2024 Travels

Our next stop on this trip was Vietnam! We started in Hanoi and were spending three days here. I also was able to use my credit card points to book a hotel, unfortunately it was a ways out of the city, but taxi's are super cheap so it was definitely worth it. Having a big comfy bed was such a change from the hostels we have been staying in. One of the days we took a day trip to Ninh Binh. Our tour guide called it Ha Long Bay on land, and we opted for Ninh Binh because we are more mountain people than water people. We booked the tour through Viator and it was a whole-day affair with a tour and three locations! This location was the Mua caves and there was a mountain to climb and also some caves to explore. Dragon carving at the top of the long long set of stairs. The views from the top! The many rocks just jutting out of the land were so strange to see, like how? We also took a boat ride at Tam Coc, super beautiful. The people rowing the boats used their feet to push the paddles, ve...

We went to Osaka for two days which I think was enough time. We decided to get the Osaka Amazing pass which includes entrance to a bunch of attractions and also unlimited metro rides. We had mapped out the previous day what we wanted to hit and made a whole itinerary with times and everything because we had to make sure we got through what we wanted to.  Our first stop was the museum of natural history and bottanical gardens. Mat likes to go to science museums and this was the closest thing that was included in the pass. It was a hike to get there and was really underwhelming. No story was really told and it was just a bunch of items with some labels. There were a lot of animal bones though. The gardens had these random beans all throughout one section and we later realized its for the exhibition at night which involves lights. Alas we were there in the morning. Next up was the Osaka zoo which had a surprising variety of animals. The notables included these penguin and a KIWI!!??! ...