Finally...Vietnam

I have to admit it. I'm never going to get to write up my holiday in the detailed way that I would like to. Who'd going to read it all anyway?!

Sure enough, I started. I even made it past the first day's entry but then ran out of the will to carry on. I have no idea why. Am I just getting lazier?

Anyway, as I said in the previous post, a picture can indeed replace a multitude of words. But perhaps they can all still be a bit confusing without any form of narration. So here's a quick one working chronologically through the photos on http://doobrie.co.uk


First we flew into Saigon (aka Ho Chi Ming City aka HCMC) and we were only there a day and a half, some of the time knackered after our long flight. We checked out a "famous" (according to our guide books) bar called "Apocalypse Now" but found that it was basically just a glorified sports bar with attendant hookers. Alright if you, like the dirty old men that were hanging around the place, are looking for that sort of thing. We ate in a nice family run restaurant one night but then in a more westernised place the second night called "The Underground" complete with London Underground roundels branding all over the place.

Next stop was the Cu-Chi tunnels to the West of the city where we where shown how tiny the tunnels that the local resistance soldiers used to hide and fight against the French and Americans in two wars. And yes, they were REALLY tiny. They had created a larger 100m "tourist tunnel" for us to try out with escape steps every 20 meters. I crawled on my hands and knees, head bowed, broad shoulders scraping the sides with barely no light in hot and humid conditions. It was all a bit crazy! Why any tourist would want to walk the full 100m, I have no idea. Twenty was more than enough for all of us!

We were also shown a lovely array of traps that had been used in the "American" war to severely main or kill soldiers backed up by a lovely mural. Then it was onto the presidential palace and then the War Remnants museum. This had a really good and moving collection of photos taken during the war by professional photographers, along with some not so nice ones depicting the horrors of war.

Then leaving this all behind, we hopped on a boat and rode along the Mekong Delta to a small village where we got to bed for the night in a home-stay. Our beds were simple mattresses (we slept in sleeping bags liners on top) with mosquito netting provided above that we all tucked in under the mattress when we retired for the night. It was actually very nice. The air was fresh (baring the wafts of anti-mosquito stuff that we had all liberally sprayed onto ourselves) and I felt very relaxed out here.

After a good nights sleep and a nice hot shower (okay, it was more of a hostel than literally staying at someones house) we left to go to a place called Chau Doc where our guide's family lived. We jokily asked if we could have dinner at his parent's place that night not realising that he was taking us seriously and all ten of us did indeed end up having dinner cooked by his mum that night! Unfortunately the food disagreed with a few of the group and we all got mercilessly bitten by mosquitoes as the door to their house was left open to give us some fresh air. Oh well!

Next day, itching slightly, we headed across the border from Cambodia into Vietnam. It was a land crossing, so no air taxes (good) but instead we had to go through a series of border huts, filling in a form in each. Our bags even got scanned by an x-ray machine whilst locals casually strolled across the border with their donkeys and oxen watching us curiously.

To be continued...

Because a picture speaks a thousand words

Enjoy the 67 or so that have now popped up on my picture site http://doobrie.co.uk from my trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangkok.

A write up will follow "soon"...

Almost back!

But not quite!

Ready to head off, yet again

Thanks to those who offered words of advice. Things on the romantic side have picked up again and everything is hunky-dory once more. In fact I feel that we are closer than we were before, which is good. It does mean that we'll probably be missing each other a lot more over the next two weeks though.

I've spent the past few days sorting out stuff for the holiday. The itinerary is basically flying out to Saigon (aka Ho Chi Ming City) via Bangkok, then west and north a bit across to Cambodia. A bit of beach time then off to it's capital Phnom Penh, up North to Angkor (a place I've always wanted to see!) and then a quick flight back to Bangkok for the last two days chilling out with a Singha or Chang beer watching the world go by on the Khaosan road.

I'm pretty much all packed barring toiletry stuff that I pack in at the last minute.

