So, how many of you still think we’re in Berlin? Because, um, since then we’ve been to London, Hawaii, and home for almost three weeks. Maybe no one is even reading this anymore, in which case I can basically write whatever I want without fear of retribution (I still love the Backstreet Boys so much it hurts a little; sometimes I put empty Nutella jars back into the cupboard to try and fool Mark into not noticing that I’ve finished them off; I secretly helped plan my “surprise” 16^th birthday party; once I put on two bras by accident and wore them the entire day without realizing; in grade one I faked being sick so I could come home from school and then stole a Full House series book from the Lost and Found so I would have something to read that afternoon; once I told Mark I was going to kickboxing class but when I couldn’t find parking, I instead went to McDonald’s, ordered french fries and sat in my car for an hour, listening to Harry Potter audiobooks).

Whew! It feels good to get that off my (doubly-supported) chest. After leaving Berlin, we went our separate ways for a few days. I flew to London, where I mostly tried to avoid the horrific crowds (Queen’s Diamond Jubilee + Olympics = awful) and watched a shameful amount of Friday Night Lights. Texas Forever! Or something.

I have to admit, and this is going to sound like the sappiest thing ever, that although it was nice to have a bit of solo time and feel slightly independent again, by the end of the first day I missed him so much that I almost couldn’t sleep. When you spend 24/7 with someone for an entire year, it can be really difficult at times, and I have often felt like I was becoming a bit too dependent on him (something I try very hard to avoid), but sleeping in a bed without him was terrible and confusing. You may all commence eye-rolling now.

In any case, after three days he came and met me in London and shortly after, we took a veeeeeery long two flights to Hawaii. It was really painful. I think we were in transit for something like 29 hours, although typing that out, it seems wildly exaggerated, so maybe that’s just how it felt. We did, however, manage to finish circumnavigating the globe on that flight, since we flew west!

Here is our reason for being in Hawaii:

These are our good friends Radka and Allan. Happily for us, they decided to get married in Hawaii and even though we were across the globe when we started looking at tickets, we knew we wanted to be there if at all possible. I am so glad we went. We got to see friends! FRIENDS! I was getting really sad and lonely by that point. We got some sun, got some sunburns (both of us! Not just Mark), snorkeled with sea turtles, made fantastic food, saw Radka and Allan get married (I bawled through their wedding ceremony. It is so nice to cry happy tears!), and then decided that that was a pretty great way to finish our trip. So we came home.

This was a rather abrupt ending, and we actually had a return flight to London booked…but being in the company of our friends and so close to home made us both realize that we were ready to be done. I’m sure a lot of you could tell by the tone of the blog, but we were getting pretty road-weary during the last few weeks. Berlin was a particularly low point for me. I spent a lot of time anxiously scrunched up into a ball, desperately homesick and knowing that I wanted to go home so badly, but also feeling weirdly guilty about calling it quits earlier than we wanted to. Some small part of me felt like we should at least stick it out for a year, because we had originally said we would. Typing it out, I can see how stupid that looks, and that if it was feeling like “sticking it out” then clearly I was done. I don’t know. I really struggled with it, and I worried a lot about whether or not Mark was on the same page as me. How do you compromise on something like that, right? Anyway, we had decided that we would fly to Hawaii and then reassess. After a few days there, we discussed it, and both of us felt ready to come home. Having made that decision, the last 10 days of our trip were phenomenal. Hawaii is stunning and I already want to go back.

Radka and Allan had a beautiful wedding at a paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) ranch. There were vintage touches everywhere and their wedding reflected them so well.

In a slightly crazy turn of events, when we were in Hawaii and had made the decision to come home, we decided to take a quick look at real estate listings in Victoria, and found what is basically the perfect house for us. We kept referring to it as “our” house, even though we knew there was about an 90% chance it wouldn’t work out for various reasons – being sold, looking better in pictures, etc. We kept an eye on the listing the rest of the time we were in Hawaii, and it was still on the market when we got home. We arrived in Victoria on a Wednesday night, saw it on Saturday morning and made an offer on Monday. We move in five days from now. It’s crazy but feels so perfect for us.

