"Drink at your own pace"

So said the Irishman to the American. Best advice an Irish father could give an Irish son and the best advice you could hear from a new Irish friend...but unfortunately it came a bit too late. I have a raging headache today from keeping pace with our new friends Oz and Jean last night. obviously all my fault, I have done this before with the Irish but i guess i just can't learn from old mistakes. at any rate it was a good evening and we got quite the history lesson on ireland and northern ireland. aside from irish history, yesterday was filled with embarrassing U.S. history. We visited the Cu Chi tunnels (famous for the Viet Cong in the War) as well as the war remnants museum. A pretty depressing museum tour but i have to blame it all on France...just kidding.

Hillary played the role of Rambo yesterday by clipping 5 rabbit targets at the firing range. You should have seen her shooting that AK-47! it was as if all she played as a kid was duck hunt...trigger finger galore. actually, it was quite the opposite. i had the luxury of snapping a photo of her prior to taking stance grasping her ears in fright of the blasts coming from the weapon next to her. not to worry though, we have time to work on her shooting skills (numchuck skills, bow skills...) when we get to Phnom Phen. We are leaving today by bus for Cambodia.

For me, this has been my second visit to Vietnam and i'm glad i had the opportunity to return because i enjoyed it much more this time around. not sure why i didn't find it as inviting four years ago but i hope to return again for the food has been amazing...the people, incredible and the motor scooters...well, the motor scooters have been pure entertainment. just a sea of them.

ps- hopefully we'll get to Laos...and maybe even play ping pong in ding dang. cheers!

Halong Bay

Wow - fun trip to Halong bay but 3 hours there and three hours back was a long ride... so far Vietnam is fantastic. We have been damp the entire time but it feels refreshing and it's better than super hot. The boat ride on Halong Bay was with 12 other people and we were able to stop on one of the islands and walk through this underground cave. Matt has decided that he wants to be a geologist or a teacher or an archeologist or possibly a writer. So basically, we have made no leeway in the career department but we are not worried - whatever happens we have decided that he likes caves.

Our guide Tink was super funny and he would get annoyed with me because everytime i asked a question he would turn to be and say 'I just answered that'! But i had trouble understanding him so i just kept asking. He thought i was funny but finally told me there was a really good program on the discovery channel on the Halong Bay World Heritage UNESCO site and that i should just check that out.

Well we are off to look for some good Vietnamese sandwiches. I'm sure we'll write more when we have some time. For now we are sitting in this hotel that we just ducked into called 'The Ritz' using up their free internet while the nice paying guests are waiting. It's not a real Ritz but it is a friendly place.
Lots of love to all and thanks for the emails we have gotten so far...Cheers! H & M

How long to Halong (Bay)?

Whatever I told you about us stopping in Shanghai, please ignore that...uhhhhh, errrr...just happened to cross paths with tokyo instead and we are now in Singapore. In the Changi airport which pretty much kicks butt. free internet for all and bon jovi live from the hard rock cafe tv monitors. I haven't seen Hillary for a while though, i think she is still spacing out in the butterfly sanctuary that they have here IN the airport. crazy! We are discovering that there is too much to see given the time we have alotted