Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City is pretty belter.


It's hot, sticky, smoggy, there's people trying to sell you sunglasses and making motorbike gestures to you wherever you turn but the place overcomes it all cause it's got bagloads of character. The people are amazing, so kind and helpful and you can't turn around without seeing something unexpected or unique.


As we said it's really hot and the internet is kind of slow at times so we'll not type much but we did manage to get some pictures up.

See here!

Leaving Sydney

We had our last day at work on Friday which felt amazing! Although we are sad to leave Sydney after living here a year we are ready to move on. Before we do we thought it would be good to look back and think about our favourite things we love about this city.

Favourite Beaches: (of the 37 in or around the city)
1) Palm Beach
2) Parsley Bay
3) Bronte Beach
4) Camp Cove
5) Coogee Beach
6) Balmoral
7) Shark Beach
8) Shelly Beach
9) Little Marley Beach
10) Clovelly

Favourite things to do:
1) Body surf at the beach
2) Take a trip on the harbour
3) See a music gig or comedy show
4) Eat and drink
5) Visit the Royal National Park/Blue Mountains/Hunter Valley
6) Watch films

Favourite Food Places:
1) Delhi O Delhi, Indian, Newtown
2) Faheems Fast Food, Indian and Pakistani, Enmore
3) Sultans Table, Turkish, Enmore
4) San Remos, Italian, Enmore
5) I’m Angus, Australian, Darling Harbour
6) Doyle’s Fish and Chips, Australian, Watson’s Bay
7) Guzman y Gomez, Mexican, Newtown
8) Palace of India, Indian, Enmore
9) Café Ole, Portuguese, Enmore

Things that surprised us:
1) The barbecues are often hot metal plates with no flame involved (how weird)
2) There are a lot less creepy crawlies than expected (very few spiders, no snakes)
3) The huge amount of Victorian buildings
4) No one drinks Fosters (you can’t even buy it)
5) Pork sausages are fairly rare – when you get them they are disgusting
6) Burgers have beetroot
7) Loads of people walk to the shop in barefoot
8) Pubs are called hotels and you often can't get a room

Favourite locals:
1) The worlds most enthusiastic and friendliest girl from the variety shop
2) The young mammy from Palace of India
3) Lovely nerd from the video shop
4) ‘NEKPLEZ’ woman from IGA supermarket
5) Friendly but stern man from our post office
6) Guy with crazy music pumping out of his sound system on his wheelchair
7) Garlo Pies guy
8) Nice Turkish girl from LooknShyn hairdressers
9) The lovely Asian guy at the chip shop at Stanmore Train Station
10) Sultan’s Table guy who makes us the nicest kebabs
11) Winston from the off-licence
12) Mad old boy who shakes his walking stick at traffic in Leichhardt

Things that we will not miss about Sydney:
1) Silverfish and cockroaches
2) The minging man next door screaming
3) The crazy birds
4) The loud airplanes
5) The sexually frustrated dog Rodney at the bottom of our street
6) The 5.40am starts for work
7) The insane people that take the bus
8) Seeing the extremely skinny wee man from the nursing home with the high trousers pick up and smoke cigarettes from the street
9) The crap TV

Things that we will miss:
1) Coopers Beer
2) Turkish bread
3) The weather
4) The huge varieties of dogs (sausage dogs seem to be a favourite)
5) Better Homes and Gardens show
6) Sydney breakfasts
7) The beaches
8) Tight Arse Tuesdays
9) Sunrise breakfast show with Kochie, Mel, Nat and Beretts
10) Border Security show
11) Chris’ bus man
12) The Harbour
13) The varieties and freshness of the food
14) The weekend music show
15) The many parks
16) The Duke of Edinburgh Bar – especially now they have started the lovely fire in the evening
17) Watching the dogs at Newtown Park
18) All the nice people we've worked with
19) People taking their unusual pets out for a walk (snakes, ferrets and parrots were some)
20) And of course OUR FLAT!

RSPCA Million Paws Walk

We went up to the Sydney Olympic Park for a walk as we had heard it had good places to explore. But just so happens there was a RSPCA Million Paws walk where dogs are invited to come together and go for big walks around the country to raise money for poor wee unfortunate animals.


