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Published: November 16th 2010
Hello All,
Hope everyone's well, all good here. Just a quick one today, it's sunday again and I'm watching the grand prix, lucy's reading in the other room.
Since our last blog, we've been to Hanoi for the weekend. We were supposed to spend a day with my Dad and Lynda who are now en-route to Saigon (arriving tomorrow morning!), but their flight was delayed and they missed their connection in Hong Kong. All of which meant that in the end, we only had 3 hours with them but it was a very nice 3 hours spent introducing them to Vietnamese cuisine at a very nice restaurant.
Hanoi's a lovely place, crazy traffic even compared to Saigon. We did all the sights in the city and spent some nice time wandering through the back streets of the old town finding wierd things and spotting even bigger stuff than normal strapped to the backs of motorcycles. The weather was lovely and we had a nice time despite the dissappointment of dad missing his flight. Hanoi has a lot more older buildings than Saigon, it's got nice lakes and people say that it's got more charm than here. It is
prettier yes, but I think for living though, I prefer Saigon with it's own sort of charm and where you can get Heinz Baked Beans if you really need them.
In other news.....yesterday we went on an (unsuccessful) road trip with two friends. Unfortunately it seemed like it was too much, too soon for the Lambretta. It stuttered to a halt half way there (it was a trek - we'd already been going for 2 hours) and so decided we would have to turn back. It would've been no fun what so ever being practically across the border to Cambodia with no bike and no garages. Luckily though we found a mechanic. Well as you'd expect, the 'garage' wasn't exactly Kwik Fit. It was an old bloke and his family in a shack by the river. We were quite an interesting attraction to the local kids by this point who looked after us bringing us Strawberry juice and small plastic chairs to sit on. We just wanted to get going before it started to rain and got dark. Anyway, the old bloke worked his magic and we made our way safely back to Saigon in some pretty mad traffic,
which was altogether a different adventure. Bike seems fine today though, been out on it and then gave it a wash to make it shiny again earlier.
My legs are still aching a little bit from friday night - we had a work 5 a side football match against our biggest factory. Now, our office is fairly small and we could only muster 4 players from the staff, the other half of the squad were a mixture of 13 year old sons of staff and brothers. Anyway, given that the opposition play "2-3 times every week", we didn't do so bad. Granted, we were 4-0 down just after half time, but we regained some pride late on and it finished 4-2. With 2 goals from myself indeed. Quite amusing event in the build up to the big match. Rita from the office asked me what kit she should get for the team - I said white shirts and black shorts of course, as per the mighty Vale. She came back half an hour later with a Germany kit! Couldn't believe it. Nevermind, once you get over the initial uncomfortableness it was alright.
So better be getting off now
as the battery is about to die on me. Luce has a special request though. She'd love to get loads of postcards as many as possible with pretty pictures of all your hometowns/countryside to put up instead of christmas cards this year. So lets see whose will reach us first?! The race is on!
Anyway, there'll be loads more to tell you about next time after Dad and Lynda's visit. We've got the itinerary all planned and then Rachel and Joe arrive just after they leaves. Fun times ahead.
My trip back to England will be around 14th-20th December I think, must book the flights this week. And by the way, Lucy lost her phone somewhere along the adventure yesterday, so her new number is +84 121 239 6711.
That's all for now, look after yourselves
Chris and Lucy
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