Wonderful trip report, thanks.

Emdee, thanks very much for your great detailed writings.I love Vietnam and was strongly impressed by what you told. In my last trip, i didn't have much time to discover every thing. Maybe this summer i'll visit Vietnam again.

loved the report

Me too. I think so.

first time using this forum and it looks great.
we are planning a trip to vietnam, thailand, cambodia and hong kong in the winter
do you have the contact info for your good guides in each location

G'day emdee

I presume you are a T1? I'm a T2 but I found this rather alarming:

"Check in was a breeze at Ho Chi Minh airport but we had a major problem when security would not allow me to take my insulin on board. They insisted that I could only take enough for the flight and should have checked in the rest. This is contrary to what I have always been told in the western world - take all medications with you and never in your checked in baggage. After 15 minutes of high drama including attempts at convincing them that lack of insulin would be life threatening and my death would be on their heads a compromise was reached - the insulin including cold pack would be given to the purser on board who would give it to me on arrival at Siem Reap. This part went without a hitch."

I'm not on insulin yet. I flew Bangkok Air to Siem Reap from Bangkok return and had no problems with the test kit and various meds. Which airline were you on?

I'm on several diabetes groups including all types (ADA forum, dLife, others). Would you mind if I mention your report on those?

My own trip report of a 2008 trip begins here for Siem Reap and Angkor Wat: http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/2008/03/cambodia.html (click on newer post to continue)
and here for Bangkok: http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/2008/05/bangkok.html

Cheers, Alan, T2, Australia

I like to reas this trip report.

Hi Trav_Eller

I am actually a T2 but need my insulin. Mention it by all means.
I met some people from Austria in the airport and they were told to pack their insulin in check in bags.

We were on Vietnam Air to Siem reap and then Bangkok Air to Bangkok and Thai Airways to Japan. Vietnam Air was the offender. Others stated their position that insulin should be checked in and I had picked up an extra cool pack in Siem Reap to comply.
Thai Airways even went so far as to convince me that they would replace my insulin should my bags get lost.

Thanks for the feedback emdee.

You said Vietnam Air was the offender, but also "Thai Airways even went so far as to convince me that they would replace my insulin should my bags get lost."

Did Thai let you take your insulin in carry-on? One of the problems in some cargo holds is quite dramatic variations in temperature from below freezing to very hot. For example, this is from a paper discussing problems with shippiong laboratory mice:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652616/
"To document the thermal environment experienced by mice during air shipments, we recorded temperatures at 1-min intervals throughout 103 routine interinstitutional shipments originating at our institution. We found that 49.5% of shipments were exposed to high temperatures (greater than 29.4 °C[85°F]), 14.6% to low temperatures (less than 7.2 °C[45°F]), and 61% to temperature variations of 11 °C[52°F] or more. International shipments were more likely than domestic shipments to experience temperature extremes and large variations in temperature"

I wrote this a while back: http://loraldiabetes.blogspot.com/20...ecome-bit.html

I'm thinking of up-dating some sections, especially to do with insulin and occasional reports like yours. As a well-traveled T2 do you have any suggestions I should incorporate?

Cheers, Alan

Hi emdee:
Thanks for the report. I am planning a trip in December to Thailand and Cambodia. I got in touch with Kim San based on your rec here and am please with his quick email reply. I expect we'll probably book with him because other guides I have contacted have not responded.

Emdee,
Would you recommend the Halong Violet or did you think it was not good enough for what they charge?

Bookmarking, since I've been talking to Emdee about this trip.