Circus Party

The first week back at school after a holiday are always killer.  This week was no different for us, especially when we started the week with a meeting until 5pm for me and parents evening until 7pm for Matt.  On Monday! The first day back! Harsh!  We had miserable rain for the entire week, and as soon as the weekend hit, so did the sunshine... and the pollution.  Winter in Shanghai isn't particularly pleasant weather. Still, the weather should start getting nicer soon.

We bought the cats collars this week. They now look like someone owns them, so if they escape (Snowball) then hopefully someone will take them in.  We're getting tags made for them too, and soon they will be microchipped.

On Saturday, we went to a circus themed birthday party for our friend's 40th.  I went as a unicorn and Matt went as a human cannonball.  The party was at our other friends house. Their kids had spent weeks making decorations, so the entire house looked like a circus tent. It was very impressive.  I had some facepaint in the shape of a rainbow, which I absolutely loved and didn't want to take off.  The night gradually became a campfire sing-along (without the campfire), with a friend playing the guitar and us belting out classics at the top of our lungs.  There were even party games in the basement, which we won, having cheated quite blatantly!  It was a fun night.  Matt watched the rugby until 3am when we got home, but wasn't very pleased with the results!

Another busy week ahead of us.  I'm on the year 4 museum trip on Tuesday, and then my friend from England, Amy is here on business, so we're going for dinner on Friday and out sightseeing on Saturday.  Looking forward to it. I just hope the pollution clears up! 

Vietnam - Hanoi

Hanoi was great.  I had loads of memories from our time spent in Hanoi 9 years ago, so it was great to see some of the places I remembered so well.  The city is much more sprawling than Saigon, as you would expect from any capital city.  Our hotel was in a great location, near to the central lake, which we walked around on our first day.  The water puppet theatre and post office that we visited before are located here.

The lake is called turtle lake and there is a big pagoda in the middle which we visited.  No turtles though. The lake is far too murky for them now!

A pomelo tree - i'm always amazed at how such big fruit can hang from such a spindly tree.  Apparently, my buzz word for the holiday according to Matt was 'for perspective'. This is a fine example of that!

Another wonderful example of a tourist 'photo shoot'  It really makes me cringe a bit seeing people have their photos taken staring off into the distance, or not smiling at the camera.  Everything is for show now on Instagram.  Our photo tour day photographer was telling us that there are such influential Koreans on Instagram, that their followers will order certain foods just to take photos of it and then throw it away.  It's crazy how much influence people can have.

We went to the old citadel, which was the scene of some fighting in the American war (as it's known in Vietnam).  The citadel was actually this huge flag monument, the Military Museum, which had a very we-won-the-war approach to things, and the old palace where the Emperors ruled from.  The palace was decorated very nicely for Tet.

This is Hanoi's main station!!!

And of course the obligatory bunker.  We do like a bunker.

We did so much walking over these two days.  My feet were so sore!

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum.  Last time, we went in to view his body.  It wasn't an open day the day we visited, so no viewing for us this time.  Not that you really need to see the same dead body more than once.

This tiny pond with a crashed B52 plane was something that was shown on the Top Gear Vietnam special 10 years ago, and we didn't make it there last time, so I really wanted to see it this time. It's just in the middle of lots of tiny back streets with houses and it's right next to a school.

It really was a wonderful holiday! We had such a great time.

We've done nothing at all this weekend, apart from have Becky and Andy over for dinner on Friday night after we got in at about 4pm.  It was lovely to see them.  We watched the Top Gear Vietnam special together, since they had never seen it, and they went to Hoi An at Christmas.  Matt played football today and managed somehow to get sunburnt in 7 degrees February weather.  How on Earth???  Back to school tomorrow, but only 6 weeks until our next holiday. We are planning on having a quiet week with the cats, before our friends visit the week after.  Can't wait!

Vietnam - Hoi An

Hoi An.  9 years ago it went straight in at my number 1 favourite place on the planet.  Over the years it's remained in my top 5.  Unfortunately, it's not in my top 5 anymore.  I must say that it did grow on me over the 8 nights we spent there but it is a vastly different place to where we visited nearly a decade ago.

The Hoi An that I remember was the most charming place on Earth.  There was a lovely river, with a few streets lined with lanterns, and of course the lovely assembly halls that you could visit, and the historic houses with the flood levels drawn on the walls.  The Japanese bridge was charm itself and there were barely any people there.  Most of the other side of the river to the main town was farm lands.