My laptop, camera (with nice new circular polarising filter), MP3 player, PSP with brain training game to make it through the long flights are sorted.

Passport, Vietnamese Visa, anti-malarial tablets, passport photos for Cambodian visa (for which we apply when we cross borders), anti-insect spray (one for clothes, one for skin), sun cream (factor 20 this time so that I might actually not come back looking whiter than when I went out as happened in Namibia with factor 30!), cap (essential for my follicly challenged head) and most other sundries are all there now.

I hope to actually write something up about my travels this time around as the Namibia write up was rather fore-shortened.

So, it's adieu for a short while I guess...

The Food Of Love?

We decided to meet up at lunch time and talk through things. There were too many unknowns and we were going in circles. Emotionally we decided that we ought to finish it and break up.

Half way out of the door, with tears in our eyes, we talked a bit more...

Breaking up didn't feel right for either of us. We hugged and made up, worked out a plan to improve things and both left feeling a lot happier.

Fingers crossed that love will out...

Happier Times

A select few pictures of my trip to New York last December can now be found here, if anyone's interested.

The picture to the right was taken with a zoom lens from the top of the Empire State Building.

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

Is a feature film being made at a pub at the end of my road. They've converted the outside of the pub to look post-apocalyptic and I currently get to walk through the set on the way to and from my house!

2006 - That was the year that was

January

• I started the year with no phone line thanks to NTHell's incompetent engineers.
• Bought a digital SLR camera, possible the best present I've ever bought for myself, self actualisation-wise.
• Had my debit card diddled wiping out my account. Grrrr!

February

• Walked a lot thinking about my future. Hmmmmm, where exactly is my life heading?

March

• Had an excellent holiday in Morocco where I got to camp out in the desert and ride an uncomfortable camel.

April

• Got to see "War of The Worlds" live at the Royal Albert Hall. Dumm, dum durr....
• Saw Jeremy Irons on the stage berating a member of the audience for coughing during a play. (Asshole)
• Cashcard diddled yet again from Gibraltar. *Grrrr* No loses this time though. *phew*

May

• Got a big rebate from the local council as my flat had been incorrectly valued too high. Yipee!
• Saw a giant mechanical elephant walk through the streets of London. So cool!
• Fought off moths that had infested my late mother's house. (Have at ya!)

June

• Melted as the June heatwave hit me as the same time that I got a temperature and I had to stay at home in my 29 degree flat. *scorchio!*
• Enjoyed the World Cup, until we got knocked out, that is.

July

• Got to see 2/3 of Pink Floyd perform Dark Side Of The Moon live in in Hyde Park along with The Zutons, The Who and then Corrine Bailey Rae at Somerset House.
• Was moved by service for the first anniversary of 7/7.
• Saw Juliet Lewis on stage in the excellent "Fool For Love."
• This blog made it to it's first birthday! (July 21st)
• Fell In Love.

August

• Slowed down pace of blog entries, rather distracted by other things...

September

• Had an excellent safari-type holiday in Namibia. (Which I never finished writing up!)

October

• Ate out a lot with the other half.
• Got to go to Amnesty International's "The Secret Policeman's Ball." (This parrot is dead!)

November

• XBox 360 died just before it's warranty ran out. Boo!
• Lots of shopping and fireworks. Bang!
• Someone tried to diddle my old and by now long cancelled debit card, yet again, but failed.

December

• Went to New York for Christmas shopping with the other half (most expensive Christmas present ever but well worth it!)
• Spent my first Christmas in five years no longer alone but with my girlfriend's family.
• Won the lottery (I wish!)
• Went to the cinema 52 times. (See previous post.)
• New Year's eve with Kylie.
• Blogged 88 times.

