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Hoi An doors
© Mark Bowyer
Cultural travel ideas from our travel guides over at Rusty Compass. Our videos feature museums, walks, cycling, architecture and more. Check out our blog on Sydney beyond the harbour.
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In this video and blog post, on the back of our recent Vietnam by the Book tour, I think aloud about three decades of change I’ve witnessed in Vietnam, from its opening to the world in 1990, to its current status as a regional economic and geopolitical powerhouse.
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Seven decades after Graham Greene foretold America’s catastrophe in Vietnam, his book still makes sense to travellers with an interest in history. On our Vietnam by the Book tour, Greene’s work guides us in Hanoi, Ninh Binh and Saigon. We also finish our tour with a stay in the h...more
Author Nguyen Qui Duc passed away in Hanoi in recently. Vietnam has lost a great advocate for the arts and a creator of cultural spaces. Vale Nguyen Qui Duc.
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Sunday 17 September 2023 was a special day in Sydney. We took to the streets with tens of thousands of others in support of the October 14 referendum to recognise our First Peoples and enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia’s Constitution.
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2023 is a big anniversary year for me – and Old Compass Travel too. Big changes afoot here and it’s thirty years since I kicked off my tourism career in Ho Chi Minh City.
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The Fatal Shore – Australia by the Book is a new 14 day tour of Australia based around books. With Robert Hughes’ 1980s work as our reference, we’ll explore Sydney, the Blue Mountains and beyond before heading to Tasmania. We’ll focus on history, heritage, b...more
Vietnam’s far north – the part that borders China to the north and Laos to the west, is an extraordinary part of the country that even now, sees surprisingly few travellers. It’s a unique element of our Vietnam by the B...more
The famed ferry across Sydney Harbour to Manly provides great views of historic South Head, a place that remembers colonisation, dispossession and the maritime tragedy of the wreck of the Dunbar.
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Old Compass Travel has a new website to mark new times. We’ve expanded our reach into Sydney from Saigon where our journey began. We’re also expanding our longer tours series. Inspired by great books, a new long tour, The Fatal Shore, will join Vietnam by the Bookmore