The Big 40!! an ode to Neil and why we love him xx

this is Neil pretending to drown himself due to his advanced age

Neil swinging on a Liana on Beng Malay temple - Cambodia.
Neil sleeping after too much beer

Neil, knowing he has 2 days to go before his birthday
Neil lounging in Laura's Bar - Saigon
Neil grinning on a tuk tuk

Day 22 – The Big 40!

"I don’t want to talk about it." said Neil when asked.

However, Nic does so here goes. We woke Neil up to experience the stupendous occasion that was his 40^th birthday! He woke up to a pile of presents at the bottom of his bed, just like Christmas, minus the orange and walnut in his stockings (At least my Mom will understand this). Sam and I had snuck off to a gourmet market the previous evening and bought him a bottle of Chiroubles (George Du Boeuf naturally) and a bottle of Verve Cliquot and to enjoy with this a box of mini French crackers, yum.

We had booked him into a 5 star hotel for his birthday and took the taxi ride there in splendid anticipation. As we checked in we were told that the roof top swimming pool was on floor 4 and the steam room, sauna and Jacuzzi on floor 2. Our room had a view of the whole of HCMC, but with little pause to admire the view we chang3ed a lunged for the pool and the fabulous swim up bar which we naturally had to take advantage of....

Some time later we ordered ice from room service and enjoyed a cold glass of bubbly before dinner.....then we elected to eat in the Equitorial hotel restaurant as it was famed for its seafood.

The food was stunning, we ordered beef carpaccio with roasted garlic and mirin dipping sauce served on hot stones, butter clams with chives and garlic and raw oysters for Sam, all was delicious. Next came crab hot pot with chilli noodles, scallops with lotus buds and a veal chop for nic....too much sea food for her!!! Heathen!

We rounded off the meal with chocolate and caramel ice cream lollipops served in a glass bowl filled with dry ice, it was great and a fitting dessert to celebrate Neil’s decline into middle age. Happy Birthday Babe xx

Day 23. We rose to the sound of jack hammers knocking down the front wall of our expensive 5* hotel, ah we thought this is more like the Vietnam we know and love, it does seem that there is building work everywhere here. The rate of development and expansion is amazing, though not too exciting or soothing to listen to over our hotel breakfast...we scarpered to the other end of town to find a hotel and try to book tickets out of town to Da Nang. The train was to take 15hrs to get us there and having made it to the antiquated ticket office in town we took a ticket and settled down to wait for a person to see us to discuss our booking.

There is 1 train line that runs from Saigon to Ha Noi in the north, the train can take between 30-40hrs to make the journey and offered hard seats, soft seats with air con, hard bunks and soft bunks with air con. We being the Western wimps we are opted for soft bunks with air con and booked the tickets for the 11pm train, due to reach Da Nang at 2pm the following day. That evening we staying in backpacker central, nice, just like the Khao San Road but with a Vietnamese accent, we were all grateful that we did not have to stay there long and that we had chosen a nice part of town for the majority of our stay here.

Day 24 & 25

an empty train station, much of our memories of Saigon station look like this, only it was darker!

The only part of the day worth mentioning was the attempted train journey to Da Nang. We arrived at the station at 10.30pm to catch our 11pm train to find out that a typhoon in Ha Noi had stopped our journey, the train was delayed for 6 hours. Instead of doing the sensible thing of getting into a hotel for some sleep we decide3d to stay up all night and drink beer – or in Sam’s case tea. The train finally left at 8am and we slept like the dead in our lovely 4 berth compartment each with pillows and sleeping bag. The journey was great. The scenery magnificent and it was a bonus we could smoke near the exits as well as have food delivered to us by waiters or sit in the 1960’s dining car to eat at a table. We arrived in Da Nang at 11.30pm feeling great so we found a local bar and had a couple of drinks whilst Sam was chatted up by the bar owner. As Sam was hungry he even went out on his motorbike to get her a sandwich for 5,000VND (about 5p) it was fun but we were tired from the journey and slept like the dead.

