Continue Your Adventure - Travel Blog

Chick here for full blog I am sending a 'shout out' to Vietnam Vespa Adventures in Ho Chi Minh City for a great ride! I had this tour on my bucket list of 'things to do' when we moved to Vietnam and I was not disappointed. I wrote the following review on Tripadvisor... "My daughter and I took The Insider's Saigon Day Tour last week and had a ball! Our guide, Dieu, was informative and fun, the drivers were attentive and confident and the sights were fab. We live in Saigon and are experienced tour travellers...this was extra special. We…

Jumping chicken and vintage Vespas! a new article featured in the travel blog titled: Asia Dreaming, by, A couple of fifty somethings living the dream in South East Asia. "They have the ability to merge and flow with their fellow riders like it's some kind of motorized ballet..."  See what else they write and check out more photos of their amazing Saigon after dark experience with Vietnam Vespa Adventures... Jumping chicken and vintage Vespas   Photos, Thanks: Ross Duncan

     The reunion tour of North Australian Vespa riders concluded it's 8 day ride from the upper Mekong Delta region, through the central Vietnam highlands to the coastal cities of Hue & Hoi An with Vietnam Vespa Adventures yestarday.  After last year completing our 7 day tour to Nha Trang, the group was keen to come back again and explore some of the best coastal roads in the world...   Special Thanks Steve, Trisha, Magellan, Margot, Peter, Richard, Sandy, Shane and Leonie!

SHE Travels writer visits Vietnam Vespa Adventures...      "The coolest thing to do in Ho Chi Minh City"... ..."Hands down, flat out the best night in Ho Chi Minh ever!" Read more... http://shetravels.net.au/the-coolest-thing-to-do-in-ho-chi-minh-city/

Celebrity Chef Bobby Chinn, and host of Bobby Chinn Cooks Asia on the Discovery Network, joined us for a short cruise around Saigon last week in Vespa style. The tour stopped at the colorful flower market in district 10 to buy gladiolas, gerbera daisies, orchids and other fresh flora grown in Vietnam. Bobby skillfully demonstrated the delicate art of making steamed rice skins and rolling fresh Banh Cuong Nong for a lively audience at Ben Thanh Market. The group sampled sweet coconut and casava based deserts, while Bobby was busy signing autographs and taking pictures with his fans passing in…

A ride with Glimpse of the Mekong tour Go where no other tours will take you on this scenic adventure that goes beyond the concrete jungle of Saigon and onto the back roads and red dirt trails of the Delta countryside. You will cross dozens of bridges over many river tributaries, ride on a river ferryboat, cruise through a vibrant bustling riverside market, tour local cottage industries and sample some Vietnamese specialties (food and drinks). You will feel a world away from the city on this off-road ride. This tour requires an adventurous spirit and a strong backside, as you…

Thanks Christine for this. The Saigon After Dark tour with Vietnam Vespa Adventures was an incredible way to explore the city’s food-focused nightlife in a truly local way: on the back of a motorbike. As Steve, an American expat who has lived in Saigon for more than 10 years and who owns Vietnam Vespa Adventures, explained: Saigon nightlife involves a lot of “cruising” from spot to spot: it’s essentially a tapas culture where you have a drink and a bite at each stop along the way, visiting several bars or restaurants on each night out. Read more....

Check out this nice blog from innerwesttosoutheast of Sophie & Tim We have just finished a 4 day, 3 night Vespa tour up the coast to Mui Ne with Vietnam Vespa Adventures and it was one of the best things we have ever done. Steve Mueller and his team were absolutely fantastic and we couldn’t thank them enough for a great couple of days. All the way from the skilled mechanical staff, luxurious accommodation and some of the best food I have eaten since I’ve been here, it was a blast! Read more...

Saigon After Dark tour from Ton Bao on Vimeo.

Saigon motorcycle traffic is, deservedly, some of the most famous (notorious?) in the world, and every visitor with a smartphone or a video-enabled DSLR camera at some point cannnot resist the impulse to capture it on film. We've therefore seen a whole lot of amateur video footage of Saigon traffic. And being motorbike-riding residents ourselves, we see it every day from street level. But we've never, ever seen any video footage of local traffic as compelling as this short time lapse, posted 5 days ago to Vimeo by local expat photog Rob Whitworth. Clocking in at a little over two…

It probably goes without saying that most of the guests who join us on our tours are from out of town. But in the past few months we've found that more and more of our passengers are locals -- people who are living in Saigon and have heard of us one way or another, eager for a chance to see the city with new eyes or to entertain visiting friends and family who've exhausted the limited sightseeing options listed in the guidebooks. Nothing makes us happier than to introduce area residents, whether short-term passers-through or long-timers, to a side of…

Can this be true? Just a couple of months ago -- maybe even less than that -- we were celebrating 2,000 page likes at our Facebook page. And now we check in on an otherwise ordinary Sunday morning to find that we had 98 new fans over the weekend, putting us at 3,029! We wish we could give every one of them a big group hug. Thanks everyone!

