Mui Ne for Christmas

We escaped the city for a few days and couldn't get ourselves organised in time to go anywhere outside Vietnam so Mui Ne provided the perfect answer for a couple of days doing very little.

Saw a couple of sunrises:


Ate a couple of fish and fish friends:


Drank a couple of beers at the latest incarnation of Hoa Vien Brewhouse:



Found a couple of ruby slippers on a yellow brick road:



Good beach, good fish, good beer. The flip flops didn't fit.

O'Brien's bar

O'Brien's Factory on Hai Ba Trung has a nice bar and the beer isn't bad either.

Singapore Quickie

A flying trip to Singapore for a medical appointment and a knicker buying excursion to Marks and Spencer didn't leave much time for taking pictures but I grabbed a few when I had the chance.

A few tall buildings:




These were taken from the roof of "Our Village" which Stephen still claims to be his favourite Indian Restaurant in the Entire World.

Some Lunar New Year decorations in the lobby of the Pan Pacific, we didn't stay there, we were on a budget this time but it was worth while going in to see what they had managed to do with their ridiculously tall atrium.



A BOGOF beer at Boat Quay



And a view of a very educational poster about the dangers of "double dipping"?



Double Dipping, just say "No!"


We managed to fit in some good meals before heading off to Cambodia, I'm back in March with work so I might managed to take some more interesting pictures then.

We got here

view from roof 2
Originally uploaded by amasc

It wasn't too bad a journey and we've settled in, we got our internet connection fixed yesterday so this is the first opportunity to update the blog from Vietnam. There have been more pictures taken but this is the first, a view from our roof of the nearby river. However since I'm doing this before heading off to work it's going to be short and sweet.

We like it here.

So work's over for the day and time for a little longer post, but not much, there's a social life to think of too. The picture above, also taken from the roof is our landmark for getting home. Most taxi drivers don't know our area too intimately yet so as soon as the bridge hoves into view we know we're on the right track.

Obligatory first impressions?

Hot and frenetic at first glance, we'd researched the traffic situation on Youtube of course and were mildly dreading making crossings but, as predicted, traffic flowed around us and within a couple of days we had stopped doing a victory dance once we reached the other side.

The food has been fantastic, lots of choice and fresh. Of course a couple of curry houses have been tracked down and sampled, we have to get some sort of taste of home from time to time. Mumtaz in the backpackers district scored highly, really tasty thali's costing around £1.50 as I recall as did Ali Baba's in a more salubrious area despite their tendancy to use the red food colouring on vegetable dishes but there are many more to try.

The beer's more than drinkable, sometimes served with ice, slightly odd to begin with but at least you rehydrate as you dehydrate.

We both have a fine collection of mosquito bites but their effect is getting less intense as we build up some immunity to them. We both got bitten on the arse and of course they were the itchiest bites in the world!

Clothing, I'm officially elephant size and will be forced to get things made for me, a certain person is "average" for the first time ever and can swan in anywhere and be overwhelmed with choice.

All in all, we're quite chuffed with ourselves, it seems like we made a good choice of countries and we're not missing much at all (except clothes in size 12).