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The Happy Couple

242 Blog Entries
3 Trips
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Trips:

Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
Joanne's Round the World Honeymoon

Shorthand link:

http://www.blogabond.com/shedden



Buddy List

Jason Kester
Jason Kester
The Happy Couple
The Happy Couple
Fred Shedden
Fred Shedden



Arrival in Da Lat

Da Lat, Vietnam


Dried cherry tomatoes, persimmon, hibiscus, mixed vegetables crisps, and artichoke tea
Da Lat was a French colonial summer highland retreat, much like Shimla in India was to the English. The road was quite like the one to Shimla, but the driver thankfully was not as murderous/suicidal as the one on my trip to Shimla. The guide book talks of the obvious French influence in the architecture, but we saw nothing that didn't look like modern Vietnamese concrete. The one exception was the radio tower at the Post Office, which is a copy of the Eiffel Tower; unfortunately I neglected to take a photo.

Dried hibiscus
Da Lat is famed for its vegetable and fruit produce, because the French planted all sort of things from home that wouldn't grow in the lowlands of Vietnam, so its specialities are things like artichoke tea, dried fruit, and avocado ice cream (apparently, although I saw none of the avocado ice cream). We dived in, and bought artichoke tea (very nice) and loads of dried stuff at the market: mixed vegetable crisps, dried cherry tomatoes, dried persimmon ("old" and "new"), and dried hibiscus, which is delicious.

Another speciality it hot soya milk, which is sold from lots of stalls on the street. When we went up to buy some we discovered that they also sell hot "mung bean milk" and hot "peanut milk", so we had to try them too. All very nice!


permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 11, 2009 from Da Lat, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Cham Tower on the way to Da Lat

Phan Rang-Thap Cham, Vietnam


Cham Towers
An early morning bus took us from Nha Trang on the way to Da Lat, after leaving our passports behind at the hotel, only to have them delivered to me by the hotel owner on a bike just after Joanne ran back to the hotel; a bit confusing. We stopped for lunch at a service station on the way, where there were some more excellent Cham towers; obviously they are just all over Vietnam. Same plan as last time: three towers in a row, one off to the side.



permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 11, 2009 from Phan Rang-Thap Cham, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Whistle-stop Nha Trang

Nha Trang, Vietnam

The guide books are fairly disparaging of Nha Trang, so we didn't plan to spend long there, however a slight error when booking our buses meant that we were staying there only one night instead of two; but we didn't mind because we were going to go to Mui Ne later, which is supposed to be a much quieter beach experience compared to the rowdy unpleasant Nha Trang beach resort. As we only had one day, and we weren't expecting it to be beach weather, we planned to spend some time and money at the mineral mud bath. When we arrived, after our overnight bus, this time up the back where I had more leg room, the place seemed OK to me. Not too touristy, actually, with quite a "real city" feel.

Joanne pointed out to me that there was a place called the Louisiana Brew house, where they microbrewed their on beer, so I headed there while we were deciding what to do about getting to the mud baths. The beer was excellent, but well our of our price range, so I just bought a 200ml x 4 "taster" platter. Sitting there amongst all the swimming pools, and sun-loungers and Japanese food, and menus with very expensive cocktails on them, we thought this is what the "other Vietnam tourism" is about. We left and secured a bike, which I was very proud of haggling down to 80000 from 120000, then buzzed off to the mud baths.


Mud Bath

Well I've never had a mud bath before and it was OK. Kind of nice. Weird. After the mud bath they had all sort of other stages you were meant to go through, like being blasted from both sides by hot mineral water, soaking in a hot tub, and then you could spend as much time as you want in the hot mineral water swimming pool. I didn't care about any of that, I just wanted the mud to help my dreadlocks!

On the way back we stopped off at Po Nagar Cham Towers, which was built between the 7th and 12th Century; four towers, three of them featuring lingas.

Next it was Long Son Pagoda. We were already starting to become a bit bored with Pagodas, but this one has a reclining Buddha, which we had to see to compare with the one in Bangkok (I'm sure there's little comparison); and also a large sitting Buddha.


Sitting Buddha at Long Son Pagoda
I quite like the temples for all the garish kitsch; you may think that Catholics can do religious kitsch well, but the East is way ahead. And they've got them beat where incense is concerned as well. Pagodas are all the same though: octagonal tower of several layers, big bell, a few temples, lots of monks.


