LIFE ABROAD · REAL STORIES · ADVENTURES
Travel further than the itinerary.
Travel guides, honest reflections, and the bits they leave out of the guidebooks — because AI can plan the route, but it can’t tell you how a place actually feels.
Hi, I’m Lara. Travel makes me feel alive: the wrong turn that leads to the best surprises, the bar you stumble into after a calamitous day, the café that makes you more creative, the person you sit next to who stays with you for years. This is where I write about those moments and how to find them for yourself.
Latest from the blog
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Travelling with ADHD: An Honest Guide (and Why I’d Stay Three Months)
I once sat down at what I thought was a footstool in a Hanoi café and put my feet up. It was, in fact, a table. A Vietnamese woman appeared from somewhere and gave me a look of such specific and deserved disappointment that I still think about it. Feet are considered dirty in Vietnamese culture. You remove your shoes before entering a home, a temple, anywhere really. I knew this. I’d read it before arriving. It just didn’t make the journey from “information I have stored somewhere” to “action in the present moment.” Which is, if you have ADHD, a very familiar gap to fall into.
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8-Day Northern Vietnam Itinerary: Hanoi, Ninh Binh & Ha Long Bay
Planning an 8-day Northern Vietnam itinerary? Here’s exactly how I spent 8 days exploring Hanoi, Ninh Binh and Ha Long Bay, with honest recommendations, costs, and transport tips.
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Vietnam visa overstay: what actually happens (and why it’s not as scary as you think)
If you’ve just realised you’ve overstayed your Vietnamese visa, take a breath. This is more common than you think, easier to resolve than the internet will have you believe, and the people at the immigration desk are, in my experience, perfectly pleasant about the whole thing, as long as you cough up the right amount…
