Last night we had an absolutely marvelous dinner at the Faena Bistro. Seriously, it was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten – a glorious mix of molecular gastronomy and Argentinean traditional. So so delicious.

But I thought I’d use it as an example to show you what the difference is between going out for dinner with a working pancreas, and going out for dinner as a diabetic:

* 7.30pm: We arrive early to shoot a few of the dishes before the other guests arrive (nothing like a bright flash going off every 30 seconds to spoil the mood). I haven’t eaten for a few hours (in preparation of the big meal), and I suddenly start feeling a little light-headed. Turns out that walk to the subway station (which was supposed to be 5 blocks and ended up being 10) was more strenuous than I thought, and I’m going low. Fast. There’s nobody else in the restaurant and everybody in the kitchen speaks Spanish. I have extremely limited Spanish skills. I mutter the phrase, “Soy diabetico, quiero jus de frutas,” which I think means “I’m diabetic, I need fruit juice” to myself a few times, then brave the kitchen.

Thank goodness one of the chefs understands a little English and can get me a Coke. Crisis averted.

* 8.15pm: Our first course arrives – candied spiced walnuts, homemade pretzels, miniature cheese scones and a white martini smoothie (in a shot glass). While I’m enjoying the range of extraordinary flavours, I’m thinking to myself, “How many carbs are in this, I wonder?”

* 9pm: I decide to simply take the plunge and take a rough amount of insulin that will ‘probably’ cover most of the 6 savoury course tasting menu (I’ll deal with dessert later). Roughly two carbs per course, perhaps? Fried egg foam has me flummoxed. But there’s rice and breadrolls, both of which I recognise.

* 10.20pm: I realise I way under-calculated the amount of insulin I should take, and take a second jab, this time hopefully including the dessert, a modern-day interpretation of lemon meringue pie with a soft biscuit base, lime ice-cream and lemon cream (that looks a lot prettier than it sounds – see below).

I am given some top-class stares from the waiting staff and the other guests as I jab into my stomach as discreetly as possible while lifting my already-rather-mini-skirt. I calculate in the 10 blocks we’ll have to walk after taking the subway home, so take a little less insulin than necessary.

* 10.25pm: More dessert! Mini Magnums and three raspberries on a stick. It’s a once in a lifetime meal, so I eat it all…

* 10.30pm: And now it’s time for my long-acting night-time insulin, so another public injection. They must think I’m a heroin addict!

* 10.45pm: The subway that was supposed to close at 11pm actually closes at 10.45pm… So there goes my 10 blocks of walking! We’ll have to take a taxi.

* 11pm: Hop out of the taxi a few blocks early so we can walk off some of the feast. The few blocks are further away than we thought, so end up walking around our neighbourhood for half an hour; but with full bellies and happy hearts, we’re not complaining.

I think the part I love most about the videos we record (apart from the very obvious perk of being able to watch them in a year’s time, when we’ve forgotten some of the tiny details), is that it gives you a chance to see what we’re seeing, only-slightly-second hand.

So here’s this week’s video diary, with some extraordinary views of Iguassu Falls, a glimpse of our helicopter ride, some streetside tango in Buenos Aires, and a quick look at the estancia we stayed at:

And while you’re at it, here’s an Empanada Tour we took in Buenos Aires (totally informally – we wanted to see where the best empanadas were to be found. Empanadas are delicious meat-filled pies. Yum!)

You can also take a look at our version of the Best Steak in Buenos Aires (we’ve been eating a lot, can you tell?) and Horse Riding on an Estancia (Mark on a horse for only the second time in his entire life!)

And, lastly, take a look at the El Ombu Estancia itself… Just lovely.

Our latest video shows our most eventful two weeks so far…

As Mark puts it, “After flying in to Jakarta, Indonesia, we travel to Yogyakarta to see the Hindu temple of Borobudur. A diversion to the Bromo region to see the active volcano Gunung Bromo and then off to Bali. Add to this the drama of failing insulin due to exposure to heat while traveling and the past week or so has been a roller-coaster of highs and lows.”

Check it out here, or click on the video below:

I mentioned this fleetingly in my blog post about what we’ve learned in the last couple of months on the road, but I’d like to elaborate on it a bit… Only because I’ve suddenly had great insight into how much where you are affects how you are, and I want to unpick it a bit.

