Nowhere in Particular

When escaping from a normal life to become a traveller, you are excited that you will be moving away from the day-to-day drudge and are now entering a care-free existence. Then reality strikes in the form of visa applications. It can be enough to dampen any travel plans, especially as South African passport holders, as the places you can travel to without a visa are very limited. It is really complicated We are already welcome in some countries, but even this is not straightforward. We have a visa for the US but the visa appears in old passports that we will have to carry with us (as well as our marriage certificate as it was issued in Lauren's maiden name). Then we have a visa for Australia but it does not appear in our passport - we simply have a letter from the Australian government. Another difficult one to explain to a customs official who wants to see a visa for your end destination. A special kind of admin hell (Image source: https://pixabay.com/en/writing-write-pe

The great travel plan has been a little vague, and intentionally so. We want to have some level of spontaneity on our travels, but flights still need to be booked, and visas still need to be secured. Earlier this month we booked the flight to our first destination – Vietnam. The country has been on our bucket list for some time, mainly due to rave revues from other travellers. We were ready to click ‘buy now’ on Expedia but hesitated when we realised we knew very little about where we wanted to go and even where in Vietnam we wanted to start. The easiest way to get a quick overview of the must-see sights was to look at some of the package tours. Although we want to explore the paths less travelled on the trip, we certainly don’t want to miss the iconic sites. After researching al little, we have decided to start in Hanoi, explore the northern areas including the mountains and lakes, and slowly make our way south over a period of a month to Ho Chi Minh City. After Vietnam, we wa