Day 26 Da Nang

We woke to sunny skies in Da Nang, it was hot, so much hotter and less humid that the Mekong delta in southern Vietnam. We wondered around town but found nothing to do at all except walk around and buy food. It was here that I fell in love with a sandwich. A French baguette filled with garlic mayonnaise, hot chilli, cucumber and chicken that had been cooked and shredded to resemble candy floss. All this was then flashed on the bbq to warm and crisp the bread. Yum!! We did little that night except drink a couple of vodka tonics and plan our trip to Hoi An. Da Nang may be the 3^rd largest city in Vietnam but we found it dull, with little culture or history except for the Cham museum which we visited for 1 hour (the Chams existed at the same time as Angkor Wat was built and the two tribes often fought each other, in fact the carving at Bayon shows an enormous battle between the two, obviously commemorated as the Angkorians won!)

We also visited marble mountain and saw about 535 pagodas. Actually I am not sure there were that many but it felt like it in the 35 degree heat... there was only one that was worth seeing and that held a sitting Buddha in a cave that had been carved out of the rock. The roof was partly open to the sun and at midday the sun streams through the cave making it a beautiful sight.

Day 27

We went for breakfast and on the way met a chap called Nam who offered us a motorbike lift to Hoi An, we accepted if he could find 2 more friends and arranged to see him later. The bike ride was great and very cool in the midday sunshine, we stopped over a bridge to watch the locals fishing and rowing their boats across the river, with the mountains in the background it was beautiful and more like the Vietnam I had been expecting. (not surprising as most of my pre-visit Vietnam knowledge had been gleaned from American war films, and here was where the heart of the war was fought)

The hotel was fab, had a pool and was as short bike ride from town. We borrowed bikes from the obliging hotel and peddled into town for lunch.

There are many local specialities in Hoi An, on a mission to find them we peddled past the 16^th C shop houses, still intact in their wooded splendour , cycles over the Japanese bridge complete with red paper lanterns and finally found a restaurant offering white rose and Hoi An wantons. White rose is a rice paper package filled with shrimp and crab and topped with a special dressing of rice wine vinegar and crisp fried onion. The wantons were like none we had ever seen before – or will see again unless we return here. They were huge crispy and beautiful, filled with shrimp and topped with wok fried vegetable including the local violently purple cabbage, green beans and onions. The veg provided a fabulous contrast the wonton, lifting the flavour and cutting through the fried taste of the dish. They are the best wontons we have ever eaten. After that the rest of the day consisted of swimming and relaxing by the pool, as well as worrying about cardiac arrest. It was a nice change from wandering around random towns in Vietnam.

Day 28

More swimming and lunching. Including a lovely dish called Bahn Xeo which I am going to make at home for anyone who is interested.

Take 1 rice paper and wet it in a dish of water, then add a piece of omelet which has been cooked .Wrap and roll. Then dunk in fish sauce with a sprinkle of chilli. Wow!!!! I love Vietnam xxxxx

When we had met our friend Nam, who brought us to Hoi An he had offered us his business card. He lived in Da Nang but worked all over Vietnam with a company called the Real Easy Riders, he had offered to take us on the Ho Chi Min Trail to ride it on the back of his Honda. We called him and he arrived at the hotel to chat with us about the trip. He arrived with his two friend Thong and Tam, we booked a 2 day trip with then starting a 8.30 the following morning and retired to bed to pack and sleep before heading off on this very great adventure!!

