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Tags: Amazing-Race-15 / Chasing Racers / Amazing Race / Television Travel / TV Travel / → All Tags

It's Like Being Dropped on Planet Mars

Click Here for Amazing Race 15 Map

Chasing Racers is back, with a brand-new Amazing Race 15 mashup. This map will update the morning after every new episode. Send along tips, rumors, gossip, locations and spoilers to our map editors; become a member and comment on the stories below and add to the Jaunted-Flickr photo pool to get in on the fray.

Remember to zoom in, out and around on the map—with so much happening in each episode, it's easy to miss a map point.

On the season-opener of The Amazing Race last week, beautiful blond boyfriend-girlfriend duo Cheyne and Meghan won the first leg of the race, and Pinky and the Brain, a.k.a. Matt and his dad, Gary, were victorious on the second leg. Meanwhile pro poker pals Tiffany and Maria made some enemies when they lied about their background to get the edge. Did the poker ladies' play pay off or was it bad strategy?

Find out after the jump.

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Tags: What Recession / Cruises / Helicopters / Halong Bay / → All Tags

Take A Helicopter To Your Luxury Tour

Apparently, there are people out there whose time is worth more than money, where by "money," we mean "fantastic amounts of." It's not enough that you can pre-board that flight; you also have to board first for maximum lollage and/or free beverage consumption. And it's not enough that you take a luxury cruise, you need to be taken to it personally by helicopter.

Halong Bay, Vietnam isn't out of reach for the ordinary traveler -- our own embedded guide reported that the only difference between her cruise and the first-class variety of same was the shrimp cocktail. Nor would we expect second-class treatment from a tour operator called Luxury Travel Vietnam. But after coughing up $745 for a three-day cruise, do they honestly expect anyone to put down $604 in order to travel by helicopter to and from Halong?

The one thing we'll say about all this competing transportation is that it might make an awesome setpiece for a Bond movie. Can the on-the-ground agents stop the helicopter with the nefarious evil conglomerate heads from landing? (Note to self: save money for punch-ups.)

Related Stories:
· Indochina Sails Junk Cruise [Luxury Travel Vietnam]
· Vietnam by Train: Cruising Halong Bay [Jaunted]
· Vietnam coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: doopits]

Tags: No Reservations / Television Travel / Food Travel / Tony Bourdain / Street Food / → All Tags

Is Anthony Bourdain Moving to Vietnam?

No Reservations wrapped up with a semi-season finale this week (part 2 of the season airs this summer), and Anthony Bourdain revisited one of his favorite food destinations, Vietnam.

Bourdain originally did Saigon way back on his Food Network show A Cook's Tour, and he waxed poetic about memories of pho during this season's food porn episode. But the Vietnam Bouridan sees this year is a contrast—you can still slurp snails streetside or stumble down a back alley and find live shrimp on a grill—but the Capital is also overrun with new motorbikes, Gucci stores, and thousands of tourists. Even the "soup lady" street vendor serving steaming bowls of pork blood has now been over-documented by American food bloggers.

Yet Tony still isn't turned off—in fact he spends much of the episode whining about how badly he wants to live in Vietnam, displaying a sentimental attachment to the country that we haven't seen from him before, anywhere. He even checks out some houses and laments that he isn't wealthy enough to ditch everything and move here. Although we're gonna have to call BS on Mr. Restaurateur/TV star/bestselling author not being able to afford a house in Vietnam. Maybe we should start a donation fund?

Related Stories:
· Vietnam travel guide [No Reservations]
· Anthony Bourdain Directs a Food Porn [Jaunted]
· Anthony Bourdain travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Travel Channel]

Tags: Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / UNESCO / Fashion Travel / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Where To Find Ancient Ruins, Tailored Suits

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

An hour south of Hue, Hoi An offers a brighter side of Vietnamese history. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site unto itself, a preserved shipping village. The entire city rests inside the low-hanging slope of scalloped, stone roofs that characterize Chinese-Viet architecture.

In town, you can watch local artisans, paint, sculpt, and embroider, visit the many gated, ornate homes dedicated to familial ancestors, or stroll across the wooden Japanese Covered Bridge. The whole place is almost too quaint, and you will be surrounded by plenty of wholesome families spending there days eating and shopping. It’s certainly a great place to do both.