We are both so excited to settle and make a home – having moved 10 times in 10 years, I am done with change and transit, and totally ready to nest (but not in the baby sense yet, since that seems to be everyone’s next question). We still have one more small (ish) trip planned for the end of July, when we go visit my grandmother in India, and I know we’re not done traveling forever – I hope we travel well into our senior years – but it is a little bittersweet that our nomader days are pretty much over. I think, overall, we did really well. We saw so much of what we wanted to see, and so much of what we never expected. We were helped out by strangers so many times, and didn’t lose our passports once. We ate amazing food and some that was terrible but still memorable. Mostly, I feel like we’ve just scratched the surface of what we want to see in the world. This makes me very, very happy.

Thanks for all the blog love and comments! We loved sharing our travels with friends and family this way.

Until next time, please always remember us like this…because this is most likely how we look:

All told, maybe Berlin wasn’t the best choice for such a long stay. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice city but, since 85% of it was destroyed during WWII, it doesn’t have a lot of beautiful old buildings like most European cities do and those that remain are badly scarred by war damage. Add the fact that half the city was then under Soviet control for decades (let’s face it, the Communists are not known for their beautiful architecture) and its many reminders of the worst things that people are capable of, and Berlin can seem a little bleak at times. The city does have a youthful, bohemian attitude, though, and in that respect it actually reminded me a lot of Montreal.

We got our bearings (and a history lesson) with a four-hour walking tour led by a really good guide (an Irishman with a PhD in history) that took us to the key historical sites of Berlin including Checkpoint Charley, the site of the Nazi book burnings, the Holocaust Memorial, the site of Hitler’s suicide (or, more precisely, the parking lot that is now overtop of the bunker he died in – the bunker itself is sealed off) and a section of the Berlin wall. When we got to the wall we overheard a teenage girl say to her parents “Is that it? I thought is would be more impressive.” We didn’t get a report on whether she was more impressed when she found out about the second wall and the “death zone” in between with its barber wire, land mines, and armed guards ordered to kill anyone who set foot in it.

One the subject of the wall, we also visited the East Side Gallery, a section of the wall covered in murals. It ends at a bridge that connected East and West Berlin over the river which now has neon signs on it that make the East and West play Rock Paper Scissors all night long.

The Berlin Zoo was also really good and we were able to get quite close to the animals, which was nice. It was definitely one of the more fun things we did and a good way to help get over a bit of travel burnout.

In Berlin I also got to try a German sauna for the first time. Germans take their saunas very seriously and a visit to the sauna can last hours, heating up, cooling down, relaxing, and socializing. The place I went had a bar, a library, two lounge areas, and a small garden. The sauna was a whopping 90˚C (194˚F) and periodically someone comes in and pours scented water over the rocks making it extremely humid.

The thing that deters a lot of North Americans from visiting German saunas is that most are mandatorily nude and are gender-mixed (meaning men and women sauna together). I’m sure my niece will be horrified by this since she was shocked to hear that the Japanese visit onsen nude (see this post for more about that). While this may seem strange to North Americans and Brits, it’s a normal part of German culture and it’s common for Germans to sauna nude with friends, family, and business associates. Having tried it, I can tell you that there’s really nothing awkward or sexual about it. Nobody stares or judges or even takes any notice at all. Being naked is literally the most natural thing in the world.

It did make me laugh, though, that the locker room (which was also mixed, as was the shower room) had a picture on the wall of the two old guys from the Muppet Show who sit in the balcony making wisecracks. While the Germans, who obviously have way less body-image issues that North Americans do, probably think nothing of it, to me it was the perfect image of why most North Americans are uncomfortable with public nudity: fear of hecklers.

After Berlin, Pia went back to London and I spend a couple of days in a little medieval town called Quedlinburg before joining her (after 10 months of spending almost all our time together, we figured a couple of days apart would be healthy). Quedlinburg is a cute, quiet little town near the Harz mountains with narrow cobblestone streets and quaint old buildings. The whole thing has a very Brothers Grimm quality to it. I mostly just wandered and soaked up the atmosphere. While I didn’t manage to find a good hike like I’d hoped (they don’t get a lot of non-German tourists, so English tourism resources were hard to come by), I did manage to take a long walk into the countryside.