Movie Review Of The Year - 2006

I managed to see a grand total of 52 films this year at the flicks (so one a week, sort of) and the odd one or two on TV and on flights around the world. Comparing my list to last year's I'm either getting less fussy about the films I do see and thinking they're better than they really are or else I'm being more picky about which films I'm going to see to cut out some of the dross.

Nevertheless, here with broad brush strokes are the films I saw this year at the flicks and how I'd categorise them according to how I'd recorded my votes for them on IMDB at the time.

Below Average:
Caché (Hidden) - Hehe, this turned out to be my lowest rated movie of the year. Yes, it's arty farty and French but that certainly didn't make it any good. I should have walked out during this movie as it was soooo boring but I never do that so ended up sitting through almost two hours of this slow, slow movie. It's well rated on IMDB though with 7.4/10 and a comment like "Disturbing, Stunning, Daring and Dark," but then would you trust anyone who capitalises words within their sentence. No, I wouldn't.

Above average (Though so average in so many ways too):
Match Point - Extra marks for Scarlet Johannsen looking lovely and for Woody setting a scene in Shepherd's Bush police station. Emotionally unengaging too much of the time though.

Underworld: Evolution - Kate Beckinsale in leather and enjoyable but a stupid storyline that could have been so much better.

Romance & Cigarettes - Nice idea but just didn't gel properly.

Brick - In two words, "over hyped."

A Scanner Darkly - Should have been good but the story was just not all that engaging and rotoscoping has been around in computer games for years.

Films I liked (I found these more enjoyable, on some level, than not):
Proof, Capote, Transamerica, Inside Man, La Grande séduction, Slither, Mission: Impossible III, The King, Poseidon, X-Men: The Last Stand, Thank You for Smoking, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Huo Yuan Jia (Fearless), Block Party, Little Fish, Miami Vice, Crank, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada, Starter for Ten, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Films I liked a lot (good story lines or just brilliant cinematic entertainment):
Memoirs of a Geisha, Jarhead, Walk the Line, Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana, The Proposition, Junebug, Once in a Lifetime, Banlieue 13, Superman Returns, Stormbreaker, Children of Men, The Black Dahlia, Little Miss Sunshine, Red Road, Borat, The Prestige, El Laberinto del Fauno, Stranger Than Fiction

And finally, my favourite films of the year (in no particular order):

Mirrormask - A weirdly wonderfully imaginative film by Dave McKean & Neil Gaiman. I just loved the dreamlike quality of this film, its subtle humour and the general warmth that emanates from the story.

Shooting Dogs -I'd thought that this could turn out to be the "Hotel Rwanda" that lost the race for release dates but in reality turned out to be a moving alternative take on the genocidal madness that occured in Rwanda in the 90s. A moving story, well told and excellently acted out.

Casino Royale - Bond reinvented the way that he was originally written. Cool and tough and downright dirty. An outstanding action movie that (apart from the slower last act) keeps you going from the beginning. Bond is back and he's good!

Munich -An excellent thriller. The intelligence of the script and the portrayal of paranoia in the spy world makes this stand out for me. It doesn't take sides but is powerful nonetheless.

V For Vendetta -Spectacular. I'd read the graphic novel a while back and whilst they can never truly capture the feeling someone would get from reading this, it's a bloody good try. A moody British feel to this movie and Natalie Portman's portrayal of Evey made this movie for me.

United 93 -Utterly moving, scary and touching at the same time. It's one of the movies that you walk out of with the audience stone cold silent. A powerful movie indeed.

Merry Christmas

I had what was possibly the best Christmas I've had in a long time. Suffice to say that spending it with the girlfriend's family (dad, brother, nan and grandad) beats my usual Christmas alone watching TV, sleeping and playing games on the old console all day long.

Instead we spoke, watched TV, ate (a lot), drank (too much), spoke more and generally had a nice Christmas.

It was back to work though yesterday through to the end of this week, then "Much Ado About Nothing" tomorrow night courtesy of work's sponsorship of the RSC. It'll be my first time to see Shakespeare on the stage. Should be good, I hope...

