Vietnam · 4 days · Oct 2023
Ho Chi Minh Travel Guide: 3.5 Days of Food, Chaos & City Life
Read the story →Cu Chi Tunnels Half Day Tour
Resources
What we booked, and how we booked it.
Every stay, train and piece of kit from our trips, in one place, with the method we use to choose them. Nothing here is sponsored and nobody sends us free things. Some links are affiliate links — same price for you, a coffee for us, and here is how that works.
How we book
The same five decisions, every trip. Here is how we make them.
Getting there
01
Trains first, planes only to start
We fly into a region once and don't touch an airport again until we leave. Long legs get booked two to three months out, when the cheap fares open; everything under two hours we buy at the station the same day. A paper timetable comes too, because platforms lose signal.
Where we sleep
02
Small, family-run, walkable from the station
One rule: we should be able to walk from the last train with our bags. We book the first two nights before we land and leave the rest open, then book ahead one town at a time on the train. Free cancellation until the day before, always, because plans change on the platform.
Staying online
03
An eSIM before the plane lands
Installed at home, switched on at the gate. Regional plans cover a whole trip on one profile, which means no fiddling with a SIM tray in an airport queue. One of us carries it, the other tethers; two plans is one too many.
If it goes wrong
04
Insurance we have actually claimed on
Once, for a camera that went into a river in Georgia. It paid out in eleven days. We buy an annual multi-trip policy every January and forget about it, which is the whole point.
Paying for it
05
One card, no fees, cash for the countryside
A no-foreign-fee card each, and one of us always carries a little local cash for the guesthouse that only takes it. We pull cash from a bank ATM at the arrival station, never at the airport.
What we booked
Trip by trip, the exact places and tickets from the stories.
1 booking across 1 trip. Each one links back to the day it appears in.
Gear shelf
The short list that has survived eleven trips.
We only list things we used on the trip we are writing about, or carry ourselves. A recommendation comes down the moment it stops being good. Tell us if a price or a place has changed.