48 hours in Hanoi

It sounds a little odd to say we took a weekend in Hanoi, just to hang out and relax. But that we did. Seven of us took off from Bangkok on Friday evening and were out on the chilly streets of Hanoi before midnight hit. Patrick and Emily met up with us the next morning. We met up with Tuyen, an old friend of both David and Dung's from different times in his life, who showed us around the best restaurants and clubs that the tourists hadn't figured out yet. Every morning we were up for pho at Pho 24, and rarely made it more than a couple hours before sitting down again for some more food. A culinary vacation. Amazingly chilly, however, 13 degrees Celsius however much that is, enough that we all went out and bought fleece jackets the first morning in. Driving around on a motorbike I couldn't feel my hands. We were back in BKK before midnight on Sunday, just over 48 hours after we left. This shot is on Saturday night at a bia hoi, all of us hoisting a few before heading off to dinner and an evening on the town.

Celebrating New Years with friends

Here's a shot of us on New Years, just before taking off to Vasco's. Lan and her husband Richard are on the left, Dung's long-time best friend and former colleague over at Baker & McKenzie. In the middle is Alex, a good friend of theirs. His wife took the shot.

A culinary journey

For our Saigon trip I was mostly interested in playing Frisbee at the Vietnam Hat Tournament and ringing in the New Year. Dung was single-mindedly focused on getting as much and as many different kinds of food possible over our four days. On the plane ride in she had every meal mapped out with every dish she wanted to order. This shot is the last bowl of Canh Bun before we got on the plane. Dung had two bowls.

New Years in Saigon

We spent New Years in Saigon, and spent New Years Eve within a one block radius of our hotel. We walked over to Skewers, a Mediterranean restaurant just a block away and had dinner with a few other friends. Set five-course dinner, and a different glass of wine with each course. At about 11:30 we walked around the corner to Vasco's where we had a live band to bring in the New Year. The band had an Aussie singer and a Vietnamese girl backing up vocals who was probably the funkiest VN girl I'd ever seen, ring through her nose and funky dress, not your typical Saigon girl. We bopped around there until 2am then walked the block back to the hotel. Six hours within a block of our hotel, but great food and music the whole time. Sweet!

Resolutions

After struggling to get my pants zipped up I decided my New Years resolution would be to drop five pounds. Then I just weighed myself and came up 170 pounds, a new record. After doing the Chicago marathon in 2004 I was as low as 156, but I'd never seen the scale tip higher than 165. So now the new resolution is 10 pounds. Dang it. Dung's is to pass the CFA exam this year! She's only one semester in to her Masters program, but you can take the first part of the exam after a year and she's going to go for it.

Bombs over Bangkok

We were in Saigon for New Years so didn't see any of the action this time around. We heard the news on New Years Eve that there had been a few bombs that went off, didn't hear until the next day that two more went off after midnight. One of the big ones went off on our street basically, about two skytrain stops down. Another that caused casualties was a few more stops down the same direction, one more was a few stops down the other direction. In the eye of the storm so to speak. Talk here is that it's political, not part of the problems in the south, so this may just be a one-off event and we won't have much to worry about in the future. We can only hope.