Central Vietnam

This post is a tricky one. We have almost 450 pictures from the two cities we visited (Hue and Hoi An) and as we flipped through them, we realized that some folks might like them and others may find them boring. So, we decided to just post a ton of them (many without specific captions or descriptions) and you can make up your own mind!

Hue (pronounced "Hu-way", as we learned, much to our embarrassment), was the old imperial capital of Vietnam. As such, there are many ruins and tombs throughout the area.

Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam

We arrived in SE Asia with virtually no plans, so when we started reading about Phu Quoc - a small island being touted as Vietnam's next big thing - we figured we would adopt the Vietnamese mindset, "why not?"

Located off the southwest coast of Vietnam, and just a 45 min flight from Ho Chi Minh City, the island is quite quaint with abundant, beautiful beaches that are still relatively untouched. However, this is likely to change in the near future, as there is a staggering amount of construction on the island (and as we would soon discover, in many of the coastal Vietnamese towns as well). Perhaps the best indicator of things to come is the brand-new airport that just opened in anticipation of increasing tourism over the coming years.

Ho Chi Minh City

Luckily, Singapore eased us back into city life, because we were thrown into SE Asia city-living head first in Ho Chi Minh City.

The city is growing quickly and is literally buzzing as a result of the millions (yes, millions) of motorbikes on the road.

Singapore

Fully rested and sick of ice cream (nah, who are we kidding?!), we eased into the Asian leg of our trip with three days in Singapore - city shots are back!

Maldives

You'll likely notice that we are officially way out of order now. To prevent ourselves from falling further behind, we decided to skip ahead to the (almost) present in an attempt to update more frequently. But don't worry, we'll be sure to fill-in the rest of the European cities at some point. As the chronology gets more and more jumbled going forward, if you're looking at the desktop version of the site, you should be able to click on a European city on the map and it should take you to that post. So stay tuned for posts on Oktoberfest, Alexis's drunkest night to date (you'll be surprised where it happens!) and the dramatic conclusion to Mike's European root canal saga.

Which brings us to the Maldives! We called this week of our trip our official "honeymoon," in part to justify how expensive and out of the way it is, but it ended up being worth every penny.

Riga, Latvia

After having a great time in Tallinn, we were eager to move onto our second Baltic country, Latvia. The excitement was based not only on seeing a new city, but also on our second guest appearance: Sadia!

Insert shameless plug: come visit us!

Tallinn, Estonia

Double post day! You knew it was coming at some point. And yet, as we sit here in Bratislava, we're still 4 cities behind (Riga, Vilnius, Krakow and Budapest). So, once we leave Europe, we are going to try to mix things up a bit and attempt shorter, more frequent posts. Understood that "try" is the operative word here, but we promise we will try, so don't give up on us yet! With that, onto the next phase of our journey...

Although the ferry ride from Helsinki to Tallinn was a short one, it represented a meaningful change, as we left Scandinavia and headed into the former Soviet republics along the Baltic Sea. The countries are a lot smaller and the Russian influences are far more obvious. Oh, and everything is significantly cheaper!

The smile on Alexis's face is from noticing that the prices of food and alcohol - on the ferry no less - were less than half as much as they were in Finland.

The Arctic Circle - Our First Audible of the Trip

Our original plan was to take a quick trip to St. Petersburg, taking advantage of the ability to spend 72 hours in Russia visa-free if coming via overnight ferry from Helsinki. However, as Russia/US relations became more and more strained by the day, we decided that going there without a visa might be more trouble than it was worth and we'd save St. Petersburg for our epic Russia/Ukraine trip (estimated date: 2044). Instead, we made a last minute decision to head up to northern Finland to try to see the Northern Lights.

We took the overnight train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, a town right on the Arctic Circle, to test our luck. Mike was very impressed with the train.

Alexis, not so much.

Helsinki

Finland - the final stop on our Scandinavian tour!

The visit started off great, as our luck with honeymoon upgrades continued. We stayed in THE Maria Kamp suite in the very fancy Kamp Hotel and had a nice bottle of champagne waiting for us upon arrival - thanks Starwood! All those nights in Hartford are starting to pay off...

Quick Update

As you may or may not have noticed, we did a little work updating the layout and technical aspects of the blog. The format is a little different (and promise we will add some color when we have a chance!) and hopefully the comments should now work (we had heard some people were unable to comment). You should now be able to log in with your Google account and post. Who's going to be the guinea pig?? Please let us know if you're having any technical problems with the new format so that we can try to fix them. And another post on Helsinki to come later today!