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Tags: Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Hue Travel / Forbidden Purple City / Demilitarized Zone / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Hue Cool

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

After trekking through the terraced mountains, I climbed back aboard the train, headed back to Hanoi, then south to Hué (pronounced Hway), a small city in the center of Vietnam, dense with history. It seems almost half the city is contained within the walls of the Citadel, the royal capital of Vietnam’s ousted monarchy.

Inside the stone gate, neighborhoods, moats, and pagodas all surround the Forbidden Purple City, the complex once accessible only to the Nguyen kings and his concubines and eunichs. I expected a maze of opulent palaces; I found a grassy field. Fighting during the American War 40 years ago virtually razed the Forbidden City, and like most things unrelated to the Communist party, little has been done to restore it.

The liveliest part of the grounds is the massive koi ponds near the main entrance, where young Vietnamese feed bread to giant fish who flap and scramble over each other, mouths agape, trying to catch the crumbs.

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Tags: Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Train Travel / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Hanging With The Hmong

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

After returning to Hanoi from Halong Bay, I rode our first overnight train northwest to Sapa, the mountainous town famous for its proximity to Fansipan, Vietnam’s tallest mountain, and for the ubiquity of indigenous tribes.

Riding Vietnam’s national railroad is an experience in itself, and during my travels through the country, I slept on four trains. Cars range from whimsical, antique wooden boxes that look like something straight out of Darjeeling Limited to dingy, plastic cells with mattresses covered in hair.

True story—I found a bottle of warm urine resting on the windowsill in one of my rooms.

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Tags: Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Halong Bay / UNESCO / Kayak Travel / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Cruising Halong Bay

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

From Hanoi, we headed east to Halong Bay. More than 3,000 limestone islands jut out of the Gulf of Tonkin, so it's often compared to Krabi in Southern Thailand, though I visited there in November and Halong’s landscape is far more impressive. It does, however, lack the sandy, white beaches.

Like many UNESCO sites, the beauty of Halong Bay is constantly at odds with the ugliness of heavy tourism. Its adjacent city is the worst of rapid, unchecked development, with hideous high-rises abutting massage parlors and slums. The bay itself is littered with “junk boats,” heavy wooden boats that ferry tourists through the maze of islands.

While the antique boats themselves look quite beautiful lumbering through the water, there is simply too many of them. Often, the iridescent glean of oil is visible on the water, and I floated past empty bottles and debris.

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Tags: Vietnam Field Trip / Embedded Travel Guides / Hanoi To Do / → All Tags

Vietnam By Train: Ahoy Hanoi!

All week long our roving correspondent Claire Duffett will be sending back her travel reports from Vietnam. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know and we'll have Claire answer them for you.

The seasoned—and spoiled—traveler often complains of desensitization. After viewing a few world wonders, everything becomes banal. So when an amazing place comes along, particularly one without a ton of hype, it restores a traveler’s basic belief that there are places in the world worth seeking out and crossing great distances to experience.

For me, that place is Hanoi. When I traveled the length of the country last month, I started in the capital, and it exceeded all expectations. Sure, its inhabitants say the city was even better 10 years ago, but it's still great and I don't risk sanctions by my home country now for visiting it.

Perhaps you’ve heard the city is quaint, with vendors lining narrow streets, selling bowls of steaming pho and two-cent glasses of ice-cold local beer. I promise—it’s more charming than the image in your mind right now. And even if people have mentioned that the country, while economically liberalized, remains staunchly communist, you can’t conceptualize the ubiquity of political propaganda—with posters, flags, and Ho Chi Minh’s face virtually everywhere.

Even if someone told you Hanoi’s dotted with lakes surrounded by parks with giant, looming trees and well-kept promenades, you can’t imagine how green the city truly is. In Asia, the “pave paradise, put up a parking lot” ethos is often an unironic way of life. Historic buildings are demolished and replaced with high rises; lakes filled and parks razed to make way for new developments. In Vietnam, a country that spent most of the last century at war, it’s amazing that its centuries-old architecture—and trees—somehow managed to survive.