Now, it is still very low rise, but it's all gone a bit neon.  The lanterns are still there but now they cover every surface in sight.  The river that was once filled with fishing boats now had Italian gondola style boats with lanterns, and every bar and restaurant has flashing signs for happy hour.  And the people!  OK, so admittedly we did arrive on the night of Tet, which is essentially new years eve, but I kid you not, it was like rush hour on the tube in London.  I don't think I've ever seen so many people in one place at the same time.  And over the 8 nights, it stayed just as busy.  Chinese people can be quite pushey and shovey, especially compared to the quite mild-mannered Vietnamese, so we were essentially in the Ibiza of South East Asia.  That first night, I was not impressed.  Our hotel was in a great location, just outside the busy town, but at that point we were looking for alternative hotels near the beach rather than near the town, just to get away from the people.  The beach was a 15 minute shuttle bus away from the town.

After a few days by the beach, and by the pool, and eating superb Vietnamese food we relaxed a bit and got used to the business of the evenings in town.  The lit up boats started to seem a little more charming than vulgar and we settled into the pace of life.  The boats with their lights on are actually very pretty.  I had expected the town to be different, yet I was still shocked by how touristy it had become.  Eventually, we settled in for a 'new' holiday.  It wasn't the town we were expecting, but that didn't mean that we couldn't still have a great, relaxing beach holiday.  The beach was actually beautiful, and everything is so ridiculously cheap.  Our most expensive meal was steak and it was about 30 dollars for us both!  Matt found 50p beer - that's inflation for you.  Last time it was 12p beer!

The wonderful Japanes bridge...

The Assembly halls haven't changed at all.  Some of my photos are exactly the same as 9 years ago!  Because it was Tet, they were all free to get into for the week, which was an added bonus.

The restaurants all still have the flood levels drawn on their walls.  The last flood was 2017, and it's level was higher than my head with my arms stretched out.  It's crazy though, because the buildings don't look like they get flooded every year.  Everything must have to be moved out of shops and restaurants and then everything gets repainted and repaired every year.

We did two half day trips while we were in Hoi An.  The first was Da Nang by night.  Da Nang is the airport we landed in, and is about 30 minutes drive from Hoi An.  It's even more neon than Hoi An and reminded me a bit of Miami, with it's wide beach, then a walkway, road and then restaurants lining the coast.  Our guide was Cuong and it was just the two of us on the trip.  We started off by going to Marble Mountain.  There are 5 mountains and each represent a different element.  There is only one that tourists can visit.  The mountain no longer produces marble, but there are plenty of marble shops in the lead up to the mountain.  The mountain is full of pagodas and temples and so many caves, full of buddha statues and bats!

I am not a huge fan of caves, because they are dark, dank, wet places, full of spiders that sets off my arachnophobia AND my claustrophobia.  Both of these were triggered when our guide announced that we would be crawling up a tiny cave to get to the top of the mountain.  I actually laughed at him because I thought he was joking.  Queue 10 minutes of Cuong and Matt trying to persuade me to do it, before I caved (get-it! Haha!) and finally went up.  No photos because I was too busy being terrified of putting my hand in a spider infested hole.  The view from the top was great, but that's when Matt got nervous of the height.  Why anyone likes caving or rock climbing is completely beyond me!

We then had a lovely drive along the coast to Monkey Mountain (did I also mention that I hate monkeys??? luckily we didn't see any!).  The coast was so interesting because all of the little round fishing boats were heading out for the night, with lights on them to attract the fish.

On monkey mountain there is a 70 metre high lady-buddha, which is the type of buddha most worshiped in Vietnam.  It was certainly very impressive.

There were these wonderful bonsai trees around it, which were grown on various animal shaped stones. Very cool.

We then went to eat some Pho (pronounced fuh), which is noodle soup.  9 years ago, on our month long trip in the north with Real Gap Touring Company, we were given noodle soup every day for breakfast.  I really hate noodle soup!  I still do, but the spring rolls were delicous.  Matt quite enjoyed his noodle soup.

We then went into the town centre of Da Nang, where there is this dragon bridge.  At 9pm every Saturday and Sunday it breathes fire and water!  The people on the bridge had no idea the water was going to absolutely drench them. It was very funny to watch!

The next morning we were up at 4.30am ready for our photography tour.  This was with 8 other people and a professional photographer.  We went to a nearby fishing village and watched the night fishermen come in with their catch and sell it to locals waiting for them.  There was a little market, and then we had a wander of the nearby village and dry dock ship yard, which was really interesting.

The photo tour was great fun.  We had 10 minutes of rain, but it was the only rain we got on the whole holiday!

Here are a few from the beach and from our dinners/lunches with various groups of friends from school. We were very sociable this holiday. Most unusual for us!

Here is the only photo of the motorbike we hired for the day.  Instead of the Da Nang by night tour we were meant to go on a day trip to do the same things, but with Matt riding his own bike and me on the back of the tour guides bike.  In a country where there are bikes everywhere and the roads are crazy, we decided to hire a bike for the day to get used to it.  I hated every second of it. It was a terrifying ordeal.  On the way home from the beach, I made Matt drop me off in the middle of town so I could walk back. I am never getting on a motorbike ever again.  Needless to say we cancelled the tour!