19 Jan 2007 - A decade's a long time

Well its been 10 years since Mark and I married and we're spending our anniversary whilst in Vietnam on our long awaited trip. Yesterday we arrived in Ho Chi Minh city (previously known as Saigon) about 9pm after delays getting started and after what seemed to be the most boring trip in our flying history, we finally made it.

Luckily our hotel (5- star!) had a free pick up / drop off service from the airport as it's really crazy around here. The trip was fascinating mainly to see how the Vietnamese motorbike (and the occasional bike riders) didn't get into accidents every 5 secs. They don't really seem to follow any road rules and their are so many people running into and out of the roads it's like a ballet with car horns.

I actually likened it to a school of miniscule fish swimming around a shark as the the motorbikes jumping in and out of tbhe paths of the large trucks, cars and buses.

It was an early rise this morning 6am, to catch a free shuttle back to the airport and now we're flying up to Hanoi in the north and we'll be joining our tour from tomorrow evening.

Jan 9, 2007 - A very festive season

Well the month of December just wizzed by in a series of Christmas parties - employee based, contractor-based, personal Christmas events, socialising with those I wouldn't be able to see later and then more events. I also had a work team incentive that had a Reward night on December 1st.
We had 22 separate events throughout the month!

As if you didn't know, Mark and I are very social beings. How did we cope with just the two of us for 6-months overseas?

Mark's birthday along with 6 other family and friends birthday's occur in December which always add to the drama and entertainment.

We hosted Christmas dinner at our new apartment for the first time. We only had half the extended family but it was still quite an affair. Mark's mother always does a very traditional Christmas lunch - ham, turkey, chicken, pork so we like to make the dinner a bit avant-garde.

We thought with our intended Asian holiday in January, that a Satay extravaganza was in order. Mark secured a great deal with the brilliant 'Satay Bar' in Melbourne which is just about 60 m from our apartment to get 2 litres of their hand-made satay sauce. We then cooked up prawns, scallops, chicken and lamb for the evening. Along with 2 refreshing salads (designed for 30 degree day, although we only had a 14 degree Christmas day!) and an Toblerone/Mars bar ice-cream cake with caramel hot sauce for dessert. It sounds a bit strange but it looked and tasted divine.

Yes Melbourne has been a town of contrasts this summer. We had over 30 degrees and terrible Bushfires for the first 3 weeks of December across the whole state of Victoria, as well as 2 other states (NSW and Tasmania). They predict these fires have burnt out over 900,000 hectares of land, costs over $200M in damages and loss of several lives and ¬ 40 properties/ homes. However, we had snow on Christmas day on Mt Dandenong! (which is virtually a suburb of Melbourne, for non-locals reading this). It's probably less than 800m above sea level. This has never occured.

Then we went right back up to 36 degrees within 2-3 days.

NEW YEARS EVE



















We hosted NYE as well, given our prime position with a view over Federation Square (main centre of Melbourne major events) from our rooftop. The weather was a sweltering 37 degrees during the day and was still very warm until approx. midnight.

There was a crush of 500,000 people at various free events around Melbourne CBD and Docklands for the fireworks and free rock concerts. Luckily our group of 14 guests enjoyed the atmosphere and a unique view of the fireworks with no jostling for position on the banks of the Yarra.




























With the help of our hospitality expert friends, Lori and Markus, we designed a rather special menu for NYE and ate in stages between the 9.15pm (family friendly fireworks) and the 12am main event. We stayed up till 4am and then I gave up.














Most people staggered back to work on January 2nd or 8th and as we're travelling to Vietnam in just under 10 days, I worked right throughout the Christmas/ New Year period and have been flat out. Mark managed to get the 'in between' days, Dec 27 - 29th off as annual leave.