Next, we’re jetting off to Hawaii for a friend’s wedding (at which point we’ll have circumnavigated the globe). I know, it sounds crazy, but the flight was at least cheap, now we just have to deal with how long it is!

Ah, Bruges. We stayed in an apartment on the most beautiful cobblestone street, lined with old brick buildings, no less than five chocolate shops and even an embroidery shop three blocks down. It was pretty fantastic.

What did we do? Really, hardly anything. Wandered, drank stunning beer, cooked (and cooked and cooked…I may have gone a little overboard), watched movies, slept late, ate cannibal toast (me, not Mark — raw beef on toast. Delicious and super fun to order!), and just soaked in the beautiful atmosphere.

We watched the city’s namesake movie, which was dark and hilarious and twisted – my favourite combination. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that the Belfry plays an important role in it. Mark climbed up there one day and took in the view:

We also took a boat trip down the canals. Somehow we were incredibly lucky and managed to be the only people on the boat. We got envious glances from all of the many other packed boats. We felt special.

We spent just over two weeks in Belgium, and I have to say that it was a real highlight of the trip so far for me. The people were lovely, the beer was fantastic, and every town we visited was beautiful. It would be really easy here to make a lame rhyming joke here about Belgium being “swell-gium” but I’m better than that. Aren’t I?

It was a pretty amazing feeling to round a corner while wandering aimlessly on our first full day there and to stumble upon the Grand Place, which is well deserving of its label as the “most beautiful square in Europe.

I’d say the best part about Brussels was just exploring the old part of town, finding its beautiful sights. I’ll be honest, after 9 months on the road, our enthusiasm for museums and the like is seriously waning, anyway. I mean, one of the most popular sights in Brussels is Manneken Pis, a fountain of a little boy peeing, so what does that tell you? The fountain was actually very small and I really don’t see the attraction, but there was a huge crowd of tourists swarming it. Also, you will not have any trouble finding Manneken Pis t-shirts, statuettes, bottle openers, chocolates, or keychains, should that be something that interests you (by the way, I know what everyone on my list is getting for Christmas!).

Brussels is also the home of many famous comics, including Tintin and the Smurfs, and there are comic murals around the city, which is quite fun.

Between Paris and Brussels I had lots of opportunities to practice my French, which was nice, but as we took the short train ride North to the little city of Ghent the French quickly disappeared and soon everything was in Flemmish.

Ghent is absolutely gorgeous, though. We found ourselves saying “wow” multiple times a day. It was all the things that were beautiful in Brussels, only in greater concentration and with lovely canals thrown in. We’ve rated it as one of the most beautiful cities we’re ever been in.

The town also has a 12th century castle called Gravensteen, which is pretty cool, although it apparently spent the 19th century being used as a factory. The entrance fee to the castle included a free use of their iPods with an informational movie (not a documentary, but a narrative feature) on it set in the castle itself. It was, well, about what you’d expect; we made it about 5 minutes in before giving up on it (incidentally, that didn’t even get us through the first of the 13 movie segments).

Of course, Belgium is known for chocolate, waffles, frites (with mayo on them), and amazing beer. You will be happy to know that we have diligently made sure to sample all of these things (particularly the last one – purely for the sake of research, of course) and can report that they are everything they’re made out to be.

Okay, I know the title of this blog post is basically the worst, but I couldn’t think of anything cleverer and also I’m not terribly original. To wit: This awful black and white photostrip of us in a photobooth at a movie theatre in Paris. Mark is mostly kissing my scarf, since I don’t believe in PDA.

We spent a week in Paris, in an apartment we rented in Montmartre. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, it is where the inimitable Amelie Poulain lives and works circa 1997 and also in the very real parallel universe in my brain. Paris was remarkable for many reasons, not the least of which was that we visited during the most perfect spring week, but I’m going to spare you words and instead share with you way too many photos I took with my new phone. I know it’s kind of lame to share cell phone photos but most of the photos we took with our real camera look like this:

So really, you should be thanking me. Also, I love my new iPhone more than Mark looks like that guy from Modern Family.

