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Published: January 8th 2011
Happy New Year to One and All!
Well, it's been a long time since the last update and my golly gosh a lot has happened. It's set to be the longest blog entry ever, so get yourself a cuppa and myself and the Mrs will take turns to update you on the last month's shenanigans.....
Hoi An
We went to Hoi An for Lucy's birthday (and an excuse for another holiday). It's a little old town that has got a bit too touristy but it's still very, very pretty. It's famed for it's tailor shops (there's literally hundreds of them), and so, when in Rome and all that. We both picked up a made to measure coat each. We had thought they would be suitable for English winters but following the road test just before Christmas, I can assure Lucy that they are not and it must just have been hot when we bought them. The weekend was spent mainly on a shopping and sipping drinks expedition - we've seen a lot on our travels here and sometimes you have to remember that we don't need to see every Pagoda in SE Asia!
Chris Goes Home
Seems like
Life's a beach
Never done this on my birthday before!ages ago now but it was lovely to see everybody that I did see, just another case of nowhere near enough time to do everything. 2 observations on the UK - it's expensive (£2.40 for a coffee from Toddington services!) and also, there is no traffic. The M1 was like a wierd ghost road in comparison to Saigon.
Mui Ne
I had a lovely weekend with my best friend here Vy (who is conveniently a travel agent). While Chris was in the UK we stayed in a hotel at the beach (1 free night woo hoo!) and then checked out the beach and the bars. Luckily we realised that we both can be as lazy as each other and had a proper chilled out weekend. We bumped into some people from our dancing class and spent the evening dining and then partying with them as well which was a lovely surprise.
Christmas
Another flights disaster struck - this time, much awaited, Ian and Joan arrived 24 hours late, just in the nick of time for their Christmas dinner/tea. Unfortunately then, they missed Christmas Eve's festivities. The place goes a but mental on the 24th, everybody is out riding
their bikes, looking at the lights and spraying fake snow at each other - lots of fun! In Ian and Joan's absence it was just ourselves and Auralie (friend from Thailand) and Vy on Xmas Eve, they joined us all again for Christmas lunch (turned out to be tea) at the Intercontinental Hotel. It certainly wasn't the same as xmas back home but a hell of a lot of fun with large amounts of food (including turkey and sprouts!) The morning was spent opening prezzies and drinking bucks fizz. The Bucks fizz resulted in Lucy then dancing round the house in her bikini singing Christmas songs. Realising that the dance classes for us both had started to pay off, she then had me dancing with her! Afternoon was spent sleeping it off at the pool. I've not said that before at Christmas - hope you enjoyed your ice. Later on the free flow booze at the hotel meant we then ended up at the karakoe club and then in a nightclub until the early hours. Boxing day was subsequently a write-off apart from a relaxing cyclo ride. Well relaxing for most of us - apart from Ian who seemed to
And the result!
If you don't mention it, you don't get anything..... have a kamikazee driver!
The Motorbike Adventure
Personally speaking, it's probably the best thing we've done since arriving in Vietnam. 470 miles on bikes from Dalat in the mountains to Nha Trang and the beach. Myself and Ian had our own bikes with Lucy and Joan on the back of our (fantastic) guide's bikes. We couldn't have seen any more than we did - winding mountain roads, hill tribe villages, elephant rides, waterfalls, flower farms, coffee planations, chocolate plantations..! silk factories, fantastic food, BBQs...... The guides were great and showed us all sorts of places you would never find yourself. We got on very well with the guides - playing cards with them until late at night, playing football with them and some locals and having lots of fantastic food from what they call trucker cafes. Now, it's not the bacon and brown sauce by the side of the A50 variety - some of these were stuck on the side of a mountain but brought us out some amazing food. The roads varied from dirt tracks to highways, with at some in between, and the now infamous 'kangaroo road' - what seemed like 15 miles of a mountain road
Hoi An
Another over priced bunch of very small bananas! that was last re-surfaced in 1953. Kangaroo road seemed to accelerate the effects of 'Monkey Bum' - a technical medical term for the discomfort of the buttocks. The first night was spent sleeping in a traditional long-house on stilts, complete with animals underneath. There was just the 4 of us in there after the card game had finished - the only other things in the entire place were 4 foam matresses and mosquito nets. Not sure the entire group enjoyed the experince due to the intense noise pollution - I will give you a run-down of the timings:
12am - Dogs under house start howling
1am - Crickets reach peak decibels
2am - Strange frog-type noises, dogs still howling
3am- Dog fight in street outside
3.30am- First cockrel sounds (continues for 3 hours)
4.30am - Extremely loud tractor starts next to house and stays there
5am - Very loud dance music starts from house behind
5.30am - Give up on sleeping
7am - Ride elephants across lake
We awoke (having arrived in the dark) to a very rustic, but picturesque hill-tribe village by a lake with dogs and pigs roaming free and life going on much as it
would 50 years before. It made up for the restless night, as did the elephant ride in Lak Lake which was a nice way to start the day. Each day was about 4 or 5 hours driving, with the rest stopping off at lots of very interesting places and also a few fresh coffee shops in the central highlands, which are really just like someone's verandah. Anyway, all those miles and not even a single mishap or close shave! The photos probably tell the story better than I can.
We arrived at Nha Trang and checked into our 5 star 'resort' very tired with a few aches and pains. The hotel was beautiful, lovely location etc. but it didn't start well when the fancy looking bath (which was all Lucy had been thinking of for the last 100kms) didn't work (well a 30l water tank for a 150l+ bath won't will it?!) Service thereafter made Fawlty Towers look highly efficient but nevermind, it was a beautiful and very relaxing setting all the same. There was a spa for the ladies and a golf driving range for the boys - with the added novelty that you were supposed to hit
Christmas Eve in Saigon
And masses of people... your ball into the sea.
New Years Eve...
Was great. We were at a beach party in Nha Trang with about 2000 other people, with great food and great music (which is unusual) and a little too much Gordon (Gin) and Johnny (Walker). We had a prime spot on the terrace outside, had a great time and then sobered up on the beach after it finished until the sun came up.
So please forgive the lengthiness of our entry - we have realised that we can print out the blog as a book and therefore it has turned into a superb set of memories for ourselves as well as a good way of keeping you all in touch in one fell swoop!
And lastly may we say thank you for all the cards and gifts that were sent back with Chris - they made our rather sparsely decorated flat much more fetistive and were very much appreciated! Oh and also thanks to the piccies of England - we still have them all up in various places too. Infact the Nottingham jigsaw has been started today - we'll let you know when that one is finished (it's a
good job we have a big table as I think it will be months!)
Take care and much love, Ms Milici (most recent alias ??!!) and Mr Chriff x x x
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hayley
non-member comment
happy new year
Happy New Year to you both. What brilliant photos - really enjoyed looking at them and hearing some more about your adventures. Almost feel like I've visited you! love Hayley