Just before heading into the great outdoors, we went for dinner at a local place and had a nice meal, Sam, Squid salad, Nic veal and Morning glory salad and Neil, squid with salt and chilli. Sam mentioned to the proprietor that she was thinking of having a dress made, Hoi An is known for the quality of its tailoring. Before we could say “hand- made silk dress”, we had been whisked to his sister’s shop next door to choose styles and material. She chose a beautiful chocolate silk embroidered with gold which was to be made into a Chinese style dress and a red and black silk top to be made to fit her....the clothes were to be delivered at 8am and made for her overnight. That is what I call good service, 2 items made in 9 hours. The Vietnamese work hard.

sorry, internet connection it terrible, so will add more photos later. Big hugs and kisses to all

Nic, Neil and Sam xxx

yum - taste of asia

these photos are a selection of the lovely things available in asia. The first photo is a deep fried cricket, we met a couple of Italian guys who were brave enough to buy just 2 (they usually come in packs of ten, just like cigarettes, but probably tastier??this is fish amok from Cambodia, you can see that they have held with tradition and used the customary banana leaf to present the dish, all held together with the traditional fastening of staples....



the Grand palace in Bangkok, it was beautiful.

Sam and I in the local market in Saigon, each eating shrimp noodle soup and bbq pork with rice in cho ben than
this is for Nic and Sam's Mom and Dad. When was the last time you saw us outside Dairy Queen? this was in Muscat airport, sadly it was shut but still gave us a taste of our childhood!
OHH! Deep fried pumpkin flower with chilli sauce, yum x
for those of you that wanted more photos, weird, i hate other people's holiday photos x but our mommy loves us and my photos
this is for you xx big kisses. This is a temple in Angkor. Below is an Apsara (heavenly being)



then a tuk tuk for Tony who does not know what a tuk tuk is, then a picture of the floating village and then a cyclo. please now imagine our butts being pushed around on on one of these by a small Vietnamese chappie.

Me Love you Long Time!

Day 19 evening.
You never quite know what is going to happen in Vietnam, the fact that there are fabulous and surprising aspects to Vietnamese society speaks volumes about the people and is in direct contrast to how we experienced Cambodia. We ate dinner at restaurant 13 a delicious combination of salted pork in caramel sauce, garlic chives and spinach sautéed and a weird dish called violet tomatoes. We were slightly disappointed when they turned out to be aubergines! All this under the beady gaze of frogs, snakes, prawns and rats...all of whch you can order from the menu, yum.
After dinner we fancied a drink, it can be dreadfully difficult to find alcohol here unless you are eating, all cafes only serve coffee and tea. Neil did the noble thing of flagging down a passing cyclo driver and asking him to take us to a bar. We hopped on, some what precariously. Western bums are not made for the tiny seats that can happily seat 4 tiny delicate Asian frames. Even Sam feels big here. The poor driver cycled us manually to a bar about 1 km away, we asked him to wait and felt guilty for asking him to push our lardy white asses around. We were ushered into a room, then pushed on towards the back of the room and entered the great pink gin palace of love. The room was filled with pink and white leather sofas, lava lamps and a bunch of Vietnamese chaps looking suspiciously like a branch of local triads, all engrossed in watching a terrible Chinese kung fu film. We ordered from the menu, as every single eye was on us, we were obviously a novelty. The whole experience was a complete amazing, surreal and possibly a glimpse into the mind of Salvador Dali had he ever moonlighted as a Japanese interior designer. Wow, the photos do not do it justice but it is something we will all remember for the rest of our lives.


Day 20
Can tho to Ho chi min. The journey was horrible. It took 4 hours n a bus that was rammed to the gills with locals and horror of horror a lady who was car sick sitting next to Sam and I. Lush. Also an experience never to be forgotten, but not for any nice reasons. We were grateful to get to Ho Chi Minh City, still called by everyone HCMC or Saigon. The city is fab, it is much more westernised and modern with a plethora of fabulous things to do any buy. For the first evening we went for dinner then found a fab bar called Laura’s secret bar, it is on the 3rd floor above her clothes shop and is the epitomy of a boudoir . As we walked up the stairs we were slightly worried that we ladies would not be welcome, but that Neil would and may be offered a “happy ending” you can probably see from the pictures on the stairwell how we leapt to that conclusion!however we were ushered in with grace and style to peruse the cocktail menu, it was here that we discovered the lychee rose martini. A cross between fresh lychees and liquid Turkish delight with a large dash of vodka, even Sam had one.....love Saigon, we all do and each of us would be happy to spend lots more time and money here, but it is still the cheapest night out you could have. Tomorrow shopping he he he.