Let me set the scene:

We’re in Ubud, in central Bali, cultural heart of the island and home to endless rice fields, palm trees, red-roofed traditional houses and stone carvings of weird and wonderful creatures. Also home to a heck of a lot of tourist shops. The main drag is ridiculously touristy – it could be any main street in any country, in fact. But step just a little off this main street and it feels as if you’re in the country: roosters, birds, nature on all sides. The plan was to stay here for 4 days, but we couldn’t decide where to stay, and left it rather late. We eventually decided on Hotel 1, which got great reviews on TripAdvisor, and sounded lovely. Looked lovely, too, when we arrived, set in a tropical orchid garden and with really friendly staff. The problem came when we wanted to go to sleep, around 11pm, and our neighbours, a pair of long-stay women, decided to crank up the cheesy girl tunes (From a Distance and Forever Young, I ask you with tears in my eyes!) and cackle and chatter late into the night… I went out to ask them to keep quiet, but they were actually inside their room. It didn’t sound like it – the walls were made of bamboo, the windows had no glass.

We left early the next morning to find somewhere else to stay.

Hotel 2 seemed far better than Hotel 1. Much bigger room, great little balcony looking out over a rice paddy, free internet. We were really rather happy there till we were woken at 2am by noisy neighbours who had just arrived and wanted to talk (loudly) for an hour or so… I eventually asked them to keep it down, but they were up at 7am again, chattering away. Who was it who said hell is other people?

Again, though, we’d foolishly chosen bamboo walls and no glass in the windows. We wanted to experience ‘authentic’ Balinese life by staying in a home stay, i.e. you essentially stayed in someone’s home. We quickly realised we’re not cut out for communal Balinese life.

So finally, yesterday we found Blessed Hotel 3. Perched in the middle of rice paddies on all sides (take a look at the view from our balcony!) with a huge balcony, massive room and best of all, brick walls! We had the best sleep ever last night, entirely uninterrupted.

What it made me realise, though, is what a profound impact where you are has to how you feel. Yesterday morning I was exhausted, irritable, headachey and fed up. Yes, lack of sleep two nights in a row will do that to you, but so will being somewhere that feels wrong. The manager at Hotel 2 was awful, our shower stopped working (first thing in the morning) and he couldn’t be bothered to apologise for it, he didn’t seem to care that we were checking out 2 days early, we kind of felt like we were in the way. And I’m sure that contributed to how we felt: it was my first real day of travel fatigue.

But today I woke up to a cool breeze blowing through the room, in the middle of gorgeous views on all sides, and walked out to my balcony where the lovely manager brought us a delicious breakfast, with a smile. And I feel happy. Really happy. So pleased to be here, experiencing Bali, so eager to continue exploring and travelling for the next few months. I suppose I never realised how important where you are is to how you feel. Now that I have, I’m going to make sure (as much as I can) that we rest our heads in lovely spots.

PS – It makes me wonder, too, how important a lovely home is to our levels of happiness. Something to think about, hey?

So today, 15 December 2009, marks our halfway point in the trip: we’ve been away three and a half months, we have three and a half months to go.
Yes, alas, although we intended to be away for 9 months, it turns out travelling around the world is more expensive than we’d anticipated! So we’ve had to change our 9 months into 7 months, returning home at the beginning of April 2010. I’m sure in some ways it will turn out to for the best – perhaps it was slightly insane to plan our return date for one week before the World Cup begins, when the whole country will be turned upside down!

I thought it fitting, at this halfway point, to reflect on what it is we’ve learnt so far… Here are some thoughts:

• Travelling is a great teacher. I had no idea I had so much to learn – about myself, about our relationship, about life in general, until I was whisked out of my comfort zone and into completely unfamiliar surroundings.
• A place is made more beautiful if you stay somewhere beautiful. Or, at least, somewhere quite beautiful. We made the decision early on to choose comfort over budget, and it was a really wise one, I think. The times we’ve stayed in really stunning luxury accommodation have been amongst the highlights of our trip so far – where you stay, it turns out, makes a huge difference to how much you enjoy staying there.
• Mark and I make a great team. I always knew this, but in the last couple of months it’s really been put to the test. Travelling with someone 24/7 really shows you their real character, you get to see them tired, grumpy, hungry, sick, worn-out and irritable. And if you still love them after all that, that’s saying something!
• We’re tougher than I thought. Apart from the last week of bad health, Mark and I have hardly been sick at all, despite strange food, strange beds, strange transport and strange weather. It turns out we’re tougher than I thought we would be… It’s amazing how adaptable the human body is.
• There are many forms of transport. Before this trip I’d done a bus, car, bike, scooter and boat. Now I’ve done a becak (bicycle rickshaw), horse-drawn cart, bemo (open-sided minibus), ferry, train and moto (motorbike taxi) – and that’s only in the last week!
• Control isn’t always necessary. This is my hardest lesson, I really like being able to have things as much in control as possible. But you learn, when it’s late afternoon and you don’t know where you’re sleeping that night, and you have to move on tomorrow but you’re not sure how, and there’s no way of finding anything recognizable for dinner, that sometimes you just have to release control. And it is a rather lovely feeling, in fact.
• Going slow is key. To rush around while travelling takes all the joy out of it. You don’t get to experience anything or relax anywhere or have any authentic interactions with people. The slower the better, as far as I’m concerned (and don’t ever only spend one night somewhere – it’s not worth unpacking for!)
• It is possible to travel well with diabetes. I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs these past few months – insulin not working, crazy food, hormones and weather making my blood sugar do unusual things – but all in all it has been SO manageable. Much easier than I thought, in fact. Which just goes to show that although travelling with diabetes is more of a challenge than travelling without it, it’s just one more thing to think about, not something to make you give up entirely.
• Practically:
- Packing and unpacking your suitcase is a nightmare if it’s too full… These incredibly useful Vac Bags have saved our lives on a daily basis. They take all the air out of your clothes so massive piles of stuff shrink into delightfully packable flat packs.
- The rumours are true: You don’t need to change your clothes as often as you think.
- We will never again take being able to drink water out of a tap for granted. Months of bottled water makes tap water seem like a luxury!
- Travelling when you’re sick is just awful. Our solution? Take vitamins every day, don’t try dodgy food, and don’t overdo it.
- Sleep is very important if you want to be able to enjoy every day to the fullest.
- Backpacks give you a sore neck, and let you (mistakenly) believe you have enough space to buy things you don’t need. Suitcases are better.
- Patience is vital.
• We are the luckiest people in the world. To have been able to have these months together, exploring this wonderful world of ours, has been such a gift. And every day we’re able to continue doing it is one more day I feel like the luckiest girl on earth. Here’s to the next half being just as wonderful as the first half!

So if you’ve taken a look at our latest video diary, you’ll know that I was feeling rather stressed about the hectic amount of travelling we had to do this week…

From Hue, in central Vietnam, we took an overnight bus to Hanoi (about 16 hours on a bus with ‘sleepers’ that lay back at a comfortable enough angle, but were created with short Vietnamese in mind, so didn’t let you stretch your legs out. Ouch.) When we arrived at 6am, we dumped our bags and then wandered around the city allll day, a day spent getting our bearings, picknicking by the lake, going to the market to buy scarves and a warm hat for the suddenly cold weather and, oh yes, buying train tickets. Because that night we were heading for Lao Cai, in the North, arriving at 5.30am, and then catching a bus to Sapa, an hour away.

Phew.

Now, before we left, I was rather worried about this whole trek. Not only because it seemed exhausting from the starting point, but because I wasn’t sure where we would get food, and how my diabetes would react to all the moving and lack of sleep, and if it would all piece together smoothly enough. Turns out, it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. Our bus and train both left and arrived on time, and finding food was (obviously) no problem at all. The only problem, in fact, was how exhausted we were, and the resulting sense of humour failure. Walking around a foreign city filled with honking motorbikes and cars and people people people is exhilarating when you’re feeling fresh and energetic (as we were at the beginning of the day, relieved to be out of the bus!), but at the end of a long day of getting lost and found, and not having a place to call ‘home’, it’s simply infuriating. Especially when as you’re trying to navigate the hordes of motor vehicles, people are approaching you on all sides asking you to buy things. Grrrr!

Still, at least this was a once-off for us. We met a couple on the train who have been travelling at this pace for the last month and a half, and another couple last week who spend only ONE NIGHT in each place they visit. Lord Above, if that was us I would be completely exhausted. And they seemed to be, actually. Turns out travelling is a lot less fun when you’re really tired.

I am so grateful we get to take it easy! I think that’s why this trip so far has been such a joy, and why we still have so much energy to keep going – we’re very careful to conserve our energy and sleep enough and eat really well. As soon as we arrived in Sapa, actually, we took straight to our bed (a deliciously warm, electric-blanket-heated wonder with bouncy pillows and a warm duvet. Heaven!) Since then we’ve been wandering around the town and surrounding mountains… But more on that tomorrow!

