
It’s not often that you get treated like a good luck charm, welcomed with open arms everywhere. It’s even less common for this to happen when you’re a red-faced sweaty mess, but happen it did in the waterside villages of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, as we (accompanied once again by Den and Babs) cycled through during the Lunar New Year’s Tet […]

For the last week, Saigon has been filling with flowers. As the numbers of Westerners diminish and the hotels and restaurants become crowded with revisiting expat Vietnamese and those taking an early holiday, the signs have been abound that the Vietnamese Lunar New Year festival of Tet is almost here. In the large central park in District 1, orchids and […]

As the flower displays have sprung up around Ho Chi Minh City and the orchids have begun to bloom for Tet (the Lunar New Year festival,) we have continued to spend time with the children from Allambie. Cinema trips, the zoo, bowling and games in the park have all helped us to get to know this fantastic group, and for […]

Never ones to over sell things, ‘amazing’ is a word we try not to use too casually. However, our time in Saigon has truly been ‘amazing’, thanks to our new friends from Allambie Orphanage It seems a bit strange calling it an orphanage because it feels more like a family home. In fact, that’s exactly what it is, thanks to […]

Our time in Asia has yeilded one universal truth: you’re nothing here without a motorbike. But, we’re not too keen on the traffic or the insurance issues related to driving the things so, as we head off each day to meet our new friends (more to follow soon) we’ve decided…if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em! (ps if you can’t […]

Let’s get one thing straight: the Vietnam War was not very funny. Not at all. So it was a little surprising to find the tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels to be so bereft of gravitas. The tunnel system became enormous from the 1950s through to the 1970s, stretching for an estimated 250km. The protection, camouflage and communication and storage […]

For those of you not familiar with the classic 1980s video game “Frogger”, it involved guiding a frog across a hectic road full of cars, bikes and lorries, with the aim being to get to the other side without being squished. If you fancy a game, click here. For us here in Ho Chi Minh City (the official name for […]