The boys at the bia hoi place
Heading back home, and almost there, I spotted a bia hoi place; the first I'd seen in Nha Trang. Following my obsession with getting the real deal, this looked like just the place. Definitely no tourists here! Another way of telling a real Vietnamese place is the lack of sensible seats: everyone sits at kiddie chairs around kiddie tables; they remind me of the "childrens table" at family Christmas, except it's grown men round them. So we stopped off, to the amusement of everyone there, which is always a good authenticity sign as well I find. "Bia hoi" I said. "One bottle?" the proprietor replied with shaky English.

The Real McCoy of bia hoi
Oh no - he's misunderstood I think, bia hoi comes out a draft, expensive beer comes in a bottle; and my suspicions were confirmed when he said it was 20000. But when it arrived I realised there was no mistake. It was a two litre bottle. So we ordered some food from the all Vietnamese menu, taking a chance, and it was very nice. The proprietor seemed keen to practice his English, but I think it was off its peak due to the large amount of beer he and his mates had already drunk. When it came to pay the bill, I think the waitress just charged me what it should have been instead of following the opportunistic money-making the owner had planned; the beer was in fact only 14000 dong -- about 45p for 2 litres.

That evening I had frogs for the first time in my life. They were OK, but I wouldn't rush to have them again. I can see why the French only eat the legs as well: the ribs are a bit unpleasant to contemplate, and they don't taste as nice either; or maybe that taste as little.


"Minced" frogs in spicy sauce

permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 10, 2009 from Nha Trang, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Last day in Hoi An

Hoi An, Vietnam

The last day in Hoi An was quite quiet. I bought a mystery thing in a banana leaf parcel, which turned out to be a sweet glutinous rice ball, stuffed with coconut; very nice!
I bought Sellotape from a stall at the market, where a pair of very cheeky girls tried brazenly to rip me off.

Cheeky girls at rip-off stall
After haggling them down to 20000, from an outrageous 80000 for a wee roll of tape, they tried the classic "one more, one more for 20000" trick when I handed over the 100000 note. I was ready for this, though, and told them how cheeky they were. Then, to get them back, I decided to take a photo of them as I left; but as soon as I took my camera out, one of the girls said "10000! 10000!" and hid her face.

During this time Joanne was off spending nearly half-a-million on dresses! I just sat and drank and people watched (and photo'd).

I also took the opportunity to sample another local speciality: fish steamed in banana leaf. The guide books all rave about it, albeit in different, more expensive establishments than the one we were in. While waiting for my food, I went to the toilet, which required me to walk past the kitchen.


Supposed steamed fish in banana leaf speciality
On the way back to my seat, I happened to notice something looking roughly fish-shaped, going round and round in the microwave, with absolutely no banana leaf anywhere near it. Well, clearly it couldn't be my fish steamed in banana leaf. Yet, when my fish arrived, in its banana leaf, it had the chewy, dry texture you might expect of something microwaved, rather than the juicy, soft texture of something steamed. Also the garlic and herbs over the top didn't seem to have infused any flavours into the fish as you might expect in a steaming situation; in fact they seemed almost as if they had been fried and then plopped on top of the fish, presumably just before they wrapped it in a re-usable banana leaf; it had a mystery red sauce on parts of it, which didn't have anything to do with my fish. Oh well, you can't win them all!

permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 9, 2009 from Hoi An, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Full Moon Festival in Hoi An

Hoi An, Vietnam


On the way to the beach
We started the day with two excellent coffee shakes. Nice and strong. The weather looked like it had turned in our favour again, so we hired a couple of bicycles (10000 dong each) and headed off to the beach, passing through some lovely agrarian scenes on the way; the countryside never seems very far away in Vietnam. When we arrived at the beach, someone there tried to charge us 5000 dong each to park our bicycles, but I managed to get him down to 5000 together when I complained that the bikes only cost 10000.

After a nice wee sunbathe and swim we headed back into town for the full moon festival, stopping off for some bia hoi on the way. To my horror it cost 5000, so they are obviously not part of the cartel; however in compensation they gave us some snacks to have along with our beer: some boiled quails eggs.