I realised today that I usually only blog when things ‘happen’ – not when everything is going smoothly.

So today I would like to say: I am one happy diabetic. I have had pretty much perfect blood sugar for the last couple of days (really, no highs, no lows, just an even keel) and I feel really healthy and well. I’ve got lots of energy, I’m sleeping really well, I’m eating as well as I can (although we’re battling, again, to find another with even a semblance of wholewheat in it!) and I’ve had a couple of days of ‘forgetting’ I’m diabetic. Of course I don’t ever really forget I’m diabetic, but some days it’s so easy that it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

I love these days.

I think part of the reason my blood sugar has been behaving itself so well is because the weather has changed. Does that sound crazy? I don’t think it is… A couple of diabetics I know have said they notice a link between hot weather and topsy-turvy blood sugar readings, and I think I agree with them. Just think about how you feel when it’s hot outside (I mean really hot, midsummer heat wave hot, as it has been the last few weeks). Sweaty, tired, thirsty – it must have an effect on blood sugar.

Midway through our stay in Hoi An the weather shifted from unbearably hot (unable to go out between 11am and 3pm hot) to cool and drizzly. Lovely! And now we’re in Hue, 3 hours further North, and it is COLD. Wintry! Amazing. I didn’t think it was possible. I’m enjoying it today, because I’m indoors and it’s cosy and warm. Yesterday, though, wandering the streets of Hue and trudging over the Perfume River, I was not such a happy chappy…

(I think this is my sarkiest Best Moment of the Day ever!)

PS – If you’re looking for an easy way to look at all of our videos, I’m very happy to say we’re now to be found on ICYOU (Intensive Content for your Health) – a health video website. Check it out here!

So I might think I’m a pretty savvy diabetic traveller after having tackled Malawi, Swaziland, the USA, Canada, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, but that’s nothing in comparison to Alex Williams, a type 1 diabetic from Australia who has zigzagged all over the globe, and is planning to walk across the Sahara desert next year in the Marathon des Sables. Pretty impressive stuff.

Here’s what Alex has to say about travelling with diabetes…

1. Hello! Please could you introduce yourself – name, age, how long you’ve been diabetic?

Hi. My name is Alex Williams. I’m 52 years old and have lived with type 1 diabetes for 36 years.

2. Where have you traveled?

I’ve travelled all over the south east coast of Australia, from as far north as Townsville all the way down and around to Adelaide. I can put my hand on my heart and say that I’ve probably driven on every stretch of highway in the state of Victoria. I started travelling the minute I got my driver’s license at 18 and haven’t stopped since.

My international travel started 25 years ago when my soon-to-be wife took me to “meet the family” in New Zealand. I was blown away by the beauty of the North Island and caught the travel bug there and then. But how do you describe to someone who has never done it, the adventure and curiosity of seeing an airport in another country, and then the strangeness as you drive through the city for the first time?

I’ve been back to New Zealand once since then, but as we were staying with family, there wasn’t a lot of diabetes adventure involved.

Fifteen years ago I got a job in Saudi Arabia. I travelled there on my own for the first trip and shared a flat with another westerner for 12 months. Then my wife and children were able to come over to join me in Riyadh, where we lived for the next 4 years. Each year we would do an international trip somewhere. Sometimes it was back to Australia to visit with family in both Brisbane and Melbourne, and sometimes it was elsewhere. During this time we did a 4 week driving tour around Great Britain in a Kombi Campervan, driving almost as far north as John O’Groats and south to Southampton. We spent a week in London just enjoying the history, the culture and the sheer joy of being there. http://www.geocities.com/alex_of_oz/Saudi_pages/Pommy_trip.html

During this time we also did a 5 week driving trip around Western Europe, flying from Riyadh to Paris via Jeddah and then driving from Paris to Luxemburg, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Switzerland and then back to Paris. We stayed in Paris for a couple of days, and then caught the overnight train to Rome, where we stayed for a week of walking. Many interesting things happened including nearly getting arrested in Rome. http://www.geocities.com/alex_of_oz/Saudi_pages/Europe_99.html

I also managed to squeeze in another trip from Riyadh to Glasgow, this time for business. The interesting thing about this trip was that the night that I was flying into London before swapping to the plane for Glasgow, was also the night that Princess Diana died in Paris. My whole trip to Glasgow was over-shadowed by Diana’s death. I caught the train from Glasgow to London on the day of Diana’s funeral. That was an experience that I will never forget. The flowers arranged around the gate to St James Palace were truly incredible.