Our week in Paris:

When we were in in Ha Long Bay, we met a guy from New Zealand who had a funny story about Saigon traffic. He, a pretty experienced traveller, was standing at the side of the road waiting for a break in traffic big enough to brave crossing when a little old lady came up, took him by the hand and led him across the street!

We visited the War Remnants Museum, which, as you can imagine, didn’t provide the warm, fuzzy feeling that the cat cafe we visited in Tokyo did. The exhibit on the effects of Agent Orange was particularly disturbing. The accounts of the war in the “Historical Truths” section were not as unbiased as the exhibits at the Hiroshima Peace Museum, focusing on the atrocities committed by the Americans and the South Vietnamese, but conveniently not mentioning anything the North Vietnamese did. But then, as they say, history is written by the winners. I’m sure that if the South/Americans had won the war it would be recounted quite differently.

After being thoroughly depressed by how utterly brutal people can be, we walked outside to see a bus load of tourists in Hard Rock Cafe Vietnam t-shirts posing for glamour shots in front of American tanks and helicopters and taking photos of them all jumping with huge grins on their faces. It seemed in extremely poor taste.

We then flew from Ho Chi Minh City to London, England. It was a long haul, including a two hours to Kuala Lumpur, then 13 and a half hours to London. We landed in London at 5 am and actually managed to get in a reasonably full day before crashing at 8 pm. That first day was a long and tired one, but it was worth it to stay up because we’ve suffered minimal jetlag since them.

It felt weird, after more than two months in Asia, to be in a country where we speak the language and have a strong understanding of the culture. I still find myself thinking in advance about transactions the way we’ve needed to so many times, only to remind myself that we speak the same language.

We had four days in London before heading to the mainland (we’ll be back to the UK later). We saw some of the obligatory London sights such as Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, and Tower Bridge. We even tried to go the the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, but if was so packed with people that we decided that we didn’t care enough about it to deal with the crowds. We even saw platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross Station and, for the Harry Potter fans in the audience, no, you cannot walk through it (silly muggles).

As I finish writing this, we’re beneath the English Channel riding the train through the Chunnel and we’ll be in a Paris in about an hour and a half which is très exciting.

Hello from Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. We have big news, but I’ll string you along to the end of the post to reveal it. It does NOT involve babies, so you can all just keep your pants on.

After arriving in Hoi An, we mostly just did a whole lot of walking, eating, and having clothes made at the tailors. Oh, and we had some massages. It was all pretty great.

One of the big highlights (for me at least; Mark eats like a bird) was the food. Hoi An has a few local specialties, one of which is called cao lau. It’s a bowl of delicious chewy noodles topped with beansprouts, cilantro and other greens, barbecued pork, lime, chili sauce, and crunchy fried croutons. There’s a tiny bit of broth at the bottom of the bowl, and you mix it all together and then dig in. Supposedly, you can only have true cao lau in Hoi An, using water from a local well. In any case, we ate it a number of times while we were there, and dudes, it was delicious.

We left Hoi An at shockingly early time — our alarm was set for 3:30 a.m. – but it was worth it, because after two brief flights, we landed in what I can only describe as heaven.

We spent a week on Phu Quoc island, which is sandwiched between Cambodia and mainland Vietnam. The temperature was scorching, but we had a beach hut, delicious fresh food, beach loungers and the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen, so we managed just fine.

This was the view from our bungalow:

We spent the days doing large amounts of absolutely nothing. We slept in, swam every day, took in large amounts of  vitamin D, and watched the sunset every evening.

On a couple of occasions, we even rented a motorbike and tooled around the island a bit. On our last day on Phu Quoc, we took a drive with another couple to Sao Beach, about 90 minutes away. It put our little beach to shame. It was stunning.

Unfortunately we came home with a couple of sunburns (my first one! Mark even had sunscreen on that was allegedly SPF 90 but we think it was fake because he currently looks a little like Dr. Zoidberg), and I had a slightly injured foot from stepping on a sea urchin in the water. Still,  if we ever go back there, I will make a beeline for that beach.

After a week, we dragged ourselves away and we’re currently in Ho Chi Minh City, wrapping up some loose ends before boarding a flight to London.