Japanese Bridge
Back in town, we (inevitably) bumped into Marty and Jochem, and discovered (inevitably) they were staying in the same hotel as us again. The full moon festival looked pretty, but there wasn't really much going on: stalls selling food and lamps, and people selling candles in lanterns to sail down the river for good luck, as well as loads of floats of mythical creatures on the river. During the course of the evening we bumped into Russell, who was about to start heading north again, so we won't see him again. After a fair bit of harrassment from little kids I bought a lantern and threw it into the river, where it breached against the side. Immediately a small child scrambled down the side and lifted it our of the water, presumably to resell to some other unsuspecting, to-be-luckless shmuck.

Emboldened by the experiment of the previous night we bought a bottle of the local brandy to drink in our room.



permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 8, 2009 from Hoi An, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Arrival in Hoi An

Hoi An, Vietnam

From Hue we got the sleeper bus again, except this time during the day, to Hoi An. Arriving in Hoi An, we were hassled by loads of hotel touts, but we were determined not to reward them with commission for hassling people and trudged around looking for hotels from the Rough Guide. We were prepared for it being quite busy because the following night was a full moon festival. After two full hotels we got one on our third attempt for not too bad a rate.


Bia hoi getting poured
As there wasn't much of the day left, we just wandered around and checked the town out. Quite a pretty place, but that's always the way with river towns, and quite touristy, but not in too invasive a way. We quickly found a bia hoi place, although there seemed to be a cartel operating, where the price was fixed at 4000 everywhere, a full 1000 more than it had been anywhere previously; still OK at less than 20p a beer, though! After a couple of beers, we found a place that does bia hoi and platters of all the local specialities, so we had to. And there I finally plucked up the courage to try one of the local brandies, which wasn't at all bad, though a bit strange tasting: mint / bubblegum, and at only 29% it was going to give anyone a hangover.

Set meal of Hoi An specialities

Across the road from our restaurant there was a square full of local outdoor food places, which sold the same specialities as we'd had for tea. The names of some of the places were quite amusing.

permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 7, 2009 from Hoi An, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Brrrrrrooooomm!

Hue, Vietnam

Free from the tyranny of eggs, we went for a Vietnamese breakfast the way it should be: noodles.

Having seen the Imperial City the day before, most of what remained to see nearby was further than walking distance, so we decided that the traffic here was sane enough to hire a moped. Great fun! And the traffic isn't that bad once you get into it. You just need to go with the flow, and behave as if you are walking rather than driving: you might be heading straight towards someone, but you just need to change your direction slightly to miss them; none of this stuffy signalling or rules regarding right-of-way. The first attempt to get petrol failed though. I watched people getting fuel before us, and the guy in front got what read 2000 on the pump; it seemed to take a good wee while, and I reckoned it would be enough fuel for one day. So I took my cap of and handed over 2000. The woman with the pump gave me a look, and then squirted about 1 second's worth of fuel into the tank, but the meter only read 200. I was obviously being ripped off; another foreign sucker to take money from! So I tried to object and indicate I wanted ten times as much, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere. The woman seemed quite indignant and was obviously saying something about me to all the other customers. So I stepped back a bit an watched the next customer. Sure enough he only got about 1500 of fuel, but then I realised my mistake when he handed over 15000; the machines have obviously not kept up with inflation so they've just dropped one redundant zero. I stepped forward and bashfully handed over 20000 and was rewarded with a "at last you get it" face and a tank nearly full of petrol. Of course you could argue that this would all have been quite obvious if I'd only done the maths and worked out that the first time I was asking for about 8p of fuel, after all this is petrol we're talking about, not pick'n'mix ha'penny chews.


Thien Mu Pagoda
First stop was the Tien Mu Pagoda, not far along the Perfume River from the Citadel. It was originally built in 1601 when a Fairy Women (Thien Mu) told the provincial governor to build one for the country's prosperity. It's been destroyed and rebuilt many times since, and since the 60s has been a centre for political protest; in keeping with this, the area behind the pagoda houses the car driver to Saigon by Thích Quảng Đức, the monk who set himself alight there, in protest of President Ngô Đình Diệm's suppression of Buddhism. They also have a huge marble tortoise and a giant bell.