Travel took a back seat for a few years until about 2005, when I travelled to Bangalore in India for four and half months. This was a business trip in which I was meant to train them up so they could take my job. I still have my job. This was also the first time I had travelled in a third world country, so the food, hygiene and medical side of things were interesting. All went well with few dramas. While there I wrote a number of stories, with one focusing pretty much on my being diabetic – http://www.geocities.com/alex_of_oz/Bangalore_stories/Missive_8.html

There is another story that talks about the time we were travelling between cities and I started to have a hypo. That can be found in the India stories here – http://www.geocities.com/alex_of_oz/Story_index.html

The last trip I did, which was 3 years ago, was a 4 week trip back to Bangalore. This time the food caused me some difficulty because I was staying in a serviced apartment where I was reliant on other people providing and cooking the food. You don’t realize how reliant we become on our “western” time schedule until you are living in a third would country where time is much more flexible.

3. What was the most difficult thing about traveling with diabetes?

For me, the most difficult thing about travelling with diabetes is keeping track of where there is a reliable source of food, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. For example, lying down on the public seating benches at Rome airport to stay until the first plane left in the morning, only to discover with 2 minutes to spare that the food shop that we can see just across the walkway is not staying open all night as expected, but is about to close and won’t open again until the plane is airborne. And guess what? I don’t have any emergency food in my bags.

Another difficulty is the effect that the jetlag, time differences and physical and emotional stress has on the sugar levels. There is an underlying constant awareness that the sugar level can plummet at any moment, which is especially stressing when travelling by yourself. This happened to me while in a hotel in transit in Bahrain; the sugar plummeted and it took me 2 or 3 or 4 hours (see what I mean) to get it back. However that was not in time to catch the airport shuttle bus!

4. How prepared were you before you left?

I believe I have experienced most things a diabetic can experience while travelling, and learned from the experience. Yes, I have woken up in intensive care in hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia after having a massive hypo. I needed to go under a general anesthetic so they could put my arm back in place. I had managed to dislocate my shoulder while having a fit in the hypo.

I have found myself without food, and learned from the experience. I have found myself with nowhere clean to have my injection, and learned from the experience. I have been challenged by the customs officers in Jeddah airport when they saw my injection kit, only to be deflated when I told them “Sucre dam”, which means “sugar blood” in Arabic, which is their way of referring to diabetes. I learned from the experience.

And I’m sure I will learn more when I travel to Morocco and walk across the Sahara desert.

5. Do you have any hints or tips for diabetics who want to travel?

• Always carry a doctor’s letter
• Always carry extra insulin and equipment
• Always have emergency food with you that is robust
• Always know where food can be obtained
• Write lots of lists, to reduce the stress level and therefore the hit on sugar levels
• Always pack your medical kit and emergency food in your carry on luggage
• Maintain 2 medical kits; one for your carry on luggage and one for your suitcase
• So long as you plan properly, there is no reason why you can’t travel
• Finally, NEVER rely on airline food

Okay, well, perhaps not quite first impressions – we have been here 10 days by now! But some impressions of Vietnam…

* We were told to be on our guard about scammers and tricksters, and expected to be harangued at every turn. So far, hasn’t happened.

* That said, people are out to make money here, so you have to be aware of that and cleverly sidestep it (for example, you can buy train tickets directly from your hotel, and they tell you the only other option is to go to the train station outside town and buy your tickets from them. Turns out there’s a tourist railway office just around the corner, and it’s US$8 cheaper each to buy from them! But nobody’s going to tell you that, obviously).

* The people here are a lot less wowed by foreigners – in Cambodia and Thailand we felt like we stood out a lot, whereas here the Vietnamese seem much more confident in their own country, and don’t seem to feel the need to kowtow (is that how you spell it?) to foreigners. There’s hardly any English signage anywhere – finding our way around is quite an adventure!

* Things run well here. We’ve been in Ho Chi Minh City (the old Saigon) for the past five days, and we’re amazed how different it is to the other capital cities we’ve been in (mainly Phnom Penh and Bangkok). Traffic is ridiculous – more on that later – but there are wide sidewalks, rubbish is swept away and picked up, and people take charge of their property. I like it!