We didn't pay the small fortune to get into the main arena and receive cool doggie bags but it would have been a bit stupid as we didn't have a dog! Instead we walked around the park to give them our support and took loads of photos of funny dogs along the way. We really want a dog! A certain sheep was very unhappy with us as we forgot to bring him. Oops

Million Paws Walk Gallery

Scarborough

For our Sunday outing this week we went south to Scarborough, which means rocky fort according to a sign on the pub. No mention of the original. Set outside the sprawling Royal National Park it's a tiny village perched between hills filled with coal and cliffs down to the sea. The main purpose of our visit was to get some lunch at the Scarborough Hotel (not as fancy as it sounds as all pubs are called hotels here, did we mention that?) After a wander on the fairly deserted beach and over the rocks we headed up to the pub for an early lunch, eager for some steak and chips. Turns out that half of New South Wales had turned up there for mothers day (happy 2nd mothers day mammys) and we couldn't get a seat. Who'd have bloody thought it eh? We headed back to sleepy little Stanmore to our favourite takeaway for tasty Indian food (well, strictly, Pakistani but it's basically the same thing.)

P.S. 2 weeks to go!

Scarborough Gallery

Dave meets Jet

At work a couple of weeks back Dave received a lovely letter from a lady praising the Sydney Ferries boat staff. A compliment like this was rare enough but the story also invloved a nice dog making it simply irresistable for the next edition of the Sydney Ferries Newsletter. One of the deckhands had given her an old piece of rope for her dog, Jet, to play with because she chewed up everything else in seconds.

Dave was dispatched with camera over to Cremorne Point to meet Louise. She was a lovely old lady, they had some coffee on her veranda and played with Jet for a while. A pleasant end to the working week.

Here's a picture to prove it happened:

Last Trip to Palm Beach

We couldn't resist a last trip to Palmie and this time we brought along our woolly friend Dougal. As always Palm Beach and the surrounding area was absolutely beautiful. We walked up the beach towards the lighthouse and Dougal got his photos at the Home and Away Surf Club.


Some locals had set up a marquee with a barbecue supporting some long board surfers. We aren’t sure if it was a competition or not but it looked pretty important. We crossed over to the other side of Palm Beach and walked along another beach that doesn’t seem to have a name although we found it nice and peaceful. When we climbed to the top of the lighthouse we were ragen that there were loads of loud families. We did meet a nice couple who took the picture below for us. They wanted to send their love to Ireland so there, you have it!


We could have paid $4 to visit the top of the lighthouse but we choose to ramble through a few hedges and find a nice secluded viewing spot of our own for lunch. The views were really gorgeous.


On the way back Chris paid her last respects to the setting of her beloved soap and resisted the temptation of buying a Home and Away cap for $20. To compensate Dave bought ice pops from the Summer Bay kiosk. They were surprisingly delicious!


Barrenjoey Lighthouse Gallery

Painting the house white

We decked our house out with posters and cards and halloween bags ages ago going heavy on the blu tac. Little did we suspect that the blu tac would come back to haunt us (alright we knew rightly but still whacked it up with gay abandon) as we strive to get as much of our 'bond' or 'deposit' as it's also known back as possible.

The blu tac left parts of the walls looking pretty ropey, and a very patchy rope at that. We needed a half assed solution and we needed it cheap. We checked out Kmart but they only had 1000 litre tanks so we were intending to bother some handyman types around our works.


Luckily we did nowt as usual and still the perfect solution fell into our laps. As we wandered back from the shops on Saturday, kebabs in hand, we noticed a load of clutter out on the street. It's a bit of an institution round here that people dump their unwanted crap on the streets for others to plunder. Mostly it's broken CD racks,1980s microwave and other such useless tat but sometimes, like Saturday, you strike gold. We found a half-used pot of paint that was the perfect match (conveniently the walls are plain white.) We got right to work. The results were totally satisfactory.

One year gone

We've consulted a calendar and discovered that it's one year to the day since we left the green shores of Ireland with a furry little gimp in tow. Dougal's one year old now and he's getting ruder by the day.

Where does the time go? We're on the home straight now. Three months of good time while travelling will fly by.

Miss you all back home.

Have a look back at the day it all started here. Dougal was so white and pure though he did get stuck into the booze at the first opportunity.

UPDATE: Dougal was on the lash all weekend. He doesn't remember half of it and only one photo has emerged. Look at his pupils, he's out of his woolly head.