I know that sounds a little crazy, since we were planning on visiting Cambodia, Thailand, and possibly even Laos before leaving SE Asia, but we took a quick look at the weather forecast last week, saw that Cambodian temperatures were in the high 30s and rising, thought about dragging our cranky selves around Angkor Wat in that heat, and then decided to revisit this part of the world later in the year, possibly on our way to India.

That may be the longest sentence I have ever typed. In any case, we fly to London this Friday, then spend four days there getting over jet lag, sending some stuff home, and then, next Wednesday, we head to Paris, where we’ve rented an apartment in Montmartre for a week. PARIS. PARIS!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t think there are words to convey my excitement, but please picture me jumping up and down, with this look on my face, waving a baguette. I promise to blog about cheese. And wine. Mark can write about the rest.

Vietnam has been incredible, and I feel very sure that we’ll be back here. The kind people, the iced coffee with condensed milk every single day, the food, the scenery, the beaches – we’ve been utterly spoiled and I know we won’t soon forget it.

P.S. For more pictures from Vietnam, click here.

Whew… It’s been a busy few days. I apologize in advance if this is a crazy-long post, but we just have so much to tell you!

As Pia mentioned, after Hanoi and Ha Long Bay we headed to the center of the country to the small-ish city of Hue (pronounced hway), which is just South of the DMZ (demilitarized zone that once separated North and South Vietnam). After the frenetic busy streets of Hanoi, Hue was a breath of fresh air, as was the hot, sunny weather after a lot of grey, misty days in the North.

The biggest sight in downtown Hue is the old citadel, inside which is the Imperial Enclosure (as Lonely Planet says, sort of a citadel within a citadel), and inside that is the Forbidden Purple City (for the emperor’s personal use – a citadel within a citadel within a citadel). We explored the three, stopping for shade, ice cream, and to buy cheap, touristy folding fans to try to keep ourselves from melting in the sweltering heat. We may have looked like stereotypical tourists with those fans, but amidst the armies of white people in souvenir conical hats, we were the height of fashion.

Since many of Hue’s sights are in outlying areas, we decide to book a motorcycle day-tour with Hue Riders, the people we’d already booked to take us to Hoi An (more about that below). We had two guide/drivers, Ty and Linh, who picked us up at our hotel and we hopped on the back of their motorcycles and took off into the countryside.

It was fantastic. I can absolutely see why there is a whole culture of people who travel the world by motorbike. In fact, by half-way through the first day Pia (OK, me too) had already decided that we should buy a motorcycle when we get home.

First stop was out in the middle of nowhere, where we visited some military bunkers that had once been occupied by French, American, and South Vietnamese troops, but seem to now have very different tenants.

We also visited a pagoda where we watched monks chanting, an imperial tomb, a village that makes incense and conical hats, and a second pagoda.

We finished the day off by heading out to a little farming village surrounded by rice paddies. There was a little rice museum where a very sweet lady showed us how they cultivate the rice and what their daily life is like in the village. She didn’t speak English, though, so she gave the presentation using an entertaining combination of pantomime and sound effects.

That last photo is her cutting up a betel nut to show us how they chew them. She offered us some and being either adventurous or stupid we accepted. It was disgusting, made my tongue tingle, and turned my mouth this colour:

She found our reaction to the taste very amusing.

The next day we left Hue for Hoi An by way of a two-day, one-night motorcycle tour which would take us up into the mountains and along part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was used as a supply line by the Vietcong (or National Liberation Front – depending which side of the conflict you ask) during the war.

The trip was fantastic. It took us through a wide variety of landscapes including jungle-covered mountains and valleys, little villages, rice paddies, and farms. Pia even proved that her napping abilities rival that of the Japanese (see this post) by falling asleep on the back of the bike on the first day. The guides ribbed her about that for the rest of the trip.

We stopped in a little village the first morning to get some coffee (have we mentioned that Vietnamese coffee is the best?) and the place also sold some traditional medicines. Here is rice wine with a dead bird and lizard in it:

and a rice wine with a poisonous snake in it, which is apparently good for the bones and the back (we never found out what the other is used for):

One of our guides says he drinks the snake-wine all the time and it really works, the other said he would never touch the stuff.