After that we zipped across the city to Nam Giao Temple. It was a bit disappointing, but at least it was free, apart from the moped parking, which we had not anticipated.


Tomb of Thieu Tri
After this, we wanted to see one or more of the mausoleums dotted around the city, but most of them were charging 55000 entrance according to the book and, as we'd already discovered, the prices of some things had doubled since the book was published (in November!), but most had gone up by at least a quarter. On our budget we decided the only one we could afford was the 20000. The only map we had was in the guide book, and we ended up having a rather pleasant tour around the semi-rural suburbs of Hue without much luck on finding it. Just after we'd given up and headed home, we found it. It was closed for renovation, but some of the outer buildings were still open.

Finally we thought we could fit in the house "Uncle Ho" (which they Vietnamese really do call him) grew up in, but we encountered further navigation issues and, although we did see some nice building who-knows-where outside Hue, we completely failed to find the village of his birth.


Banh Khoai

Defeated, we returned to town for some Hue specialities for dinner, following a Lonely Planet recommendation. Same story as the last one: very expensive; they must have at least double their prices since the stamp of approval. So we went up the road just a block or two and found another really nice cheap authentic place instead where we had Banh Khoai; a local speciality, so we had to try it. It's a rice pancake with beansprouts, bacon, Spring onion, and so on, on top. The place we found was a local place for local people, so it was all phrase books and gestures. Most of the local places are actually pretty easy in Vietnam, because they serve only one thing. Most of the street food we've eaten have been places where you just need to say (or signal) how many you want and you get what they do; no menus no choices. Simple! This place was the same. Until then we'd been eating with chopsticks everywhere without much difficulty; noodles, mostly. But these things we really quite difficult to tackle with chopsticks. I had a clumsy bash at it, breaking it apart a bit by jabbing the chopsticks in, but I was sure it couldn't be the correct approach. I had a wee look around the restaurant and watched some other people; they were doing exactly the same thing. The real problem is that chopsticks aren't the right tool for this; what you need is a knife and fork. Especially the knife.

permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 6, 2009 from Hue, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Goodbye to Cat Ba, hello Hue

Hue, Vietnam


Last photo of the dragons
At the hotel it was eggs for breakfast again, then off to a much nicer boat that the one we'd stayed on, to sail back to Ha Long City.

Tourist trap
We said goodbye to the dragons and took the last photo in Ha Long Bay. At Ha Long City, we were taken to a terrible tourist trap restaurant where a hall full of people were all served the same rubbish we'd been eating for several days now. I decided that we would ask for a discount instead of getting any included food in future. I took advantage of the large concentration of tourists to leave another book, My Favourite War, lying casually on the steps in front of the restaurant (bookcrossing.com/542-6924659). I felt slightly unhappy leaving a book I'd really enjoyed, but my bag was starting to get lighter!

The bus took us to the hotel we'd been staying at, in Hue, and very kindly waited for us while we collected our bags. As I was picking the bags up, the guy behind the desk signalled to me to wait while he was on the phone; however the guide from our tour had grabbed one of my bags and was on his way out, so I followed him, worrying that the hotel had decided to charge us an extra two days for leaving our bags or something. However, why he got off the phone, just as I was going out the door, he said "I just wanted to say goodbye to you". Strange, but sweet all the same. I like Asians.


Happy on the sleeper bus
Then it was straight onto another bus at the travel agency: a "sleeper" bus to Hue. We didn't really know what to expect, but the first slightly unusual occurrence was that the driver asked us to take our shoes off and put them in a plastic bag as we got on the bus. The shoes were to go in little cupboards under the seats, which were in three rows and two layers, very reclined, but not quite flat. They also inclined to an almost sitting position; if you have short legs, that is. I have a theory that these were invented by the Vietcong during the American War to torture the much-taller-than-Asians Americans.

Misery on the sleeper bus
As it was my feet were stuffed as painfully as I could bear against the end of the metal "leg pouch", but my bum was still halfway up what would be the seat back if it were upright. So it wouldn't go up. Joanne seemed quite happy though, until I realised that my bed was actually shorter than her and we swapped, due to my additional height. Now we were both roughly equally uncomfortable, but much less than I had been before the swap. We did actually get some sleep, when I discovered my feet fitted better if I slept on my side, but I can't say it was the best sleep of my life. The shoe cupboard seemed like the ideal place to stash Flight Paths of The Emperor, another book I'd really enjoyed (bookcrossing.com/817-6924653).

