2018 was always going to an Asian
holiday year for us. After visiting Europe in 2017 and before going
to Ireland, Iceland and France in 2019, Asia beckoned.
Robyn and I took the kids to Vietnam in
2012 and we always felt we had a few more things to do there,
specifically in Hanoi. Added to that we had started to get an urge to
travel down the Mekong in a river boat of some description. I'm not
sure where that one came from; possibly Luke Nguyen's cooking
programs on SBS TV, or maybe from somewhere else. In any event we
decided early on that we wanted to visit that part of the world, and
to travel without the children.
If the Mekong was going to be the
centre-piece of the holiday then we needed to get into Cambodia
somehow. Angkor Wat was obviously a drawcard so that was added in.
And if we were to go to Hanoi and Cambodia we felt should also see
Laos in between. I'm sure that Luke Nguyen was a major factor in
choosing to do that. He was very enthusiastic about Lao food and
about the city of Luang Prabang in particular. Another destination
added.
We were then left with the problem of
how to fit it all together. We had a choice of starting in Ho Chi
Minh City and traveling through to Hanoi via Cambodia and then Laos
(what I called the clock-wise solution) or going the other way
(anti-clockwise). Starting in Hanoi and passing through Laos and then
Cambodia. Either would work and I have a feeling that the only
reason we made a decision to start in Hanoi and finish in Ho Chi Minh
City was to be able to float down the Mekong rather than fighting our
way upstream. Which is, frankly, a rather ridiculous argument as the
only work on the river was all going to be done by the boat anyway.
But decisions were made and they seemed reasonable at the time so I'm
not going to attempt to second guess them now.
The basic idea for this trip started
way back but started to firm up about two years ago. In that time
Robyn has been able to source a number of local tours, cooking
classes, food excursions and the like. She read the reviews of each,
discussed and argued about them with me until we came to a mutual
agreement about all of the little bits that go together to make this
trip. And there are a lot.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion
that Robyn enjoys the planning of these trips almost as much as the
travel experience itself. It certainly takes longer.
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