Tet
Trip Start
Jul 01, 2008
1
15
Trip End
Ongoing
Hanoi, Vietnam
Monday, February 2, 2009
Good evening one and all from an distinctly snowless Hanoi. I'll start quickly with a couple of Birthday wishes. First up is Mr Jimbo Higgins who's age will start to catch up with his hairline on the 5th of February. On the 7th now oldest brother celebrates his 35th birthday. Dan's hairline however is showing no signs or retreating and is as curly as ever. On the 14th of February forget about buying into yet another capitalist free-for-all and think instead about a young boy named Tommy who unlike Peter Pan is now getting older and will soon be 26. I can assure all of you though much like the boy who hates pirates Tommy will never grow up. Ok now I have finished insulting some of my closest friends I shall move on to a little bit of news. The 9th of February is My sisters and Dan's wedding anniversary so congratulations guys. My biggest news however comes again in the form of congratulations and this time they are sent out to my main man the fighting Jew. Dr Josh Parsons. He recently completed his phD and is now a certified bad ass. Well done Jooy.
Ok onto our lives as I know that's the reason you all opened this message. I can inform you that over the past week or so we have done almost nothing as it has been the Tet holiday which is the Lunar new year. During this time everywhere closes, school, shops, EVERYTHING. That has left Sarah and I without money or work for a couple of weeks so we have been budgeting.
The first thing we did at the start of our holiday was take a trip to "Dan's Bistro" it's a little diner with a shop off to one side where you can buy all things western. It is awesome. Imagine being away from all those things you get at home so easily. Mince, Boneless/Headless chicken, cream, flour. The list could go on. Anyway we went to this place and bought ourselves enough food to last us over the festive period after that we spent most of the time at home watching tennis, doing washing and playing scrabble. Really living the dream.
Now this house as some of you may have seen is a delightful 4 story place with a roof garden and a further root top terrace. We have an oven and all things useful in the house including a bath and of course urinals in each of the 4 bathrooms. There are however a few little annoyances about the place. The afore mentioned bath is so narrow that even I, Harry "The sauce bottle" Waters, can't fit in it at the shoulders. I won't even go into how short the bath is, it also sadly requires about 8 trips, down 3 flights of stairs to get the really hot water from the kitchen in order for it to be a decent temperature. I must however admit that it was nice to take a bath.
Another issue we have with the house is, it's cold. In these here parts they don't build houses to hold heat because it's normally fucking hot here. So in these icey cold lows of 14 degrees the house plummets even lower to around 12 degrees. It's not easy to relax and watch tv fully clothed with socks on. I just wanted to lounge around in my pants and watch episode after episode of Curb your Enthusiasm and not have to hug a hot water bottle the whole time. On the few occasions we did venture outside it was generally warmer outside than in.
Aside heat the place doesn't prevent sound penetrating at all. So throughout the night, in the morning and at various points in the day we can hear people hocking up phlegm opening and closing doors, taking out rubbish and of course the obligatory old woman walking around shouting ringing a bell intermittently. The sounds are most irritating at night as I can't get to sleep unless I can confirm what a sound is. So I spend a few minutes wondering around, this time in my pants, looking for the offending area. It is normally just a house sound.
I sound like I am complaining bitterly about my time off. I really have enjoyed it. The highlight was probably going up to the roof and watching the fireworks on "new years day". By watching the fireworks I mean looking in the general direction of the occasional flashes in the sky. You see the problem with having fireworks in such a polluted city, whilst it is very very overcast and rainy, is that they can't really be seen, at all, by anyone. So we stood there up on the roof looking at the nice pink and green clouds. It was nice.
The lowlight of the holiday for Sarah was however probably breakfast yesterday. We had bought some duck eggs for a change and upon opening the first 2 Sarah let out a wail of disgust at the horrendous smell of the clearly off eggs. She did however continue onto the third egg. Now what happened next is something you would normally write into watchdog about. She cracked the egg and within 2 seconds was in the living room shaking and squirming in disgust. What she had cracked open wasn't an off egg it was in fact a duckling. Mmm what a delightful way to start your day, a fluffy ball of cuteness. I then disposed of the offending items and attempted to clear the putrid smell of rotten eggs and decomposing duckling from our kitchen.
Anyway we're back at work tomorrow so our life of leisure will have to be put on hold for a few more weeks.
Until next time.
Peace out and Big Love
H and S xx