Our only warning is that once in Hanoi, you might be met with a strong and sudden urge to never leave. However, if you stick around for only a few days, here are a few Best Ofs in town.

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Tags: Travel Promotions / Alcohol / Vodka Travel / → All Tags

Vodka and Vietnam Go on VaKAItion

KAI Vodka is the world’s only premium vodka made from rice, so it’s fitting that the company is hosting several package trips to Vietnam, where they have been making vodka for over 600 years. Take that, Russia!

The KAI Exotic Vietnam Adventure (KEVA for short) is a custom-packaged deal that plans out eight to 14 days in Vietnam, stopping in at major cities and scenic spots.

The 8-day package starts at $2,649 per person, and includes roundtrip airfare from Los Angeles or San Francisco on Cathay Pacific Airways, hotel accommodations, tours of Hanoi and Saigon, as well as a cruise of Halong Bay--you know, that huge bay with all the jungle-like monolithic rocks, unspoiled beaches, and vine-covered cliffs. Think Catherine Deneuve in Indochine.

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Tags: New Airlines / Indochina Airlines / Asia Travel / Ha Dung / Videos / → All Tags

Vietnamese Pop Icon Launches Indochina Airlines

Move over Branson, there's a new celebrity airline exec in town: A pop music composer in Vietnam launched the country's first privately-owned airline this week.

Alongside a group of Vietnamese businessmen, Ha Hung Dung, who's also a judge on "Vietnam Idol," put up the $12 million in cash to buy two planes for Indochina Airlines. The new carrier has four daily flights between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, as well two flights daily between Ho Chi Minh City and the central coastal city of Danang.

Vietnam Airlines and Jetstar Pacific, both with foreign-owned majority stakes, also fly within the country. But even airline execs in Europe agree that the Asian market is the future of flying, and carriers in the region are all one-upping each other with aggressive expansion even in the current business climate.

As more people discover that about half of Vietnam's border is lined by white-sand beach, the carrier plans to add flights to Nha Trang as well as to the ancient capital of Hue. No word on whether Ha Hung Dung plans to blast his catchy tunes aboard the flights, but from what we've heard of Vietnamese pop, we're crossing our fingers that it's a no.

--Claire Duffett

Related Stories:
· Vietnam's First Privately-Owned AIrline Launched [AP]
· Fall The Best Liquor in Vietnam [Jaunted]

Tags: Booze Travel / Alcohol / → All Tags

The Best Liquor In Vietnam

Mexicans have tequila. Cubans, rum. Americans, uh, Budweiser. In Vietnam, the booze of choice is ruou (pronounced zeo), an elixir so smooth and multi-faceted it can be consumed with the sophistication of Dr. Frasier Crane.

The rice whiskey comes in multiple varieties and colors, but we hear the best comes from Binh Dinh province along the country’s south-central coastline. Locals follow ancient, meticulous protocols to create the stuff, using the fresh water of the Con River, pumping it through bamboo pipes, distilling it in terracotta pots and heating it over low flame.

While we sucked down Japanese rice wine during sake bomb binges in our college days, ruou should be sipped slowly and at room temperature. Like any good alcohol, the cool burn as it goes down feels like a giant Listerine breath strip soothing the throat.

In addition to claims that it "cures melancholy" (what alcohol doesn’t?), it's also used as a fever remedy. Just one wiff, and, voila, you're cured--or too drunk to remember you felt sick in the first place.

Related Stories:
· Last of the Summer Wine [Vietnamnet]
· Fall Culture Travel: Germany's Young Wine [Jaunted]

[Photo: noodlepie]

Tags: Southeast Asia Field Trip / Southeast Asia Travel / Memorials / Attractions / Tourist Attractions / Museums / → All Tags

SEA Field Trip: HCMC's War Memorials

Can't afford a European vacation this summer? Do what our contributor Claire Duffett did: Explore Southeast Asia instead.

Are we talking about the same war? You don't know the history of the Vietnam War until you've learned about the "struggle against American aggression" from the tour guides at Ho Chi Minh City's Reunification Palace.

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