The next morning we arrived in Hue, which is much smaller and much quieter than Hanoi. Even the traffic was calmer. After getting a hotel, we found a wee Vietnamese place to have brunch. The food was a huge improvement on what we'd been eating, but inexplicably we still got Lipton tea, when everyone else there was drinking green tea. Just after we left there, we passed another, Western and Vietnamese place who actually had Vietnamese tea on the menu. Finally! I now wonder if the key is that asking for tea doesn't get you it unless you specify Vietnamese tea; unless you ARE Vietnamese in which case I guess you have to specify Lipton tea if that's what you want. Anyway, it was worth the wait -- delicious -- and very cheap too. While we were on a roll, we decided to try the Vietnamese coffee too. Also excellent, and very strong.


Uncle Ho above the entrance to the Imperial City
Back at the hotel the two Dutch guys, who'd been on the boat with us, appeared. They had coincidentally booked into the same hotel. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the Imperial City, a fortress within the fortress of the Citadel. It's modelled on the Forbidden City in Beijing. The Emperor was so paranoid, he even had a third, interior fortress, where his concubines lived. The Imperial City is huge, but parts of it are in quite a state of disrepair, bits of it having been destroyed in successive wars, and the Communist government not having taken much interest in preserving Imperial relics; however the restoration is well under way now that tourist money is pouring in. Walking around inside, we bumped into the French couple we'd been kayaking with in Cat Ba. It was becoming obvious that the tourist circuit here is quite small, or maybe just linear.

Outside the Citadel we picked up some unusual street food. I think it was potato with some other stuff over it, but it was quite nice. Later the good food continued with some delicious steamed spring rolls.

The downside of the day was I sustained the second casualty of the trip: I lost my sunglasses.

permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 5, 2009 from Hue, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Cat Ba Island

Cat Ba, Vietnam

The morning we woke up on the boat, I took advantage of the fact they obviously don't check or clean out the furniture very often, to leave my first bookcrossing.com contribution: I left Paddy Clark ha ha ha in the drawer above the vodka bottle in the hope that another (English-speaking) traveller would find it and take it with them (http://www.bookcrossing.com/6924642). We were treated to "eggs" again for breakfast. I was starting to worry about my cholesterol.


View from the top of the tower at the top of the hill
We docked at Cat Ba just after breakfast and the boat picked up the people who had spent the night in the hotel. We set off into the Cat Ba nature reserve, where we were taken on an unexpected hike up a small hill.

Us at the top of Cat Ba Island
The going wasn't too bad, but there was a couple of about 60 years old, who the Vietnamese guy in front of us repeatedly referred to as "old people", telling the guide to take it easy so the "old man" could keep up. I imagined how my parents would feel being referred to in this way.
The view at the top was very nice, although I wasn't at all sure about the steel tower they had built there, presumably to improve the view; it reminded me of the fire escape at our flat, which we needed to have taken down due to its instability. The top step before the platform was particularly fun. It was nice to get a bit of exercise, and very nice to see the sun again.


Joanne paddling the kayak
Then it was back to the hotel for the same rubbish again for lunch. Vietnamese food so far had been very disappointing, except when we had bought it from street vendors. "Included" Vietnamese food is terrible though. I think at some point someone has told them what westerners like and they've just stuck with the "winning formula". We got chatting to an older French couple sitting next to us in the hotel, who decided that they were going to join us for a bit of sea kayaking after lunch. On the way to the kayak place, we had our first first-hand experience of the mopeds in Vietnam, as we were taken by "xe ôm" to the harbour. It wasn't at all bad, but there wasn't that much traffic on the island. The kayaking was very pleasant, although my arms felt like they were going to be very sore afterwards. Team Shedden easily outstripped the Team France and we reached Monkey Island after about 30 minutes, well ahead of the competition. On the island we saw no monkeys, but had a chance to sunbathe, for the first time this trip, and swim in the sea.

