5 Things I found out in Hong Kong

ONE. I can't speak Chinese. Obvious I know, huh? However, this certainly became clearer surrounded by Cantonese and understanding lots, but not actually being able to put what I needed to say together properly. Life fail.

TWO. To my surprise there are Mandarin speaking people everywhere. This includes "has no idea" woman who replaced "onto it guy" calling out numbers at yum cha. You can't call out numbers only in Mandarin. Not fair.

THREE. There are heaps and heaps of people. Like, HEAPS. I certainly do not remember this from my trip there years ago. We were in Mong Kok and were shocked to be swept up in a tidal wave crowd of people. We even had to ask if it was "normal".

FOUR. I am not as weird as I thought- being in my 20's and still holding on to a passionate love of Hello Kitty and all things cute, you often get certain 'wow that's a bit funny/weird' vibes from people. Almost everyone has laughed at my Hello Kitty phone case *sad face*. Going to Hong Kong has confirmed my suspicion that Asians have an inbuilt gene to love cute stuff. It was everywhere- from an air hostess with bear earrings to old people with Mickey Mouse t-shirts to bank promotions. And I freakin loved it.

FIVE. It's really easy to get around. And the city isn't scary. The train is great and is almost on par with Bangkok's BTS. Their Airport Express puts Sydney to shammmme. I'm not even going to bother comparing Vietnam.

Chicken with no head please

Every so often I ask my maid to help me buy groceries and things from the market (even after all this time it's still daunting). This time I asked her to asked her to buy a whole chicken. I spelled it out in vietnamese and did a google image search and pointed to a chicken. She pointed to the rooster. I pointed to the chicken.

In this process as best I could I mimiced without the head. She totally got it. Of course, westerner, no head.

The next day she arrived with bags of things and took me through them. At the very end she said "chicken!". "Chicken!" I exclaimed in my own head. She pointed to the bag acted out a head being cut off before opening it up and pulling out...the chicken's head.

She looked at me again and mimiced the head being cut off.

That's what I wanted right?

*On a side note, it wasn't actually it was a rooster. Do not ever buy/eat rooster. Even after I steamed it, removing the meat off the bones was an Olympic event.

Drunk baby

We had dinner with the Dines last night and found out what happens when a ice-cream loving baby eats slightly alcoholic ice-cream.

This:

And now a slightly less "...now let me tell YOU something" shot:

As you can tell, Maya has lost alot of weight since last time.

So we went to Bali and Singapore

...and Bali was surprisingly awesome. Yep, people do love it for good reason.

And then there was Singapore. I don't know what I loved more, Gardens By The Bay or eating way too much chilli crab. My guess for Johnny that it was buying not 1, but 3 pairs of shoes (in less than an hour). 

I love you chut chut

This is what Johnny got delivered from his local work coffee shop the other day....

Bay Mau Lake

One of my favourite things about Hanoi is Bay Mau Lake near our apartment. It's so big and always interesting to walk around just see a frenzy of activity everywhere (and you know I love booty dancing aerobics). I'd walk there more except sometimes it's that tiny bit too far and I always think I'm going to get eaten by insects/have an asthma attack. Or BOTH.

Anyhoo, a couple of afternoons ago we had the most amazing sunset so we just had to go for a walk. It had just rained and that coupled with the time of dusk made it look amazing.

These were taken with my iPhone and I'm wishing I had my SLR in hindsight. Doh!

Saigon...not so bad after all

Last weekend we went to HCMC - Johnny for work and me just to tag along. I didn't want to go actually but I'm glad I did because I became a little less of of a city hater. I still felt a tad claustrophobic but I caught up with Nikki and after we had cupcakes at L'usine, checked out a few boutiquey clothes stores and had a drink at Decibel I was a little more sold. Staying at the New World Hotel on the fancy executive floor in a bed I can only describe as a giant silk nest giving you hugs probably helped too.

Other highlights included eating Beard Papa, Warda and The Deck (staples), buying the above bunny and dinosaur knick knacks (whose names are now Nibbles & Bits) and Johnny surprising me with a new ukulele (may or may not have had something to do with him getting insanely drunk the night before).

