goodmorning vietnam...

...probably the #1 over used phrases of tourist here in vietnam but it is still funny everytime i say it of course. so once again i have fallen off the blog writing thing and much has happened since the last time so lets see what i can remember.

after new years things seemed to die down a lot in koh chang, but we were only there for one more night so it didn't really matter. i had a nice beach day to get a little tan going since i wasn't going to see the beach for a while. i also got to make some calls to people back home that were getting there new year on (glad i was let into a little "circle of trust"). we made it back to bangkok rather easily since we got to sit on the bottom of the bus this time which i guess is the first class area since there was more leg room. we then stayed in bangkok until this last monday (7th?) morning in which we took a flight to vietnam. the stay in bangkok was longer than we thought we were going to but we enjoying the comforts of a nice room with a/c and hot water and a tv with movie channels. most nights we just hit khoa san rd. to see what people we could meet. ran into a lot of different people with a lot of different stories which was cool to hear. we wanted to get one more night to spend with rich and isabelle since they lived there but things kept coming up and we never got around to it, so hopefully when i get back i will be able to see them again. but like i said, we are now in vietnam. we flew to ha noi which near the "top" of vietnam because it was much cheaper to fly in and out of there than ho chi mihn (saigon). we only stayed there one night cause we wanted to start at the "bottom" of 'nam and work our way up. so we booked a train ride down to saigon...a 33 hour train ride! that was fun (a little bit of sarcasm), though i enjoyed the chance to look at the vietnam country side as we went through it. i was a little put off vietnam cause of ha noi since i didn't really like it that much but after seeing the beauty of the country side, i thought id give it another chance (especially since the soup and coffee here are so good). so now we are saigon and i much prefer this city to ha noi. we stayed in an excellent room last night that we got at a good discount since we were coming in so late and they could only offer the room for one night. once again i didn't take a picture of it though so i won't get to show off the beauty of it...though for my defence, i did take many photos on the ride down from ha noi on the train or the sunset and sunrise so when i find a cable i will load those ones up. we are staying in a smaller room now but it still is comfortable and has a/c, hot water and tv and it is only 12 dollars a night. i had another excellent pho bo and pho 24 (i pronouce it twenty pho so it rhymes) so im in a good mood, plus it is warmer in saigon since we are farther south so that makes me happy as well. oh and pho bo is the noodle soup with beef (pho = noodle, bo = beef). i don't know what we will do here and how long we stay but im sure we'll find something to do and won't be in a rush to leave right away from the comforts of this place so we'll see. for now that is all, until next time...