Our next stop after Mai Chau, during our 2 week trip in Vietnam, was Pu Luong Nature Reserve! Pu Luong Nature reserve was a little hard to get to so we decided to spend two days here over the Christmas holiday. Pu Luong was absolutely gorgeous. We wanted to go a little off the beaten path and was able to find a great ecolodge with the help of friends.
After recovering from jet lag and spending a great weekend in Hanoi, Ke and I continued our tour through Vietnam. Our next two stops were Mai Chau and Pu Luong. We researched probably a dozen tours but was able to plan this trip on our own with the help of great friends.
For the Christmas holiday, Ke and I wanted to go somewhere warm and southeast Asia was at the top of the list. We had two weeks to work with and debated squeezing in two countries, Vietnam and Thailand. After doing a bit of research on ideal itineraries, we decided to travel solely to Vietnam in order to experience as much of the country as we could. We traveled to Hanoi, Hoi An, Pu Luong, Nha Trang, and Ho Chi Minh. A very busy two weeks! Our first stop was Hanoi =D
The last stop on our week-long group trip to Taiwan was Tainan! After spending a long day in Alishan, we drove to Tainan. We had drivers throughout our trip around Sun Moon Lake and Alishan due to the size of our group but Tainan is very accessible from Taipei.
After Sun Moon Lake, the next stop on our Taiwan group trip was Alishan! While researching things to do for this trip, I wanted to see as many parts of Taiwan as possible. Alishan National Park is famous for its beautiful forests and for its sunrise and sunset.
After a spending a week in Japan, Ke and I met up with a group of friends in Taiwan! For my second time in Taiwan, I decided to drag Ke and our friends all around the country. We spent the first few days in Taipei and then headed to Sun Moon Lake.
I’ve always dreamed of going to Kyoto. Especially during autumn. I finally got the chance to go this year and it was as beautiful and stunning as I had imagined. Ke and I allocated 3 days to spend time in Kyoto during our week in the Kansai area. I squeezed in as much as I could but would recommend 4-5 days to really see as much as possible.
Nara has always been on my travel bucket list. Ever since I was a poor college student studying abroad in Tokyo, I’ve always wanted to explore the many temples and feed the famous Nara deer! We had a day saved to visit Nara while in staying in Osaka. The only day we were able to visit Nara happened to be the day with the worst weather during our trip. But Nara was still absolutely beautiful!
For Thanksgiving vacation, Ke and I went to Japan! This was both our first time visiting the Kansai region so we squeezed in as much stuff as we could. We almost missed the first day of our trip due to a 20 hour flight delay. After waiting for hours at the airport in San Francisco, we were able to hop on a new flight 8 hours later and ended up getting to Japan only 5 hours after we were supposed to land!