- The passbook for my bank account
- My camera and phone, both completely out of battery
- My favourite lipgloss
- A black crayola pencil
- 6 hard-boiled sweets
- 2 kirby grips (bobby pins)
- £3.94 in change
- 2 toe socks, worn
- a plastic carrier bag
- loads of loose cashew and pistaschio nuts
- a pack of cards
- 3 mini emery boards
- a christmas card
- a Wispa wrapper
- gum
- a packet of panadol
- 2 loose tooti frootis
- a broken pen
And my favourite, a flyer for Stiff Kitten (a club) on which someone has simply written the word ‘BUM.’

Yesterday was spent eating everything Marks and Spencer sells and washing.

Seriously, I took a preliminary shower, then a bath, then another final shower. Then I whipped out my beautiful Clinique products and got to work on my face. I don’t think I’ve ever been so clean, let alone just since February! It’s marrrrvellous.

The layover in Bangkok was, as predicted, absolutely horrid. We just sat on the floor near the check-in counters for like 6 further hours until we could let the airline know we were even there. We were trying to sleep, but a giant backpack and a floor provide limited options that don’t completely destroy your back. We then had the 11 hour flight, which again wrecked our poor spines and had the added fun of really scary turbulence, and then had a 4 hour wait in Heathrow. Which was actually quite lovely because we got to spend some time at the international arrivals! Which, for all those who have seen Love, Actually, you will know is a fantastic place to be. People running and hugging and crying and giving flowers and kissing small children and not letting go of each other. It’s lovely anyway, but when you are tired out of your mind and are so close to being home yourself and you just see all this love and happiness, you will cry. It was beautiful!

And then, glorious then, we got to go HOME.

Mum met us at the airport with balloons, which was adorable, and we went home, attached them to our garden gate, attacked our previously napping cat with affection, and were home.

I can’t quite believe it, and I literally gasped when I woke up this morning because in my dream we were still in Vietnam, and I did not expect to wake up in my own room. So I woke up with a gasp and then a giant grin on my face.

I’m SO glad to be home and can’t wait to see everyone! And the Roland Garros finals, to which I must go now!

We’ve just flown from Hanoi to Bangkok and are in Bangkok airport for the longest layover eeeever (more than 12 hours.) It’s about to get seriously grim, but has been swell so far because we met a nice guy from Belfast in Hanoi airport and spent the past few hours eating noodles and gelato while having a lol.

He’s now gone for his flight, though, so it’s now time for trying not to kill ourselves while the rest of the hours drag in.

But we’re on our way and very happy about it!

This brief update brought to you by the Green Mango restaurant in Hanoi, providers of excellent fare and an incomparable nearby table full of ridiculous Americans, who said things like:

‘Losing your lipstick is hard.’
‘What, none of your kids went to college in the UK?’
‘It was a really phallic symbol.’
‘The Moldovans were wild.’

to the great amusement of all assembled.

We’ve also been trekking in Sa Pa since last we spoke, which is a tale of reckless paddy-fieldery and steep slopes which ends in no-one being able to handle stairs for days after. In addition, there’s a truely noble portion involving me opting out of the second part of the trek (because 24 kilometres is a distance I in general have issues with, let alone 24km of ridiculous climbing) and also a cautionary tale about using plimsoles and fake Converse you bought on the street instead of proper climbing shoes.

In related news we went to Ha Long Bay, which was magnificent, and we’ve been otherwise loving life in Hanoi.

Em and Sam leave tomorrow morning, and then after that Catriona and I have a stupidly small amount of time left before we go home. I can’t even believe a) that it’s been four months already and b) that four months have gone by so slowly. It’s confusing to say the least! But we’re getting a bit more homesick now that hometime is allegedly drawing nearer, and I think I’ll be thoroughly ready to go home.

I’m even going to be glad to see Heathrow airport. Who knew that could happen?!

We have channels that will give us very up to date episodes of current shows, and a few movie channels that have brought us such classics as The Craft, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Blonde Ambition. Overall, when the business of the day is ended, the tv provides much joy. It, for example, has the Hallmark Channel, which delivers us heartwarming content at any hour day or night. Also Without a Trace, which I had all but forgotten about til a few days ago.

Another stellar option is HBO. Which generally shows pretty recent and pretty decent films. And so we were watching it a few days ago when we stumbled upon the story of a broken marriage. The fireman husband was stricken by a porn addiction and the wife was understandably unhappy. And so the guy went to his father and received help in the form of a book of thoughts and exercises, also of prayers. And the guy’s life changed, and his wife came back to him and wanted to change as well. And he forgave his mother for something, and it was all very happy. There were a few odd lines of dialogue, like:

‘Something has changed in you. I want to change too!’
‘You can!’

But since it was an American Hallmark-style movie from the get-go anyway, we just assumed this was making sure everyone knew how wholesome the film was.

And then the film ended, the screen blacked out and up popped:

FIREPROOFMYMARRIAGE.COM

Which I didn’t recognise, but from which Catriona recoiled in mild terror.

You see, this film, and this website, are part of an extremely Christian movement that’s about giving your life over to God, taking a ‘Love Dare’ where you let him decide how your marriage will pan out and other helpful and constructive ideas for staying in a marriage you don’t want to be in anymore.

