I spent five fun and relaxing days in Hoi An from Dec 24-29. The days were spent wandering around taking pictures while snacking on various mysterious but good and super cheap street food, eating excellent meals with friends, and playing pool until the wee hours of the morning.
Yesterday I met up with Roger and Marjorie in Hoi An. We did some sightseeing during the day, had some very tasty pho, a round of 21 cent beers and some really good spring rolls for a snack, then we splurged and had an excellent 5-course meal for our Christmas eve dinner. ($6.50 CAD)
I arrived in Hanoi around 8:30 last night, the start of 3-4 weeks or so in Vietnam. I’m really excited to be here. (mmm, Vietnamese food!)
To paraphrase Napolean Dynamite, this is pretty much the worst blog ever made.
I am now about three weeks and dozens of adventures behind on blogging. I think I’m going to abandon the practice of trying to include photos with each blog post, or maybe just start adding them later; my photo-publishing habits are too sporadic to be able to keep up.
I have been on Ko Samet for the last few weeks, and this island/beach life has made me verrry laaazy.
I’ll try to catch up soon.
Leaving Whistler to travel for the winter was a difficult decision; I had to keep reminding myself that I’ll never get a better chance to do an extended trip like this, and Whistler will still be there next winter, etc. I have been happy with my decision but every once in a while have second thoughts, e.g. when hearing about the record snowfall Whistler had last month.
I managed to forget about it for a few days, and upon arriving in Bangkok I checked my voicemail for the first time in weeks because my phone didn’t work in Japan. I had 16 messages waiting including a few nice birthday wishes, but among them were a series of automated messages from PowderFone (that I had signed up for last winter) saying things like “good morning, this is PowderFone, today Whistler has 20cm of fresh snow”.
Argh!
I met Roger and Marjorie for a weekend in Kyoto on Nov 25-27. Getting there was quite an ordeal and a bit expensive, but it was a fun weekend.
One morning in Tokyo I got up at 5:30am to check out Tsukiji fish market, by far the world’s largest fish market. One sixth of the world’s daily supply of fish passes through this market every morning, 2000 tons worth.
The first leg of my RTW trip took me to Tokyo for some meetings; I went a couple weeks early to do some sightseeing. I had planned to travel around the country a bit but decided not to once I realized how expensive it is to travel in Japan (the 2.5 hour train ride from Tokyo to Kyoto is $260 CAD return), and since I had some work to catch up on anyway.
Woohoo, after my traditional hectic few weeks of last minute travel prep, I’m finally on the road! I’m currently about an hour out of Tokyo.
Wow, what a year… I have been meaning to write something here for a while but whenever I try to think what to write I’m at a loss for words. Whistler is awesome. I might be stuck here for a while.
