Lee Dovey

To be honest at the start of the trip, Lee and I were going to give Saigon a miss. Turns out though that Andrew Lloyd Webber already did it 30 years ago. Thangyouverymuch, I'm here 'til Thursday. Due to our extra time in Hanoi waiting on our trip to Halong Bay, we had to miss out a few of the delights that lie on Vietnam's coastline and we decided to fly south to Saigon straight from Hanoi. Given everything we know now, we would have headed straight to Saigon instead of going to the North first but 20/20 hindsight is indeed a rare commodity. Saigon is a great wee place and also has plenty more to do than Hanoi. It's just as manic traffic-wise, but it has the wider streets that make it even more dangerous ... read more

I think it's about time we realise that no matter how much you plan something, there will always be a spanner lying about just waiting to lobbed into the works. Now normally, Lee and I just rock up at immigration, say "Sawardee Kap, G'Day, Sin Chao" or however else you say hello, and they welcome us with open arms to their lovely countries, no rubber gloves necessary. We're not used to having to buy a 1 month visa to go somewhere so it was kinda at the last minute that we arranged our visitors visa's to Vietnam. I mean like 36 hours before we were due to enter the country, I wouldn't recommend it by the way. We flew out of Bangkok at 09.10 on the 26th and our visas came through at 22.00 the previous ... read more

Here it is, our final week in Sydney and in Australia. Now we don't want you all to get offended or anything when we say this, but we don't really want to go !! Don't get us wrong, it'll be great seeing everyone again and we've missed you all heaps while we've been away but, you know how it is, it feels like we're leaving home again !! And you don't leave home again without having a leaving do again, do you ?? Actually I'll come to that in a minute. For some strange reason, you can only work for the one company for a total of 6 months in Australia. This meant that Lee and I would be finishing our jobs earlier than we would have chosen so I would be searching for a new ... read more

Now as previously mentioned in our other blogs, we have of course been keeping up to date on the pantomime, sorry, football season back home. We have checked the scores of our beloved Hearts each week and comfort from the fact that we have not been there to witness some of our performances, and yet more comfort still that we have been spared the many ingenious and witty comments from the Wee (flair) Team. Starved of a successful and entertaining team in Maroon to support, I have transferred a small part (albeit temporarily) of my allegiances to the Brisbane Broncos, of Queensland. When I was wee and my Saturdays constituted of spending the day glued to Grandstand, I used to watch a load of rugby league and really enjoyed watching the brilliant Wigan side of the ... read more

There weren’t many of us left by this stage. Liam and Jim had returned from the far reaches of Victoria where they had been working and playing cricket for about 2 months and had saved not very much but were determined to go home with pretty much nothing. Their idea was to spend their remaining cash supplies in their final 3 days in Sydney and to honest they made a fair bash at it. Lee and I had offered to put them up at our house for a couple of nights to save them money and the first thing they did when they got to ours was head out and buy a few cases of lager to help numb the pain of leaving Australia in the next few days. The plan was to have everyone round ... read more