Vietnam720: Before you do a Sapa travel, seek info on Sapa hotels or want to know about Sapa tours, read this comprehensive Sapa Vietnam guide from Dr BruceMoon first. Dr BruceMoon, aka ‘An Australian Veteran globetrotting…’ (who prefers that I not leave his contact here) is a regular contributor in the TravelFish’s Vietnam forum. You can find the original post here…

Vietnam720: Agent Orange in Vietnam and the story of Agent Orange effects on Vietnamese children covered by Julian Abram from his Julian Abram Photography Blog. Julian shares here how his 2 visits to work on the Vietnam War Agent Orange effects can be vastly different since having his newborn. He titled it ‘Reflections of a new father visiting an Agent Orange orphanage’…

Beautiful images of Hoan Kiem Lake of Hanoi City by Piero from his Flickr images…

Chanh Hung market, on the edge of Ho Chi Minh City’s Chinatown district and on the banks of the Saigon River, is Vietnam’s biggest wholesale fish market. It operates at night (if you go, plan to arrive after 11PM), 7 days a week, most of the 365 days in a year. It’s an authentic working market where everyone wears Wellington boots. It’s busy, it’s aggressive, and by the time the market has closed each day, millions of dollars worth of fish have passed through its doors…

Photo slideshow of beautiful Vietnamese girls and boys of the Loreto Fest 2008. This Vietnam international music festival was held at the RMIT University in Ho Chi Minh City on November 29, 2008. The event, which is organised by Loreto Vietnam Australia Programme (LVAP), aims to raise funds to support disadvantaged and disabled Vietnamese children. The Loreto Fest 2008 drew the participation of famous Vietnamese singers namely Ho Ngoc Ha, Pham Anh Khoa, Phuong Vy, Kim, and Mai Khoi and music bands from Australia such as Regurgitator and Curtis King…

Last week we flew to Rach Gia airport in Kien Giang province, transferred to the bus station and took Mai Linh’s ‘express’ service to Ha Tien. Kien Giang is in the bottom left of Vietnam (for the geographically challenged), or if you want to be technical, the ‘south west’. Phu Quoc island is also part of KG.
We jumped out of the cab around 30km from Ha Tien at Ba Hon where the road forks onto the Hon Chong Peninsular. The peninsular was beautiful at one time, but the drive out to the bay was pot marked with half quarried cliff faces and smoldering cement factories. Beyond the industrial mutilation of nature, the road hits a windy, forested section through which eventually emerges the 3 kilometer bay of Hon Chong…

By hydrofoil, the southern coastal town of Vung Tau is hardly far enough from Ho Chi Minh City for travelers to grab a catnap. Arriving in Vung Tau after the 75-minute journey, the first thing you notice is the wide, curving bay filled with fishing boats so colorful you may wonder if a fleet of tankers carrying oil paints simultaneously ran aground there. Forested mountains hug the long coastline; French colonial mansions dot the foothills. A luxurious marble pathway greets visitors along Front Beach. In the mornings, sidewalks gleam with fresh catches of fish sold to passersby. On the rocks that the early tide has exposed, women scrape away at stubborn, clinging shellfish…