Traveling this way also let us visit some places we would never have seen otherwise and it was lovely to get to some areas where tourists are not as common. People were so friendly and kids would enthusiastically wave at us with huge grins on their faces.

One of the places we stopped was a little village of one the mountain tribes of Vietnam where we made some little friends who tried to follow us home.

Here’s a little video (if you’re reading this by email you’ll have to visit the site to watch the video):

We spent the night in a tiny town called P’rao, which actually reminded us a little bit of Leavenwoth, Washington (the little bavarian-themed town we visited in June). Obviously it was culturally completely different (we didn’t hear a single accordion in P’rao), but the size of the town and the mountains surrounding it were reminiscent.

The night we spent there was also the night of a “lady-boy” concert which, as near as we can tell, is basically a drag show except that they actually sing. Our guide convinced us to go check it out. It was a small outdoor stage with a sort of carnival midway attached. The lady-boys had not yet started performing when we arrived. We watched some of the carnival games while have the people there watched us, but it didn’t take long before Ty determined that it would be a while before the show started and we just went back to the hotel.

The second day we visited a pineapple farm, where we proved our ignorance by admitting that we thought pineapples grew on trees. It turns out they don’t; they grow low to the ground kind of like cauliflower or broccoli.

The last place we stopped was at My Son, a complex of temple ruins that were built built from the 4th to 13th centuries. Nobody really knows how they got the bricks to stay together because they didn’t use mortar.

The motorcycle trip was such a great experience and will probably be one of our favourite parts of the trip, but by the end of three days on bikes our bums were pretty sore and we were happy to arrive in Hoi An.

Hello ladies and germs! My god, I am hilarious.

Guys, please comment on my blogs. Mark gets all the love and I have resorted to begging. I will respond to anyone who comments with a personalized compliment and/or treasured memory about them that I would have otherwise kept to myself. Incentive!

We are in Hue, Vietnam now and today it reached 34 degrees Celsius. That’s 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit for those of you from the one country that refuses to switch to the vastly superior metric system (rhymes with Schmunited Shtates shmof Shmamerica). I’m not gonna lie, we are pretty gross and sweaty right now. On the plus side, I’ve been having freshly squeezed fruit juices daily in an attempt to cool down! Also, I procured some guava today, which is my absolute favourite fruit.

When we landed in Hanoi last week, it was much cooler. We had the foresight to arrange a hotel pickup from the airport, and there is basically nothing I like more than arriving at an airport and seeing a sign with my name on it…except for maybe arriving at an airport and being greeted by someone who is not paid to be there.

Our hotel was in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, which was right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the city. Our first impressions of Hanoi were that it was like a slightly less chaotic Indian city. There was a lot of car/motorcycle dodging and noise, but we got used to it after a day or two. We had five full days there, and aside from one or two main sights, we mostly just lost ourselves in the streets and had some incredible food.

That last photo is of a 400-year-old, six-foot-long GIANT TURTLE displayed in Ngoc Son temple.

We took a half-day cooking class while in Hanoi, and it was fantastic. The menu was “Street Food” and included spring rolls and barbecued pork. It felt so good to chop some onions. It was almost therapeutic.

We knew we wanted to visit Halong Bay, which is about a four-hour drive from Hanoi. It’s a 1500 square kilometre area filled with over 2000 limestone islands. It was recently named one of the new seven natural wonders of the world and we had heard tell of its beauty.  The most common way of visiting it is by taking a junk boat cruise through the bay. Because it’s such a popular tourist location, there are hundreds of companies offering this service, with an entire range of reviews and prices. We did hours of research and then just sort of picked one, but it turned out fantastically. This is not our boat, but it looked pretty much identical to this one:

This was our super schmancy cabin:

We were on the two-day, three-night cruise with 17 other travellers and a crew of about 8. Everyone on board was so friendly, and having the chance to have a bit of outside contact was really nice. When I travelled through Europe, many moons ago, a four-day gulet cruise through the Aegean was one of the absolute highlights of my trip, and I think Halong Bay will be right up there in our memories of this trip as well. The scenery was phenomenal. I have never seen anything like it and I don’t know if I ever will again.

The first night of the trip, we docked near a giant limestone cave and had a barbecue dinner surrounded by stalagmites and stalagtites.