* Traffic is ridiculous. Completely and utterly insane. For the first day, I stood paralysed on the pavement because I was too scared to step off into the mass of scooters, motorbikes, cars, taxis and buses. Absolutely terrifying. Eventually you just have to step off and trust that they will weave around you, but try remembering that when a bus is heading towards you at full speed! Eek.

* The food is great. Ho Chi Minh is kind of a melting pot of all of Vietnam, so it’s a bit of a hodge-podge menu, but the national dish (pho noodle soup) is light and delicious and fragrant, and there are all kinds of other delicacies to choose from (including spring rolls every way you look, yum!)

* It’s busy here. Reallll busy. We’ve been in the city a couple of days, and have been taking a few hours each day to explore and get lost and found and make a personal map of the city for ourselves. Thank goodness we’ve had the time for this! I think if we only had one or two days it would just be totally overwhelming, but to take it in bite-sized chunks it’s good fun. I’ve actually really enjoyed Ho Chi Minh.

And now! Tonight we catch an 11pm train northwards, to the beachside town of Danang for two or three days, and then into the historical town of Hoi An… I’ll keep you posted!

PS: On the diabetic front, nothing to report. Isn’t that lovely? One of the main things I love about cities is that they have supermarkets, which means I can buy normal food, which means my blood sugar is more stable. We’ve also been walking around so much that I’m getting a good dose of blood-glucose-lowering exercise. Great stuff!

I’m back! Sorry, it’s been a bit of a silent week – we’ve had extremely sporadic internet access and I wanted to wait till I had a little down-time to update you properly.

It’s been a lovely week. Ever since my bad health day when we first arrived on Phu Quoc Island I’ve been feeling heaps better (thank goodness!) due in large part, I think, to my secret to travelling with diabetes (which I reveal in this week’s video diary… to be posted tomorrow).

We had a really fun couple of days in Phu Quoc – the first two nights we spent at an eco-friendly resort called Mango Bay, right in the middle of nowhere surrounded by stunning views and beautiful beaches. Then we moved to town (we were craving shops and snacks and easy access to things), although still with a beautiful sea view and a mere 3 minute walk from the sea. What a stunning sea it is! Clear and bright blue, no waves, warm… heavenly! (You can see some footage of it in our video diary and in our best moments… Be warned, though! You might get jealous.)

We had a fair amount of work to do – catching up on hotel reviews for Just the Planet and real work, to try and earn some money as we travel (turns out travelling is rather pricey, who knew?) But we made time each day, usually around sunset, for a long swim in the sea, just as the sun dipped into it and turned it golden-pink-and-purple. Incredible.

It was during one of these late sunset swims that it hit me (once again) how lucky we are to be this age, living this adventure. I feel like there’s this small window of time in life – when you’re old enough to be able to have a clear head and look after yourself overseas, but not so old that you have a mortgage and responsibilities – and we are lucky enough to not only be in that stage but be living it to the full. Some days I find myself longing for a slice of familiarity or to see my family or my friends, but most of the time I feel (quite rightly) like the luckiest girl in the world.

The feeling was heightened by finding this fantastic little restaurant right on the beach where we could sit at small, lantern-lit tables, our feet in the sand, and eat delicious fresh seafood and yummy barbecue, while sipping on iced fresh lemon juice (my new favourite drink – about as diabetically friendly as you can get with something resembling fruit juice). This place (whose name I can’t remember) became our regular hang-out for its’ really reasonable, really fresh food. If you’re planning a visit to Phu Quoc, pop me an email and I’ll give you directions J

We also spent a day scootering all over the island on a hired motorbike, exploring little side streets and beaches, and picnicking right next to the sea… And we popped into the night market for some authentic Vietnamese food (delicious! Although a little strange, I was served flat squares of vermicelli noodles with my pork. Hmmm… How many carbohydrates would that be?)

And then we jetted off to Ho Chi Minh, or Saigon, as it is still known, on our first aeroplane in months! Turns out it was only $20 more expensive to take a 1 hour flight than a 2 and a half hour ferry and a 7 hour bus ride, so we treated ourselves… And what a treat it was. I’ll fill you in on our delicious time in Saigon so far in the next day or two – looks like we’ll probably be more connected this week… If you have any tips for us for Ho Chi Minh, let us know asap (please!)

Any suggestions for us as we head to the North of Vietnam?