seemed mostly like a whole bunch of city, and "big city in Vietnam" is something I'm obviously pretty familiar with. That said, I had a wonderful time hanging out with my good frien...

Hello and xin chào! My time in Vietnam is wrapping up soon, so I've been ticking off the last few boxes of places I want to see here. Two weeks ago, I took a sleeper train right after class from Hanoi down to the Central Vietnamese city of Huế , which I visited in January. From there, I rented a motorbike to cross the coastal Hải Vân Pass and then spent the night in Central Vietnam's largest city, Đà Nẵng. It was basically a 24-hour trip with one main activity, so this'll be a pretty brief entry. At the base of the Hải Vân Pass. The sleeper train was a fun experience, and I actually managed to sleep for a good chunk of it! Luckily only one of the other four berths in the cabin was occupied, which meant that it was relatively quiet and spacious. Overall it was a really pleasant way to make the trip down to Huế. My cabin in the morning. The flowers were fake and stuck to the table. Bathrooms notwithstanding, everything was quite clean, but dear Lord was the ...

Hello and xin chào! A few weeks ago, lured by round trip flights for under US$100, I headed to Malaysia's bustling capital, Kuala Lumpur, and an erstwhile British hill station known as the Cameron Highlands. This post is a two-for-one deal—I didn't do much in the Cameron Highlands besides take in the pretty views of tea plantations and bask in the blessedly cool mountain weather, so it doesn't really need its own post. First, though, Kuala Lumpur (called KL by residents and visitors alike). Now the center of a metropolitan area of nearly 7.5 million people, Kuala Lumpur was founded in the 1850s as a trading post for nearby tin mines, and it remained a small town well into the 1890s. It shares much of its history with Penang and Singapore : 19th- and 20th-century British colonization and contemporaneous immigration from southern China and, to a lesser extent, southern India. Today, the city's population is roughly 45 percent Malay, 43 percent Chinese, and 10 percent ...