Oh and then off to see Kylie at Wembley Arena on Sunday! Woo hoo!

Life is treating me well at the moment. I hope that it lasts. (I even won £200 of John Lewis vouchers in my company's Christmas raffle and spent it on a lovely DAB radio!)

New York, New York!

We had a good time in New York but there's more to do and see in just the long weekend that we were there for that we're already talking about going back in the Summer.

Things we did manage to do were:
See a show on Broadway - Yeah, I know that it's such a touristy thing to do but then Americans visiting London almost always visit a show and so we reciprocated. As it was, we enjoyed our night out seeing the musical version of "The Wedding Singer" as we're both children of the 80s and liked the film version too.

Go to Liberty Island - It just has to be done. Whether or not we believe in the USA's modern take on "Freedom" (and I don't), the Statue of Liberty is still iconic and had to be seen close up. Ironically lady liberty is looking a bit run down, but then most Americans apparently don't understand irony. We went across just before the sun set so I managed to get some nice moody shots along with frozen bollocks as it was a bit nippy out on the boat at the time!


Visit Macy's - It's the largest store in the world, don't you know! Ten floors of heaven or hell, depending on whether or not you enjoy shopping. It was quite an experience. We went on a Saturday when one of their one-off 50% off sales was going on. It was crazy the things that we could buy at huge knock down prices. All in all we spent almost four hours in this one store alone. I was practically dead on my feet by the end but the other half was in retail heaven! Hehe...

See the Rockefeller Ice Rink and "World Famous" Christmas tree - It was HUGE. The tree in Trafalgar Square looks pretty crap this year (I think that the Norwegians are trying to tell us something) and this tree really puts it to massive shame. Mind you the electricity for the lights on the tree alone would probably be enough to power a small suburb.

Stroll through Central Park on a beautiful Sunday morning - It was cold but Sunny and we had a lovely romantic stroll through the park. That plus the fact that we needed the exercise after eating American size portions of everything for the previous few days made
this perfect. We both agreed that it would be nice to come back here in Summer. A week later we did the same thing in Hyde Park and it was cool to think how we'd been in New York just a week before walking through Central Park.

Do the Empire State Building at dusk - We'd originally planned to go on the Friday but visibility was poor and the outside viewing area closed, the same on Saturday but then we ended up with the best visibility on Sunday and I got lots of pictures at daylight and then after the sun had set. Just brilliant! I also had to resist the temptation to propose here as the sun set behind us. Perhaps, next time?

We took the subway a few times but never really needed to get a taxi as most places that didn't require a subway were within easy walking distance. I discovered that New Yorkers are the grumpiest city people in the world (Yes, even grumpier than Londoners). I've never come across such a bunch of unfriendly people before. When the other half asked for a tea but then forgot to ask for milk in it the person working in the cafe wouldn't stop moaning about it. When one of the employees in the Empire State Building tried to take our picture and we refused as it was really tacky, he muttered "Well, why don't you just fuck off then." to us. Most people in the street or in shops don't understand the use of the work "Excuse me" when trying to get past you and just go in elbows first. And a few other similar cases of people not really being particular friendly to strangers.

Also, in the few days that we were there, we managed to see a shoplifter getting away from a store detective and a mugger getting arrested with great force and volume by the NYPD. I've lived in London and have yet to see a mugging all my life and we get to see a few instances of things in just three days. It's not as safe as they say it is, is all I can say to that, though we never felt unsafe walking along the streets, even at night, as there were always loads of others around in the populous midtown area where we were based. And besides, if you are a city person, you'll feel at home straight away. It's just the pure scale of the buildings that can take your breath away for a few seconds when you first arrive.

We managed to fit a few more things in but is was all over too soon for us but as I said, I'm sure that we'll be back.

All set now

I'm all packed but the other half has amazed my by her ability to fill the huge suitcase that I lent her for our five day trip to the brim!