Day 21 – Me and My Worm
We have a stow away, a little parasitic friend who has hitched a ride to pastures new on to the other side, the nicer, more affluent side of the Mekong. One of us has Hookworms......
This little devil enters the body through the soles of the feet and can be easily passed on from walking in sandals or flip flops in dirty streets. Thank you Cambodia. For all you who think travelling is glamorous, this should lessen the envy.
Never mind, it has been easily treated by buying 30,000VND of medication (£1)
We went to drown our sorrows with lychee and rose martini’s ...3 martini’s a piece and we were feeling no pain, not even Stevie the worm. And one of us was drinking for 2. This whole episode cost us all of £10pp.
Aside from this, this is our first proper restaurant review. We stumbled across a tiny restaurant in a backstreet of HCMC, which specialises in food from Hue in central Vietnam. This town used to be the capital back in the early 19th C. Today it is well known for its poetry and exquisite cuisine, especially street food. This particular restaurant is called Mitau, www.mitauhue.com which is Vietnamese for you and me, moi et toi. The whole place has a grand 5 tables, each looked after by Mom and son, mother cooking , entering the dining room to dispense advise to the customers on what was good and to show off her golfing trophies. (1st place in the ladies tournament this year)
We ordered Bahn Khoai, an egg and rice flour pancake stuffed with bean sprouts, shrimp, mushrooms and pork which was chopped in to our bowls, by the avid Sam admiring waiter, her son. On to this was ladled a sesame and peanut sauce (Nuoc Leo) and mixed, by the Sam loving waiter with the fresh veg that characterise every Vietnamese dish. The greens were star fruit, green banana, lettuce, mint and another purple leaf which to this day remains a mystery. It was delicious.
Next came a dish of pork mushrooms and shrimp which was divided unfairly in Sam’s favour into our bowls by the lovely waiter, it was served with a chilli condiment and a crisp wafer of bread garnished with white and black sesame seeds. The crisp bread is used to scoop up the savoury pork mixture; offering a texture and taste sensation that made us all thank our lucky stars that we had sat here to eat. Wow. Reading our guide book later on we learned that it is normal to have to book in advance for this restaurant as it is regularly oversubscribed. So I guess the gourmet gods were shining upon us.
This was followed by some worming tablets and a new dish which was by far tastier, a mixture of spring rolls made with pork and crab and serves with rice noodles and more fresh veg and just a dash of sweet chilli sauce.
Wow, anyone coming to Saigon soon? Please visit, it is fabulous. And to be honest, there are no words to describe how amazing Nic, Neil, Sam and Stevie the worm thought this meal was. It was worth the thousands of miles we have travelled just to eat here. (Well obviously only several hundred in Stevie’s case)
The meal was rounded off with logan fruit and lotus nuts served over ice, delicious. Then a pot of ginger tea was brought to the table with home made candied ginger wafers sweetened with palm sugar. The lady was so pleased that we had enjoyed her cooking so appreciatively, she gave Sam and I a tea cup each to take home, however, I think she wanted to keep Sam for her son......watch this space, we may be going back there for lunch for Neil’s birthday.
Of course we did have to pay for the meal. It wasn’t exactly expensive by western standards however the suggestion that we left Sam with them as payment was relished by the excited waiter. His mum seemed quite keen to get her working in the kitchen or possibly as a amuse bouche for subsequent diners... In a country that eats rat anything may be palatable.

Still Day 21 – My handbag holiday
I love handbags. I especially love silk handbags from Asia. To date I have had 3 lovely presents from my lovely sister Sam. The first was a green, rough silk handbag purchased from a very expensive silk shop in Cambodia for the princely sum of $14 (£10) it is beautiful with a cream silk lining and a flower on the side. The second and third were purchased today in Saigon. One a black box embroidered with white daisies with coconut rings to thread the handle shut. And the third was pure indulgence, a ribena silk bag with cream flowers and black beads. Oh no, it deserves a whole new wardrobe to do them justice. I know that Christina will be very proud of me.