Andrew Percy and Christopher Marsh joined our Oct. 12 Nha Trang Coastal & Highland Adventure earlier this month, and last week Andrew shared the below video (in super-duper HD) with us. Sit back, put a bag of popcorn in the microwave, and enjoy 16 minutes of hi-definition adventure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEacTICCBQc&

Love this video posted last week from Mark, Sin, D, and Chris of their July 6-12 Nha Trang Coastal & Highland Adventure. Guys, we're totally using this in our marketing materials! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ15QlXcRSI&list=PLF73EFF82D4683A51&

We've long been fans of online travel guide Travelfish, which specializes in Southeast Asian destinations. In fact, Travelfish is our own first go-to resource whenever we're doing any exploring in the region. We've used it in Bali, Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Thai islands, and of course here at home in Vietnam (if we ever get to Laos, we'll use it there, too). So we practically wet ourselves with excitement last week when Travelfish Vietnam editor Angela Schonberg contacted us about joining one of our Saigon After Dark tours for a possible write-up. She and her boyfriend joined us on a…

On Monday night, Steve and Josh were both out of town on a Mui Ne tour and a Nha Trang tour, leaving Bao and Phuong and I to mind the house and the local tours that cropped up. These included a birthday group of five (happy birthday, Rafael!) and a separate tour of mostly locals. Among them were District 2 residents Rachel and Rupert, hosting Singapore compadre Dmitry on his last night in HCMC before returning to the world's largest city/state/shopping mall. But we also had the media with us - namely Angela and Max, Americans who are the local…

For the past several weeks, our team here in Saigon has been a little distracted. The source of our distraction has been the social media-driven travel site TripAdvisor, on which we've been listed since last February. We've been marking the progess of those (incredibly flattering, blushworthy) reviews toward the number 100 like a kid watching a Christmas calendar. Like a pot that's being watched for a boil or that red light that just seems to go on forever (in Vietnam this is admittedly not much of a problem), it seemed like the closer we got, the slower time dragged on,…

Writer Jo Lane, reporter at AsianCorrespondent.com, writes today about her five favorite places in the world for a good cuppa, and Vietnam is right at the top of her list: Coffee drinking in Vietnam is magic. I love the slow drip drip of the single-cup filters, the strength of the brew and the sweet thickness of the condensed milk (introduced because of easier storage in a tropical climate). You can also get the coffee brewed onto ice. In Vietnam coffee is normally served while it is still brewing and on my motorbike travels through Vietnam last year it was blissful to…

The Guardian U.K. drops a lovely read today about the adventurous scooter riding to be had along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We couldn't agree more! Our own route through Southern Vietnam is rather more comfy than the one the author of this article took, but the adventure and the scenery are of a piece. The mountain paths of the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail offer visitors to Vietnam an adventurous alternative to the well-worn coastal route - especially if you travel on the back of a motorbike."    

It was a little testy at first - two Kiwis and two Aussies on the night tour, each cracking jokes about the other's motherland. But very quickly the spirit of the evening (and, well, the spirits) overcame the niggling little differences of nationality and questions over what one may or may not do with sheep and everyone united in their love of Banh mi.

Two weeks ago a longtime friend celebrated his departure from Saigon & return to London with one of our Saigon After Dark tours. Nhu Vo, one of our Vietnamese friends who was along to say farewell, posted a blog about the experience on Facebook. A lovely meditation on being a Vietnamese watching visitors experience the unseen Saigon (and learning a few fun things about her city along the way). Saigon does not offer the natural beauty or flocks of birds except for the flow of bikes, ever-growing high-rise, French-colonial buildings, war-memory spots and one of the famous cuisines in the…

Several members of the Vespa Club of the Philippines will be joining us in November for a one-week Nha Trang Coastal & Highland Adventure, which should be a blast; we love having Vespa enthusiasts on our tours, and Steve can talk for days (and days and days) about the old Vespas. Today we saw a Tweet pointing to a new image club members had created to convey their excitement over the coming trip. If these folks aren't enthusiasts, nobody is.

My group of 4 friends (all early 20s) spent 4 days & 3 nights in the city. While we visited the usual attractions like Cu Chi Tunnels and the War Museum. This Vespa Tour was the highlight of the trip, for all of us! My experience first started about a month before the trip, when i emailed Vespa Adventures to ask about the availability of their night tour. Steve was especially helpful and patient as i clarified all the nitty gritty details about the tour. He even agreed to send Vespas to pick us up from our hotel (which they…

With the beginning of June's rainy season just around the corner and the slow tailing-off of high visitor's season, things have become slightly less frenetic around Cafe Zoom and the Vietnam Vespa Adventure offices (a couple of tables in the back of Cafe Zoom). But that doesn't mean we haven't been busy - or that we're not running around like ants at a spring picnic preparing for upcoming tours. Two weeks ago we hosted a big group for our seven-day Nha Trang tour -- three Australian couples and a pair of Americans from San Francisco. The six Aussies -- Peter…

Josh and Walter are just back from a pair of back-to-back, week-long tours to Nha Trang, and we're not sure we'll ever walk entirely straight again. I flew into Dalat Saturday evening to join up with groups, this time a crew of seven who were doing the full Vespa Adventure -- seven days worth of scootering from HCMC to Nha Trang. By the time I met up with them around dinnertime, they'd already been riding for three and a half days, having traded the the pang of sea salt and drying fish for the fragrance of fir needles and wood…