So far we’ve been to Bangkok, Thailand (major city), Siem Reap, Cambodia (tourist mecca) and Hoi An, Danang and Hanoi, Vietnam (tourist mecca, small city, major city). I certainly can’t say I’ve seen it all and know everything, but I have a few observations to share anyway.

Driving in South East Asia is bananas

–  In Bangkok,  there is a mix of all manner of vehicles including tuk tuks which really have no business being a mode of transport in a major city, but there they are, readily available for you to take and wish you hadn’t as you suck in fumes from all the other bigger vehicles that could roll right over your tuk tuk at any time.

– In Siem Reap, I am pretty sure there are no laws, but everyone manages to get around somehow. Tuk tuks abound there as well, but they fit right in with the otherwise mostly motorbike traffic.

– In  Vietnam, well, Vietnam is a special case. Everyone seems to drive by echo location, constantly beeping their horn to let whoever is nearby know they are there. I thought this might be limited to the smaller towns, but we’re in Hanoi and it’s the same thing here. It is not pleasant. The worst of it was when we paid to walk around the “old town” area of Hoi An which had signs everywhere saying pedestrian traffic only. At first, it was quite pleasant with no scooters buzzing by and beeping every three seconds, but, an unadvertised rule allows motor traffic through from 11 am to 3 pm every day. Sigh.

Eating in foreign countries is hard work

– We’ve had breakfast included in most of our hotels so far so that has been the least challenging meal of the day.

– We managed lunch okay in Bangkok and Siem Reap, but in Danang we ran into big challenges. We went to the beach and rented lounge chairs for $2 each and settled in to relax all day. When we started to get hungry, I agreed to venture out to find food and bring it back. Unfortunately, it seemed like almost no options existed for lunch. The closest, seemingly obvious option was to go to one of the million of what seem like the exact same seafood restaurant in a row so I tried that and failed miserably. I ended up ordering two (small) sausages and two beers (reward for my foraging failure) from a beach stand which I could have done at the very start.

– We’ve had some proud moments just by being able to get dinner. Jon and I managed to get dinner at one of the million seafood restaurants in Danang. Then again, they gave us quail eggs and crackers at the start which we assumed were free as we didn’t order them, but then had to pay for, making us feel a bit rube-ish. Of course, our whole dinner, including shrimp for both of us and 4 beers, was all less than $10 so I should probably get over it.  We also had our first bún chả experience last night which I can’t believe isn’t a thing in America or Australia (or maybe it is?? it should be).

People are mostly good

– I continue to debate this in my head, but I think people are mostly good. I read so much about scams and thieves and so on before this trip that I made myself a bit nervous. Asia is the furthest physical place I’ve traveled out of my comfort zone so I didn’t really need to make myself any more anxious before getting there. Anyway, I am happy to report that while we’ve had people tell us the Grand Palace was closed in Thailand and try to get us to take dodgy taxis to the point where I thought Jon’s name was Tuk Tuk, none of them has actually been mean or (too) pushy and all of them took no for an answer. Of course, there was an American guy at our hotel in Danang who bought a girl a drink and told her she couldn’t say no and who I wanted to punch in the face, but that’s a random tangent and thus the debate in my head rages on.

Jeez – we are slacking here down under. Over 2 months since we’ve posted anything. We haven’t really done anything that on its own would be considered “blog worthy”, but we have compiled quite a few smaller adventures that when combined reach that lofty threshold.

So, here’s what we’ve been up to since our road trip to South Australia.

Beach Day

We whinge quite a bit about the “summer” weather here in Melbourne.  But finally we came across a day (February 4th to be specific) where the Melbourne weather was suitable for a trip to the beach.  So, we packed up the Esky, strapped our backpack chairs on and headed to the train station.

It was easy to find a spot on the beach and just relax.  Getting in the water was even enjoyable. We even observed someone using a wooden spoon to put suntan lotion on their own back, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

On our way back home we decided to stop and see the famed “Brighton Beach Boxes” – that people pay upwards of $300K for.

They are neat to look at, and probably wonderful to have, but probably not worth that amount of money on a beach that has (in my humble opinion) maybe 10-15 good beach days a year.

International T20 Cricket @ the MCG

I think we’ve mentioned before that the T20 version of cricket is our favorite – since it fits into our 3 hour attention spans.  The other versions are “one day” which lasts about 8 hours and “test cricket” which played over 5 days.  No thanks!  We’ve been to a few KFC Big Bash League (what a name!) T20 games, but never to a proper international match.  So, when the Aussie international T20 team was going to play against Sri Lanka in Melbourne we wrangled up some mates and headed down to the ‘G.

Ultimately the Australian team lost on the last ball, which was sad, but very exciting to watch.  Of course, this being Melbourne, just a short time after our beach day it was practically a winter day once the sun went down and the wind tunnel effect of the ‘G picked up.

White Night

An annual event in Melbourne is White Night.  They light up all sorts of buildings with art and it is pretty neat.  Note we are wearing fleeces in the summer. It runs from sunset to sunrise, but being a couple of oldsters we made it out and back home before midnight.

Yarra Valley Beer Tour

For my birthday, friends of mine gave me a voucher for a beer tour.  Did you know we like beer?!  We met a small bus near the main Melbourne train station at 10am and headed about an hour to the northeast of Melbourne to the Yarra Valley.  Us and 9 new friends headed to various breweries and cideries to try all sorts of beers for the next 6 hours.

Ashlee’s 40th

Our friend Ashlee celebrated her 40th birthday in style by throwing an 80s themed birthday bash at a bar.  We’ve mentioned before how Aussies take their dress up parties seriously.  This was no exception.   It was a blast and I had an excuse to wear my fluoro.

Formula 1 Grand Prix

Every year, the Formula One season kicks off with a race in Melbourne.  We’ve never been to any sort of car race before and this one was a 15 minute walk from our house, so we went!  The cars are fast and loud.  We saw the F1 cars do practice laps and the V8 Supercars in a race.

That should about catch you up what we’ve been up to for the last few months.  I promise the next few months will be much more rewarding for blog lovers.  Our friend Jen is popping in for a visit so we’re meeting her on arrival in Sydney (in less than a week!) before she makes her way to Melbourne (via Cairns) just as I’m leaving to go to the US to visit family and play golf. Stay tuned!