Me: "Isn't there anything that you can leave behind?"
Her: "No. Absolutely not!"
Me: "Sigh"

I'm not quite sure how she's going to find any room for anything that she might buy (up to the £145 limit you're allowed before declaring goods and having to pay tax on them....of course.)

I also had to resort to ringing up the limo company in New York re-confirm our "meet and greet " pick up, since I'd not received any confirmation from them after having booked a reservation over a week ago.

And it's just as well that I did as they had no record of my booking! As it was the woman on the other end of the line was apologetic and very professional so I gave her all the details again and we should be set for a nice luxury sedan pick up come tomorrow afternoon. PHEW!

I have to admit that I got a bit excited talking to someone across the Atlantic too. Sad, eh?
(And I used to do it all the time in my old job.)

Oh and to cap it all off, since we are flying with Virgin Atlantic, I came into work today and checked us both in online and even changed our seats to better ones so that the other half now has a nice window view with only me sat beside her rather than us being sat in the centre aisle as we were before! How cool is that?!

Also found a great Times Square webcam site so that I could check out a realtime feed of The Big Apple before I went. I'll try and keep an eye out for it when we are there and give a wave...How geeky is that! Hehe.

Anyway. See you all next week!

Preparing For The Big Apple

Off to New York on Thursday. I'm a wee bit excited!

Things I have sorted:

Passport.

Printout of electronic ticket and lastminute.com hotel reservation form.

Minicab booked to Heathrow.

Camera battery charged.

Things yet to sort:

Limo service (just a luxury sedan, not an actual limo) from JFK not yet confirmed, though I booked it a week ago. I e-mailed them and may have to ring them up before I go to get a firm confirmation. It only works out at 20 quid each as the Dollar is so weak.

Packing my holdall. It's still in my wardrobe. Packing for five days shouldn't be that hard though. (I hope!)

Sort out the cables, rechargers and plugs I'll need to take for my laptop, PSP and MP3 player.

And Lo...A New Saga Unfolds

So, I rang Microsoft yet again as the labels that they were sending out to me for me to use to return my dead as a dodo XBox360 console to them hadn't arrived yet. It'd been over a week and they said five working days to me, so it was nigh on time to follow up.

An Indian/Scandanavian sounding chap then gave me the UPS tracking reference and contact number to follow up myself about the package. This was a bit annoying as I'd thought it'd be their job to find out what had gone wrong rather than me having to do their dirty work.

Oh well...I called them and got told that they would call me back after they had found out what had happened with my label.

This they duely did (good) but only to tell me that for some reason (unbenownst to them) the driver simply had got around to delivering the label (bad) and that they could try a redelivery.

"Ermm, since I won't ever be home during working hours, can I please change the delivery address to my work one?", I asked.

"Sure, but I can't do that, I'll transfer you to someone who can..." at which point they hung up on me! Argh!

But surprise, surprise, they promptly rang me back apologising and then did pass me through properly.

"We'll have to try at least one delivery before the delivery address can be changed" was their next response to me.

"So, even though I've told you I won't be home, you'll send someone out on a wild goose chase, wasting time, just so your system can then allow you to change the delivery address???", I asked incredulouly.

Exasterbated, I waited for a response. "Hang on, I'll see what I can do..."

"Sorry sir, but we can't change the delivery address, you'll have to call the supplier to have the label changed."

"SIGH, Okay. Thanks...Goodbye."

So basically, I rang Microsoft and arranged for the pickup from work. Apparently you pack up your console and UPS comes along, sticks a label on it and takes it away.

Twenty four hours later I'm still waiting for the pick-up from work.

Here we go again....

Cheap booze for those in the UK

And obviously there isn't anything that we like better (if Friends episodes are anything to go by).

So get 40% off all wine and champagne at Threshers with this coupon until the 10th December.

Read all about it here to see how this has come about...

And remember...Drink Sensibly!