Vietnam Cambodia River Cruise 2017 – Saigon – NNs On the Wind

September 6, 2017April 28, 2019 Kathleen Ennen

SEP 4, 2017 – Saigon

Today we disembark onto coaches, once again, at My Tho Port, and go to Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam’s former capital of Indochina was once known as “Paris of the Orient,” and today, it is an industrial, cultural and educational hub. We stopped at the Central Post Office, Notre Dame Cathedral and the War Remnants Museum before going to the Ben Thanh Market—one of the oldest and most iconic structures in Ho Chi Minh City.

SEP 5, 2017 – Saigon

Today we boarded coaches again for a scenic drive to My Tho and the Cu Chi Tunnels, an immense underground network built during the Vietnam War. It was then back to the hotel to get ready for departure. We wandered around Saigon on our own, looking for pho, once again!

SEP 6, 2017 – Saigon

Today is our last day! It’s been an incredible trip – Hanoi, a terrific river cruise with everything you can imagine to make it perfect, and a final few days in Saigon. So much history. We go for a short walk from the hotel prior to heading to the airport for the long flight back to the east coast. It’s been wonderful. I hope we can come back some day!

We have traveled over the years and retired in 2017, when we started on a nine month long adventure departing in December 2017. In the past we’ve traveled to Sri Lanka, Africa (several times), Turkey, and made a number of trips to Europe, and St Lucia. Our 2015 trip to Turkey, took nearly 3 weeks to explore Istanbul, Cappadocia and the areas in proximity to Izmir.

This is a chronicle of our travels, past and present. We love to travel by trains, planes, ships, and cars – and love sailing whenever and wherever we can.

We retired from the US General Services Administration, the Federal Government’s landlord! Thom worked at planning and large scale program management of numerous projects and Kathleen, a registered professional civil engineer, was a project manager for many infrastructure and building renovation projects, including both design and construction aspects, in New England, Florida and the metro DC area. We lived in Washington DC for 12 years and upon retirement sold the house, putting a few things in a 5’x5’ storage unit and started traveling.

On return to the US in September 2018, after traveling to 21 countries, we bought a Class C RV – 2019 Thor Freedom Elite 24FE. We enjoyed our week long camping trip in New Zealand in a small converted van with few amenities, so this seemed liked a good way to tour the US. We hope to visit family along the way and as many US National Parks as possible.

UPDATE – the Covid pandemic made travel more difficult for us. We were abroad for several months when the pandemic started and returned to the US in July 2020. After several months in the RV to visit Utah and Albuquerque NM, we moved east, bought a house on the Northern Neck of Virginia, and sold the RV. For 2021 and 2022 we tended to our new house and cottage, gardens and various boats including a 18’ 1977 Marshall Sanderling catboat and a 25’ Steiger Craft Chesapeake fishing boat, and kayaks and a canoe. Hopefully travel will start again one day!!

May 2022