In other news, back here in Hanoi we're putting our new Accor card to good use. You have to buy it but it means you get a free night in any worldwide hotel AND, this is the best part, 50% food at any of the hotels. You know what that means? 50% off at our beloved Metropole. #win

It's only recently occurred to us that we're heading off the Bali and Singapore next week too. #doublewin. Can't wait!

Francesco Tristano

We saw Francesco Tristano play live on Tuesday night at a bar called CAMA ATK near our house.

I didn't know who he was but anyone who plays with Carl Craig and can cover Strings Of Life has to be a winner in my books. And he was.

Note, he played this piano live. LIVE. I quietly lost it in my own special way. It was insane.

Hoi An: Fantastic and fantastically bad timing

Fantastic timing: Getting back to Vietnam from Sydney just in time to make Johnny's annual work trip to Hoi An. It doesn't look like there's much work on his behalf getting done here but trust me there is. It's would just make a really boring photo.

Fantastically bad timing: Since we went to Hoi An last year there wasn't much we were itching to do except one thing- visit the amazing restaurant Morning Glory (hands down the best Vietnamese food I've had ever anywhere). We saved this for the last day and when we got there we found they were closed for renovations. That's okay I thought, they owned other restaurants I figured would be just as good. Nope, they were all closed for renovations. *Insert devastation here*

On a side note, we made a little more effort to "do something" this time round and visited the Champa ruins at Mỹ Sơn. To be honest it wasn't terribly exciting but it was worth the trip just to walk through the forest full of huge butterflies down a little path that felt like it led to nowhere (they actually said not to bother walking down there). It was also very exciting on the trip out there to see a football field full of cows and a hot pink house. Hot pink! Such a shame I couldn't score a photo but it was real I swear.

Oops, was that 6 months?

Pretty much. Somehow I went back to Sydney for Christmas and Tabitha's wedding and ended up being there all that time. I initially had visions of a glorious beach filled summer but in reality it was a lot of working my ass off (okay only some of the time), being cold (alot of the time) and spending way too much money (phew thank god that's over).

When I first got back to Sydney I had a hit of reverse culture shock from two things- 1) holy moly were portion sizes huge, and 2) everyone's standard of living had noticeably been upped. Scary.

But now I'm back in Hanoi so there's a lot of reverse reverse culture shock happening again. I should probably mention first that in order to get back here I almost missed both my flights, one my fault, one not. Let's just say I found out that my new Swedish Hasbeens as much as they are awesome and comfortable are most definitely not made for running through airports.

But I digress- Hanoi, culture shock, yada yada.

There were a few things that I had forgotten, namely, everything. Including my small amount of crappy language skills.

Here are a few other things:

It's hot here. Really. Bloody. Hot. Don't even get me started on sweat.

Things never go to plan/are easy. I had three rolls of film scanned and developed. Last time for some reason they just "missed" scanning and developing a chunk of shots that were on the negatives so this time I checked every one. They had missed printing 1 shot right in the middle of the negatives and only put 43 of the over 60 shots on the cd. After I got them to put the rest on and I got home they didn't open. Sigh.

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Blatant staring and being talked about. I woman laughed at me because I was riding my bike with a helmet. Johnny asked "are you sure it wasn't the flowers on your bike?". I'm sure.

You can't just buy what you need in a convenient easy way. I rocked up to the supermarket only to remember produce there is pretty much limited to tomatoes, pumpkin, eggplant and Asian veges that taste like water or detergent. Meal and shopping planning 1, Jo 0.

I have no idea what anyone is saying. My maid was very excited to see me and chatted for ages. I think she may have mentioned something about...oh I have no idea.

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Sometimes things are just weird- my friend Mel and I went to a new french bistro the whole experience was an...experience (see visual cue above). We thought we kept hearing dolphins/a cat stuck in wall but then half way through the owner came in and turned up the stereo and proudly said "these are sounds from my farm" *Cue sounds of animals possibly having sex*. Oh and he also completely ignored out order and gave us food we didn't want.

I now have time. Alot of it. And all my friends are gone/ leaving. Gasp!

On the upside to this all we're heading to Hoi An this weekend. Johnny has to work but I get to hang out. Pretty much like every day.