peep

I can hardly believe that I've been back for a week!  It went by so quickly!  I've spent most of the time in bed, exhausted from jet lag and miserable from several symptoms.   I finally went to the doctor on Friday for treatment and am feeling so much better, but can't say that I'm 100% just yet.  ATM has been lovely with helping me readjust.  He took me to Hot Springs this weekend for an excellent meal, a little fun, and a lot of rest.  It really did the trick.


In short, my trip to Vietnam was a real eye-opener.  I didn't know what to expect.  It's very beautiful, dirty, strange, and a little heartbreaking.  Vietnamese people are resourceful & weird, but generally friendly.  They were always taken aback by our knowing a little of the Viet language.  I think it worked in our favor many many times.  The food? Excellent.  It will be hard to get over some of those dishes as it might be awhile before I'll have them again, although I have been hitting Go Ogle hard to see if I can recreate some of them for future TOFU HAPPENINGs.  Traveling with my mum and sister was good exercise of the heart & mind.  We survived with hardly any scrapes or bruises.  In our last days in Saigon while I was unwell, KMHD made really good company.  I would love to make this trip again and I'd recommend it to anybody.    


I'm just going to start here, yeah?


Getting there takes a long time & is uncomfortable.  You start in Little Rock --> Atlanta --> Los Angeles --> Taipei --> Hanoi.  We left midday on March 10 and arrived in Hanoi in the early afternoon on March 12.  You do the math.


LAX Int'l via ATL:



I'm so glad Vietnam is a proper coffee drinking nation because airline coffee, no matter how good it looks on camera, is disgusting.



VOML or Vegetarian Oriental Meal.  Of course, it's terrible.  I didn't get far with this meal...



...or this one.



But, hunger really did make things taste better on the third go-around:



Still in good spirits:



KMHD recharging & keeping up at the Taipei Int'l Airport:



Waiting waiting waiting:



The last leg of the journey from Taipei to Hanoi was a three hour flight.  We dubbed this little one "Ear Plugs".  Oh, she was naughty, but we didn't care because we were so close!  Funnily, she fell asleep at landing:

I'll unpack a little at a time.