The Map Room
A busy weekend here at Toad Hall planning and sending emails to travel agents and hotels across South East Asia.
I decided to do the decent thing and create an online map in Google. Do have a play – its fully zoomable. I should point out though that its hard to plot the train track in places, so its not exact!
I have added a map room link on the right so you can look at this map at any time if my posts from places you have never heard of before confuse you!
I have also uploaded some static maps into Blogger too, so I can easily drop them into posts on the move.
On other matters there are so many loose ends in the plan at the moment that I don’t know where to begin! I was worried about where to stay in Vietnam as I will be there for New Year – so I have booked hotels even though I don’t have any train tickets – lets hope that sorts itself out. I’m really looking forward to going back to Danang (the Furama) and Hoi An (the Victoria). I don’t have anywhere to stay in Hanoi at the moment and would welcome any suggestions. In Saigon, it’s easy – the only place for me is the Caravelle.
Closer to home (but still a few thousand kilometres away!) in Moscow I have been making some arrangements to see some interesting places. Real Russia have tracked down my guide from last year, the brilliant Alexey, which is great. The only bad news so far is that the quoted cost for a day trip to Star City is over £500 for one person. That seems a lot for a four hour trip, so I may have to drop it.
More to follow next week!
Anonymous
September 10, 2013 at 10:46 pmHi Matthew, following your journey last year was great fun . Looking forward to reading this year's preparations and the trip itself. Our one piece of advice would be to beware of the different standards of trains in Vietnam. We travelled on SE1 and SE3 which were fine both day and night travel. The SE 7 however was a very different experience. Much older rolling stock and very dirty mattresses on the bunks. I'm not sure whether they retain the same numbers, worth some more research with some other travellers.
Toad's Travel Adventures
September 11, 2013 at 7:15 amMany thanks – good advice – I have requested tickets on SE1/SE3. No Livitrans availability, but hoping for four berth air con soft. I have read quite a bit around this – most complaints seem to come from cockroaches but on the Livitrans, perhaps because tourists are more likely to complain..