Other random purchases have included a grey silk ao dai for Sam which is traditional Vietnamese dress, some lotus flower tea, dragon ball jasmine tea and oh my goodness, weasel poop coffee. This lovely little creature eats fresh coffee beans from the plant and some poor bugger picks up their poop and decants it to make some of the most expensive coffee in the world. I have always wanted to try it and at 45,000VND for 100g ($2.5) £15 a poop sorry I mean pop in Selfridges! We made our purchase after smelling and being completely bowled over by the rich chocolate and cinnamon scent. (not like poop at all!!) We look forward to sharing it with anyone who is brave enough! Anyone for coffee?

I Love the smell of Vietnam in the Morning.....

Day 17

We rose early to take our tuk tuk from the hotel the Vietnamese border, a journey of about 8km of road and the following 37km on a dirt track. It rained for the first 30 minutes, soaking us to the skin before the storm blew itself out.the tuk tuk’s here are not like the average three wheeled trikes that you see in Thailand. Here they are a motorcycle, usually 125cc, with a 2 wheeled carriage attached to the back. Most of the ride was bumpy and uneventful, passing rice paddies, coconut palms and bungalows made from wood, the locals swinging from hammocks waiting for the sun to reappear. About 5 km from the border, our tuk tuk driver received a mobile phone call, wedging his phone under his helmet to speak. Then he turned around and drove to a small shack where 5 men wearing army cammo preceded to ask us to leave the tuk tuk and climb aboard their motorcycles for the last hike to the border crossing, judging by their clothes they were not officials. We refused to get out, you could see that the driver had been called by these thugs and demanded to return so that they could make some money ferrying us to the border. After much gesticulating and Neil being forced to talk to someone who could speak English on the mobile phone, we were at last allowed to proceed to the border, as originally planned in our tuk tuk. The driver, was paid and we left Cambodia as we had arrived, on foot.....

We passed through the Cambodian side of the border with no issues, walking the 300m to the Vietnamese border control. Unfortunately, it was lunchtime and the border, she was closed!

After a 20minute wait for the controller to eat his lunch, we had our passports stamped and haggled for a motorbike (xe om in Vietnamese) and we were driven in convoy to a hotel in Ha Tien.

Here is where our food adventure began! Cambodian food does have some fab dishes. Khmer curry, a delicious dish of chicken in coconut and spices, fish Amoc is also great and of course loc lac, beef marinated in lemon and pepper. But to be honest, after 2 and a half weeks of eating it, we were bored and ready to indulge in a little culinary adultery with the Vietnamese next door neighbour. Walking around the hotel, we found the local market, piles of produce, fresher, better prepared and more abundant than in Cambodia. In quick succession Sam, Neil and I sampled a beef, egg and onion steamed bun, a coconut bun and a sticky rice parcel. It was all delicious. I could hardly wait for dinner....

Dinner was noodles with fish cakes eaten in a tiny street kitchen, their tables and chairs set up on an empty bit of pavement. The noodles were served with fresh stir-fried veggies, morning glory |(a type of spinach) pak choy, cucumber and onions....delicious. After only 4 hours, we all decided that we liked Vietnam...after all, no one had tried to sell us a bracelet or a leg wax all day.

Day 18 – Oh how I have missed good coffee.....

We rose early to investigate the unidentified frying objects......Vietnamese street food is considered to be some of the best in the world, having tasted it, I have to agree. We sat in a local coffee shop and managed to order fresh filter coffee. It was served with its own mini dripper on top of the cup, alongside a pot of Vietnamese green tea. After enduring the coffee of Cambodia, which has the weirdest taste of plastic and syrup (even before you add sugar) it was a pleasant surprise that Vietnamese coffee is delicious, strong and enables you to run a half marathon after only one cup. We sat outside the coffee shop waiting for the rain to stop, getting completely soaked to the skin despite the canopy we were sitting under. Breakfast was calling so we ran to the covered market and quickly devoured several unidentified frying objects. One like a sweet flat Yorkshire pudding was delicious, then in quick succession, some coconut sticky rice and a pancake omelette type thing served with prawns and pork and wrapped in leaves was eaten dipped in a sauce of chilli, lime, fish sauce and palm sugar.....delicious. We also ordered a bowl of rare beef pho (pronounced fur) which is beef broth flavoured with lime, chilli and lemon grass which is poured over raw beef strips and noodles for breakfast. It was delicious, dipping the beef in the chilli sauce and adding our own veg and extra chilli kept the dish different and interesting, like having 7 dishes in one.