The food and ambience were both amazing. They brought out course after course and each was accompanied by some incredibly carved fruit decorations. This is the very last one — it took the chef two hours to make and it’s a replica of our boat made from a watermelon and carrots.

The picture doesn’t even do it justice.

We did some kayaking, and would have gone swimming if it hadn’t been so cold and damp. Mostly we just gawked at the scenery — from the kayak, through our cabin window, from the deck of the boat.

We also visited a small floating village called Cong Dam and got to take a quick peek at the lives of the fishermen and their families. We visited the elementary school, which, aside from being only one room, looked suprisingly similar to an elementary school at home.

I won’t get started on the food, but let’s just say that it was some of the best food of this trip — and that includes our road trip. We were very lucky and happy. Plus, each meal ended with a plate of fresh fruit.

It was hard to drag ourselves away from the boat, but we have a lot to look forward to, including a two-day motorbike trip and some hardcore beach time coming up next!

We’re spoiled at home with a wide range of foods available to us, there is nowhere near the variety here. The fact that Pia’s allergic to fish and I’m not too keen on it adds another element because Japanese cuisine has a lot of fish in it. This not only cut back on our options, but meant we had to be very careful when ordering based on pictures rather than words (which was almost all the time). When we stayed at hostels with kitchens we had a little more control but we were still limited to what was available at the store (lots of noodles and tofu) and what we could identify.

We finished off our stay in Japan with four more nights in Tokyo, getting to see the looming Mt. Fuji on our train ride (on a bullet train) from Kyoto.

We stayed in dorms this time (separate dorms the first two nights and the same dorm the second two, as was availability dictated) in an attempt to meet some people and have a tiny approximation of a social life. It mainly showed us that we’re too old and married for dorm rooms. We did, however, meet some really nice people and succeeded in being a little social, hanging out and having beers in the common room. To further make us feel old, we went to bed when a big group decided to take the last train (midnight) to an area known for its bars with the intention of returning on the first train in the morning (6 am). It makes me tired just thinking about it.

The neighbourhood we stayed in this time was quite different from where we stayed the first time, with the surrounding area boasting quaint shopping, a temple complex, Tokyo Tower, and a bulding with a golden chilli pepper(?) on the roof.

Not far from the hostel was a street full of store that sold kitchenwares and restaurant supplies including the fake food that many Japanese restaurants display in their windows to entice you to eat there. Pia desperately wanted a keychain in the shape of a miniature bowl of ramen, but unfortunately we couldn’t find one. We did however find a giant piece of sushi on the sidewalk.

We also went to visited a cat cafe. No, a cat cafe is neither a cafe that serves cats (as food) nor a cafe that serves cats (as customers). A cat cafe is a place where you can hang out with cats (rescued strays) and have a drink if you like. It was really fun.

On the subject of cats… the Japanese love Kit Kats (how’s that for a segue?). We were Skyping with my family the other day and we mentioned Kit Kats and my eight year old nephew (unaware, I imagine, that we could hear him) says, “Oh, not that again.” So, Remy, you may want leave the room.

The Japanese have a surprising variety of Kit Kat flavours. Some of them are only available in certain regions. We bought some of them as saw them, then we went to a store in Tokyo Station that has a super wide selection.

Here are the flavours we tried:

Citrus, Sakura Matcha Latte (sakura meaning cherry blossom), and Air In (bubbly like an Aero bar)

Roasted Tea (pretty tasty actually – not unlike a Coffee Crisp)

Cinnamon Cookie

Strawberry, and Green Tea & Cherry Blossom

Hot Japanese Chili

Almond Tofu

and Yubari Melon

In case you’re really interested in Kit Kats, here are the other flavours we saw:

Matcha
Strawberry Cheesecake
Blueberry Cheesecake
Eitaro Muscovado Syrup
Hotcakes
Red Bean Sandwich
Purple Sweet Potato
Kobe Pudding
Shinshu Apple
Wasabi

So… yeah. Kit Kats are a big thing. I think that sums up the last of our time in Japan. We caught a flight from Tokyo to Hanoi (via China) and are now in Vietnam, which we’ll tell you all about next time.