And we felt mentally assaulted! What was this doing on HBO? How did we manage to inadvertently consume Christian media? How can I fireproof my marriage? How didn’t we notice until the end?

It was most distressing indeed. And has taught us the virtue of caution towards the television. We must respect it, or it will punish us. We still don’t know what we did to upset it, but we’re sorry!

On top of an excellent range of tv channels in English, spotless sheets, a lovely waterfall-sized shower, a fridge in our room, free breakfast, air conditioning, intensive cleaning of the room daily (I came back to the room at 11am and the girl was literally scrubbing the floor), and overall complete surpassal of our expectations, they have provided us with free internet.

Not in our room like yesterday, but reagardless! It’s free, fast, easily accessible internet in a nice cool room with a very cheery ‘Merry Christmas’ banner and santa-hat fairly lights.

In summary, Charming Hotel is Charming.

And in related news, Hanoi is lovely. It’s like if you took India and removed all the competition, aggression, hassle and rudeness, and replaced it with cheerful people and beautiful purple-flowered trees. Then if you just mellowed it all out some more? That’s Hanoi.

Definitlely aces all round. Which, in an inexcusable pun, brings me back to the tennis. The smaller room did indeed have a TV, (and all the other features of the big room except the internet, actually) and so one or more of the squillion sports channels available to us will deliver the match to us this evening to my great delight.

So you’ll see why we’re so very pleased. Nothing (except the Vaidya, an ‘elite business hotel’ we wangled ourselves into around the time of my birthday, in Kollam. It was beaut, but waay too expensive for more than a few nights) we stayed in India came close to this!

In addition, Em and Sam arrive tomorrow, and have checked in with us so we know all is well so far, so all’s coming together very well indeed.

Including the bar of dark Galaxy I have waiting for me. Excuse me a moment…

The hotel is lovely, as we mentioned, and we’re transferring now to a smaller room, which is just like this one but smaller and therefore cute but sadly without free internet (reasonably, though. I mean, it’s ridiculous we have it now). They’re helpful and friendly and apparently include free breakfast in all their room rates, which is amazing!

There’s a choice of toast with butter and jam, eggs and toast or pho (noodley soup), and with each you get fresh fruit, fresh fruit juice and tea and coffee. Way to own our hearts, Charming Hotel (its actual name. How fitting!). Today we got passionfruit juice and fresh pineapple while a nearby English family celebrated a birthday. It was marvellous.

Also great is the tv in this room, which last night showed me the tennis! (Madrid, Rafa playing Almagro, if anyone cares) And which will presumably, if we have it in the next room (I haven’t seen it yet and Cat didn’t check, boo), show me the final tonight! Which is a Roger Federer vs. Rafa Nadal match and will therefore be a source of endless joy to me. It will also be well timed, because we’re not up to much today. We’re waiting for Em and Sam to join us tomorrow morning, and so we’re not going to go see any sights or anything, so sitting by the lake during the day and watching tennis at night will be a wonderful first day.

Keep it up, Hanoi!

(P.S. As we say, the free internet disappears in about 20 minutes, so while we’ll keep updating more regularly than in, say, Sydney, it might only be every couple of days. Worry not, Mum. )

And that Vietnam seems very promising indeed, and has already been so much less aggressive than India that despite our tiredness, we are quite pleased with life.

Our hotel is currently wonderful, because they made a mistake with the booking and upgraded us for free because they didn’t have the right room. Right now our room includes this free internet, some lovely flowers, an apple-shaped pink alarm clock and a tv with a few hilarious channels. How could we not like it?

Tomorrow we’ll have a look at their other rooms and see what we can actually afford, and report back then on our long term accommodation prospects. They have super reviews online in general, though, so it should be okay regardless.

The most saddening news at the moment, however, is that facebook seems to be unavailable in Vietnam. Not ideal, but it will probably actually be healthy for us in the long run? We’ll soldier on.

Anyways, now it’s time to go eat some food, because the last decent thing we ate was at 7pm last night, and it’s 1pm now and did I mention eeeurrrgh?

And the TV is comparing types of line and making electric fans with human faces projected on them sing and saying that palindromes are the same as homonyms and I’m not alive enough for that right now! So away I’ll go in search of something noodley.

We’ll be trying to update this more regularly now that facebook isn’t happening, we hope!

It was ridiculously good! We got to see the men’s locker room, walk down the Hall of Champions on the route they take to centre court, sit in the media room, go into the arena, (but sadly not onto court as they were preparing for a gig), go into a private box, see the trophies, and were guided around all this by a lovely and super enthusiastic tourguide!

We also happened to be on the tour with Canadian tennis enthusiasts who turned out to be the manager and bassist of Tegan and Sara! Which was fairly unexpected!

It was amaaazing. We also then dandered around the grounds afterwards and discovered that someone had left one of the gates to show court 2 open.

An opportunity (for photos) we did not pass up!

Speaking of which, there are oodles of photos. Here are some that are, I assure you, just the tip of the iceberg. XD

(They work better in Internet Explorer. Mozilla seems to squish them for no reason that I have the ability to fix. View in IE to see them properly!)

“Look Mum, we’re at the Australian Open!!” (In the men’s locker room, in fact. Roger plays cards at that table before matches!)

(In the players’ box!!)

Me and Rod Laver.

Our new bessie, Pat Rafter.

And my personal favourite:

It’s been a WONDERFUL day.