Having dried out over breakfast we were ready to visit the next town on our list Chau Doc. The bus collected us at 12.30pm and then subjected us to the most terrifying ride of our lives. In Vietnam, the left and right hand side are only there for guidelines, it is not necessary to drive on the correct side of the road or even go the same was as everyone else. Interesting.... in the course of the 2 hour ride on the bus we managed to knock a small child from their bike, hit a truck wing mirror and drive over the piles of rice that were drying on the side of the road. All this in a bus with no suspension and with a driver who obviously needed therapy for anger management issues. We gratefully found a hotel and collapsed to recover.

Day 19

The American as well as the Durian is a strange fruit. Spending their formative years on a diet of meatloaf and McDonalds, football (the American kind) and apple pie. They then feel the need to visit lands far away. The gap year students, for whom everything is Awesome! I guess not having any history of your own would make everything awesome. However there are a few other adjectives that I feel schools in the states may want to think of including in future syllabi.

So I’m a kid from some middle American backwater with a school sports field that would rival Wembley and I’m going to go on a trip RTW (Round the world), I have to use acronyms as words are just so passé. ‘Vietnam looks like a good stop off. Dad was bombing them in the 70’s and said it was Awesome!’

I find the whole idea of Americans or French for that matter visiting Vietnam a little odd. After defoliating most of the country and killing more civilians than military personal with their friends Agent Orange and napalm. A legacy still seen here today. Do Americans feel safe ordering food in restaurants? It must be so tempting to drop something a bit nasty into a dish for table number 4. It’s not as if their taste buds are going to detect it.

I am of course not forgetting the English gap year students from the Home Counties in there designer shorts and T-shirts, i-phones permanently glued to their ears ‘texting’ friends across the table. We like to eat chips and South East Asia has accommodated this peculiarity offering western versions of classic dishes everywhere, usually by adding chips and reducing the chilli content. Imagine if you will, the beef loc lac we described earlier, garnished with that excellent asian accompaniment of chips....somehow it detracts from the experience of asia, but it is what the people who visit here seem to want. A group of girls in a restaurant a few days ago were seen perusing the menu and after not enough deliberation one announced that she was going to the shop to buy some crisps. Returning a few minutes later to tell her confused nest ‘ I couldn’t find anything in English’ So they ordered chips and a bottle of Banana wine. My advice, go to Spain.

Can Tho, at the heart of the Mekong delta is a melting pot of tourism and industry with Vietnamese going about their daily lives surrounded by tourism. The people seem weary of tourists and therefore not as engaging unless a dollar is to be made.

Today we ate at two restaurants. One geared up for tourists and one mainly patronised by Vietnamese. The verdict; The local restaurant won hands down and Nic was beaten by a chilli. This is a first.

The journey from Chau Doc to Can Tho was driven by Michael Schumaker’s Vietnamese cousin a journey which was scheduled to take two and half hours was covered in a little over two and included a fuel stop, numerous dogfights with other buses and a group of bikers who we kept up with for a surprising amount of time. Never taunt a bus driver from the pillion seat of a bike. Mercedes Sprinters are surprising agile in the right hands. Upon a triumphant arrival at Can Tho Bus station the driver was present with a laurel wreath having shaved two hundredths of a second off his best lap time. Other passengers were given Valium.

Angkor Wat Photos

Hi All
It seems to have escaped my notice that I have not published any photos of the sunrise at Angkor wat. So here goes!!