I've managed to do quite a bit since I last posted, which was in the middle of Vietnam. I dread writing the huge long spiels because I feel guilty that everyone has to sit down for a year and read it ( and I know people do, because it's been mentioned in emails ;) )

So, instead, I shall intend to condense things in a Helen Fielding style, in the hope that I can cram the rest of Vietnam, and our Hong Kong fun with Gary into a reasonable size blog.

And so...moving on....

Hue

Spent my birthday here, didn't do anything much apart from getting a pizza for dinner (because it wasn't bloody noodles, rice or anything remotely Asian) and eating copious amounts of Grape flavoured birthday cake. Ate it for pudding and also for breakfast the next day. Went out for drinks with two nice Isreali girls, both named Adi (not sure on spelling) and had green toxic sludge looking cocktails which were meant to be orange flavoured.
Also visited some tombs of past Emperors, some slightly damaged thanks to lovely American bombs. Went to a place called the Forbidden Purple City. It wasn't forbidden. Or purple. But it was where Emperors got their groove on before Communism took over.


Hoi Ann

Famed as a preserved "Old Town" of Vietnam. Is actually known as the "Cheap Shopping Town" of Vietnam. I bought clothes and shoes which now weigh down my overstuffed backpack even more. 50% of my travellers cheques got spent here.


Hanoi

The capital of Vietnam. Can't say a lot about it really, has all the museums we saw in Saigon, so we ignored them this time round.

The overnight bus here was the most interesting part. Halfway through the journey, two men got on (even though the bus is already full, the drivers aren't adverse to making some extra money and picking up local passengers who sit in the aisle of the bus, making the journey a million types of illegal in terms of health and safety).
The men seated themselves in on the floor of the aisle next to me and Ness, with two rather large bulging bags. Bags which prompted Ness to scream :

"There's something alive in there!"

To which everyone turned, studied the bags, and discovered that masses of small birds were moving and sticking their beaks out of the bag. Thus, all the Westerners (Ness and myself included) began to scream,

"BIRD FLU! BIRD FLU!"

The owners of the bags typically didn't understand any of this, and were not very obliging when everyone screamed at them to take their bags and sit at the front of the bus with the locals. After some minor harassment, one of the guys (thankfully the one in the aisle next to me and Ness) gave up and moved, but it took a lot of aggression from a German lady for the other guy to move also, finally relenting to her "HAFF YOU NOT HEARD OF ZE BIRD FLU??!" screams.

Freakishly enough I developed a cold after this, but it's gone away now, so no bird flu for me :)

Sapa

Took an overnight train here from Hanoi to do some trekking in the mountains, where hill tribes live. Full of amazing scenery and even more amazing people. The young girls of the tribes are sent out to flog you stuff, but actually end up chatting with you instead (although I ended up buying stuff). Met two 13 year old girls who were lovely, and spoke excellent english for people who had learnt it off tourists (was careful not to swear - didn't want to add to their vocabulary). On our last day, they dragged us to an internet cafe to help them read and send emails in English. Have not seen anything so weird in my life - a net cafe full of young girls in hilltribe dress, all on msn messenger and hotmail.


And after all this, we flew to Hong Kong to hang out with Gary for a week.


Hong Kong

Would like to say I did some interesting cultural things here, and took a lot of hot pictures. The sad truth is, we went shopping most of the time, and the sky was too bad to take photos most days.
Gary succeeded in getting us trashed twice - keeping us out til 6 am, which is the lastest I have ever been out on any night, let alone a school one. The weirdest thing was going to a 24 hour English pub at 4 am for a full fry up breakfast. I couldn't handle food at that time, so I watched in awe as everyone else stuffed their faces.

I also did a very bad thing in Hong Kong. It is so shameful that there are tears in my eyes as I think of it now. My beliefs are rocked to the core, and my life will never be the same again.

I ate a McDonalds. Twice.

Yes, after my 2 year (and it was meant to be eternal) abstinance from fast food, I ruined it all by having a big mac with fries, and six chicken nuggets.
In my defence, the first wasn't my fault, we were at a theme park and there was nothing else to eat. I could hardly go off for an M&S low fat sandwich, so I had to break tradition.

The second was my fault. It was 5 am, I was trashed, and we thought it would be a good idea to get a taxi across town to the only 24 hours McDonalds. A painful drunken mistake.

The rest of Hong Kong was just spent catching up with Gary, meeting his friends, and doing normal Westener things again. We went to see the Da Vinci Code, which I was pleased to see was very close to the book, unlike some films, which do silly things like miss out huge storylines, and add in random lesbians (Bridget Jones 2).


I am now in Sydney, but I will have to update on this next time as Ness's bro needs the laptop back, and it's bedtime.

But before I go, I WROTE THIS ON A MAC POWERBOOK AND IT WAS AMAZING. :D