Good Morning Vietnam

Just overhearing a man saying "there is no f***ing way i'm crossing this road" reminded us when we first landed in Ho Chi Minh City. Having thousands of little motorbikes coming at you from all directions with seamingly no regard for law or order can be quite scary at first, but once you have crossed the road you realise that from chaos comes calm. Just like swimming, you relax and let the traffic move around you. If you let it, it can be quite zen.

After the shock of our first impressions wore off (hot, humid, noisy and chaotic) we started to really enjoy Saigon. There is really nice energy about the place. We settled into the heat, got used to riding motorbike taxis and Nina went Asian using an umbrella as a sun guard. We spent couple of days getting the feel of history while visiting the bizarre Reunification Palace (where the 'Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh' song got into our heads and will probably stay with us for quite awhile :)), pretty Hotel De Ville, the gruesome War Reminance museum...

Going out in Saigon is quite nice. There are plenty of nice bars and restaurants where they serve great food. We went for Vietnamese BBQ where they bring fire to your table and you cook your meat (crock, ostrich, beef...) yourself. That evening we ended in a proper slav holiday tradition "na terasi" (hotel roof) watching the kids cruising, chatting and romancing. It was sunday night and that is the night to go out.

Our friend in Jakarta

After 8 hours of turbulent flight over a thypoon we landed in Jakarta airport. We were greated by Heather who managed to tip her way into the "secure" baggage area and collect our luggage. As people do, she picked us up in her chauffeur driven black car. Nice one Heather. After a nice evening meal in Jakarta (if slightly hot), thanks Jason, we checked out a local dancing joint.

The next day Heather, Nina and Rob headed south for a couple of relaxing days on the beach. Well one of them was relaxing (swimming in the pool, having a house boy bbq fish for us, having a massage on the beach...) the other was spent going down the grade 2 river in small canoes. That was lots of fun, almost equalled by the trip to the river standing on the back of a big yellow truck going down some steep tiny country roads. Oh how we laughed...

The Jakarta trip felt rather short as once we got back we had one more night with Heather watching Asia cup on TV, Indonesia playing South Korea. Indonesia lost. :(

As we bid our sad farwell to H and Jason we boarded the plane to Saigon via one night stop over in Hong Kong and guess what??? We got upgraded to the first class again... it's hard being us :)

Surfing in the USA

Hawaii really is heaven on earth. Having no poisonous animals or predators, everyone is so chilled out that even the holly has lost its thorns and mint has lost its smell and taste. Beaches are sandy, water is crystal clear, surf is high and even the US homland security agents are smiley. If that is not heaven then we don't know what is. Well, our view could have been somewhat tainted by firstly being upgraded to first class on the flight from LA, then our rental car was upgraded to a convertible chevy. It was a good start. And it did start with a BANG. We arrived just in time for the 4th July fireworks over the bay. All in all, no so shabby, but would have been perfect if we could have just bought a beer or two on the beach.

We were a bit taken aback by Waikiki and Honolulu as we didn't expect such concrete highrises and urban jungle on a small island, so we didn't spend that much time there opting instead to head to the North Shore to surf with 'Uncle Bryan' and surf we did!! We even have the DVD to prove it. Other then surfing we drove around O'ahu and we think it is an underappreciated island as the drive was absolutely stunning. Together with the surf of the North Shore it is definately worth a visit.

After a few days of surfing we hopped on an Aloha Air plane heading to the Big Island, the real Hawaii. The Big Island has many things to offer not least of which is one of the most active volcanos in the world but we also managed to score ourselves a fantastic little appartment on the magic sands beach in Kona. Whilst drinking our morning coffee on our Lanai (hawaii speak for a balcony, brah) we watched colourful tropical fish, turtles and even a pod of dolphins swim by.

It's a pretty cool island, half of which is covered in a dark crusted lava and the other is still bubbling. Well not quite. Lots of thick forest, ranches, secret waterfalls and black sand beaches are about. One of the coolest things we did was to walk through the middle of the volcanic crater with the steam spirting up, like a scene from a sci-fi movie.

We were very sad to say aloha to Hawaii but we look forward to sayin aloha to it again very soon. Next stop Jakarta with a one night stopover in Japan. We take away many good memories and a really good tan.

LA

Nest stop LA. Realising it would take longer than the two days we had to be discovered and become international superstars we decided to make our plans a little bit simpler. Go see all the places we have seen in the movies! Well what else is there to do, really? So we holed up in a hotel downtown (and being a weekend it was very cheap) but utterly deserted. Only thing going on was a jewish wedding outside our hotel. So we staying in and watched. It was quite fun, if a little over the top. Well it was in LA.

So for our first day we jumped in the hire car to see the sights. Hollywood boulevard, the Chinese theater, Sunset Strip, Bevely Hills, Redeo Drive, then off to Venice and Malibu beaches where Rob scared some local teen by taking off his shirt. we don't think she had ever anyone quite so white.

Next day was more of the same, but heading south. Stopping off briefly in Watts / Compton boarders (with NWA going through our heads) to check out the Watts Towers. These amazing things rise 30m into the sky and are made from reclaimed material like 7up bottles and scrap metal. It looks fantasic, and all the more bizare because of the area it is in, surounded by these one room houses. Such a different world from the mansions of the Hollywood hills.

Onward to Orange County, Sunset beach and Newport to complete out tour of the city's beaches. Although Newport itself was a bit of a disappointment as we didn't quite get to see the place that looks so nice on 'The O.C'. Bloody television - it's all lies I tell you.

Our last trip was up Mulholland drive, past the homes you see in films perched on the steep slopes, zig-zagging up to offer great views of LA and the Valleys on the other side. It was great as the sunset (like something out of the movies???)

The only other things of note were that we saw the building they used at the end of Blade Runner (made Rob happy anyways), it was very very hot (they were having a bloody heatwave!), and we saw no celebs.

Talking about the Revolution

Boston: tea parties, Red Sox, Harvard, MIT (and seemingly hundred other universities - we recon at least 2 per capita) and the Boston Massacre. That rare breed an American city with history was our first stop on our mini round the world trip. We had decided to visit a couple of cities in the states on our way to Hawaii to break the journey up a little. So, firstly we stopped off in Boston. We got there the week before Independence day, when all americans gleefully fly the flag, have BBQs and watch fireworks, so obviously Boston was awash with revolutionary zeal. We wandered through the historical places where the evil Brits had "massacred" the americans (5 people died when the soldiers were provoked - hardly a massacre but that set them off) and seeing almost every aspect of Paul Revere's life (he rode from Boston to Lexington to warn the rebels that the english are coming and hence became a national hero).

All revolutioned out we headed back to the hotel, the Omni Parker House which (unbeknownst to us when we booked) was where JFK proposed to Jackie, Ho Chi Minh was a soux chef and Malcom X was a bell boy. All very grand.

Our second day led us to the hallowed grounds of Harvard in Cambridge which, although having lovely leafy squares, really is a lot smaller then we imagined. We wandered back via the Charles river, tried to see if we could get into Red Sox game ($200 for a ticket i think not, you would have imagined it would have been lot less for a team that never wins). And that pretty much was that.

Other highlights included the Maparium, a stained glass globe you can walk inside and see the world, the pretty residential streets with red brick houses and even the main shopping street been made up of similar houses with the ground floor been converted into a shop. To be honest we could probably live here - it's our kind of a town.

still alive

just a quick check in to say we LOVE surfing. been to Boston, saw the revolution. been to LA saw the movie and now we are at the north shore, o'ahu, HAWAII.
today we caught our first solo waves and we rock!
we are having too much fun to write the blog - sooo laters gaters we are off to the beach xxx