The arms held out OK and suffered no ill effects afterwards, although the hangover from last night's vodka was still lingering on, so we resolved to cut down on the alcohol consumption. Same rubbish for dinner.

permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 3, 2009 from Cat Ba, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Leaving Hanoi and Ha Long cruise

Ha Long, Vietnam

By Monday, when we were due to leave Hanoi, we had had enough of the breakfast at the hotel. On Saturday morning, we were asked "Eggs?" when we arrived at breakfast, so we said "ok", although I really wanted the noodles with beef, chillies, peanuts, and beansprouts that the staff were eating when we arrived. Eggs arrived. Absolutely destroyed, drenched in grease, two horrible fried-to-death eggs. This was accompanied by two slices of poor white bread and sweet red stuff that was probably supposed to be jam. We got coffee because we had already discovered that it was not possible to get the nice looking green tea that the Vietnamese were all drinking; tourist are given Lipton tea, which is like Tetley, but not as good. So on the Sunday morning I had asked "Is there any choice, could we have a Vietnamese breakfast?" - "No. Eggs." so we had the same again.

So on Monday we said "No eggs, thanks" hoping we might get more bread instead, or something else, but it was just two slices of bread with red sugary stuff. Apart from the hotel breakfast and their refusal to give us green tea anywhere, I was quite sad to be leaving Hanoi; I don't think we really saw enough of it, and I felt like I was just getting to know it -- and it seems like a fun place, where the cheap food was good (apart from hotel breakfast). However we have to keep moving to get places, and we were stll keen for warmer weather as, although the 20C we were blessed with in Hanoi was a huge improvement on the freezing temperatures in China, it still wasn't really the beach weather we were keen to get some of.

We caught our bus to Ha Long Bay, where we were going on a boat trip. Half way to Ha Long we stopped at a service station. By that time we were already starving, having foolishly rejected the eggs that morning. Unfortunately we had run out of money, so all we could afford at the very expensive tourist trap full of vases and the like, was a wee packet of biscuits between us. We hadn't thought to buy food in advance, but we did make sure we had a bottle of vodka and a bottle of lemonade, along with our usual supply of water, as we were sleeping on the boat that night and figured that the booze would be as expensive as their captive consumers could stand.


Floating village next to fish farm
We were able to draw money when we got to Ha Long Bay then, on the boat, we realised that the booze was not as dear as we anticipated, but their was corkage charged on your own supplies, which we resolved to keep hidden. After a quick visit to a fish farm run by people who live in a floating village (cheesy techno blasting out of the wooden houses), lunch was on the boat: an unappetising mix of unpleasant fried (whole) fish, fried peanuts, chips, and some salad; not the Vietnamese food we had been buying on the streets of Hanoi, and of course Lipton-not-green tea.

Backlit "Dragons" in Ha Long Bay
A few Chinese people had told us that they call Ha Long "Yangshuo in the water".
It's true that the Karst formations look almost identical to those around Yangshuo, but they are the more beautiful for being in water, or maybe it was just that we could see more of here. Ha Long means "Descending Dragon", a reference to the collection of unusual peaks in the water, which are supposed to be dragons. We sailed through the dragons long enough for us to take far too many pictures of them, which of course we did. The scenery really was stunning, though.


Lime formations
Next stop on our wee cruise was a cave. We've all seen plenty of caves before, and it was like that -- except maybe with a bit more neon that your average cave. After the cave, those of us who had elected to sleep in a hotel, rather than on the boat were dropped at Cat Ba, leaving only a few people, including a pair of Dutch guys we'd been speaking to earlier, Marty and Jochem. They are four months into a trip, which started in Turkey and followed the Silk Route through lots of countries ending in "stan", and lots of places where bribing officials in a daily requirement.

Jochem and Marty (and Santa!)
It sounded like fun though -- maybe for the next trip! We settled into sharing our sneaked vodka with them, and chatted until it was dark (probably about 6.30pm). It gets dark here early in winter, due to the extra hour west of China they've set their clock, despite not being west of China. Back in our wee room on the boat, the staff kept us awake watching loud TV on the deck, but we just finished off vodka and secreted the empty bottle in the same cupboard as someone else had left their empty vodka bottle, and an empty whisky bottle.

permalink written by  The Happy Couple on February 2, 2009 from Ha Long, Vietnam
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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