After a rather hard air transport from Ho Chi Minh City to Perth /WA – we took Air Asia from Ho Chi Minh to Kuala Lumpur – 5 hours transfer – 6 hours to Perth. We touched down in Perth at 5 am – really hard time after a 13 hour commute.

Perth is for me always like “coming home” as I spend here almost 3 years for working. For me it is always emotional as I enjoyed the time in Perth very much…. I liked the city …. I liked the people …. and I liked the attitude to work e.g. everything can be solved and we are happy 😊 with a 80/20 solution or even less when we can get the ball rolling……

We stayed with our good friends Basil and Georgie in Applecross – Basil was my boss when I was working in the 90 in Western Australia 🇦🇺 and we still have, after 25 years, stories to tell….. All of us love both as they are so friendly – helpful and courteous.

We spend the first five days in Perth doing our standard e.g. going to Cottesloe Beach to the OBH (Ocean Beach Hotel) – Fremantle (Freo) and this time we went with Tim to Rottnest Island and many other things …… a perfect start in Down Under celebrated with the help from Basil and Georgie.

THANK YOU SO MUCH BASIL & GEORGIE.

Basil and Georgie’s house in Applecross

Tim’s first Eastern in Down Under

Captain Basil

Passengers Anne & Tim

Perth – the City of the Black Swan

Fun at Cottesloe Beach 🏖

“Sun Downer” at OBH (Ocean Beach Hotel)

A day on Rottnest Island with the bike …. watching out for Sting Rays at the beach and Quakka…. we all had a lot of fun…..

We are now preparing for the north….. for one of our dreams swimming with the biggest fish 🐟 in the world – the Whale Shark at Ningaloo Reef…..

After a very emotional good bye from Mrs Tam Tam and Mr Phong and a really cool 😎 beach we left Hoi An towards Mui Ne to relax for a couple of days before we take Air Asia to Perth.

We choose to stay in a state operated luxurious hotel …. you might ask what state operated means … you see very quickly that staff is about double you see in other hotels, processes are not optimized (because nobody is interested) and the responsiveness on requests have a slightly longer delay 😀

Never the less we had a great 👍 room with a rest view to the ocean. Two big swimming pools and in close proximity about 💯 bars and restaurants… so for everyone was s.th. available to have fun…

View from our room daytime

View from our room at night

Vietnamese Coffee

Vietnamese pancake 🥞

Breakfast at The Cliff Hotel

At the hotel pool

Red Sand Dunes of Mui Ne

Fisher Harbor Mui Ne

Keeping in touch with friends at home 🏠 – WhatsApp video call

In the Sports Bar

Writing ✍️ letters to Grandma Grandpa and Petra & Oli

Hoi An was a special visit for us – last time we meet some people here we still keep in our memories. And now we tried to find them again.

First one was a tailor we meet – called Mrs. Tam Tam – she was running a Small tailor shop called blue…. we still use some of the things she made for us …. so we believe it was good quality work.

Mrs. Tam Tam and her team 2008

Mrs. Tam Tam 2018 with Tim and Anne & HP

Things have changed 2008 the shop was rather small ….. 4 people are working in the shop and 10 were working in production …. in 2018 she has now 12 people working in the shop an 40 in production…

We really enjoyed seeing her again and she even remembered us ….. so we left some memories as well…

Dinner 🥘 on the street together with Mrs. Tam Tam …

The second person we meet in 2008 was Mr. Phong – he was working in a restaurant close to the river and offer a tour to his home village about 10 km away from Hoi An. We joint his tour in 2018…..

Mr Phong and Anne in 2018

Mr Phong and family 2008 at the village tour

Anne and Mr. Phong’s mother 2018

Mr Phong 2008

In 2018 we meet Mr Phong again …… he also seems to remember our visit from 2018… a bit older but still very friendly and a funny guy …..

Mr Phong & Anne & Tim & HP in 2018 in Hoi An

Mr Phong was and is still running his tours ….. a Hoi An legacy…..

In Hoi An we had house 🏠 close to the beach 🏖 so we try to spend as much time as we could on the beach enjoying warm weather good food and drinks 🍹 and the warm water…..

Our house…

Our house with our landlords…

On the beach 🏖

Relaxing massage on the beach…..

After 5 days in Hoi An we hopped in a plane ✈️ to Ho Chi Minh City and took a 4 h transport to Mui Ne…… see you there……

To have a bit of a break of busy and rather loud Hanoi we choose to go for two days to Halong Bay – to are of the sleeping dragon.

We did the same tour last time in Vietnam 🇻🇳 but this time we choose for an upgrade e.g. own cabin with great views to the islands and far away from the engine room.

This resulted in a great experience for all of us despite the weather was not perfect.

The tour was nicely completed by additional activities like swinging , cave rowing, squid fishing etc. (luckily we missed the Karaoke 🎤 )

Our cabin: Tim tested all three beds

Our 4* ship

On the boats sun ☀️ deck

First view on the sleeping 💤 dragon 🐉

Activity : Kajak Race and island exploring

Our Guide

In the caves

Tim at squid 🦑 fishing

Some impressions

Last but not least – cooking 🥘 class

We loved to visit again the sleeping dragon. Especially we enjoyed how Tim quickly adopted to the new environments and new people (what we were never really sure).

On the way back to Hanoi to our apartment we spoke a lot what has changed in the last ten years and we had to confess – a lot. People are much more professional and business oriented compare to 2008, the trip to Halong was planed by the minute (what we never experienced before in an Asian country) and many more things….. but still very authentic and people oriented ….. some things will never change 😀.

…… at the airport we got contacted by our landlord …. he organized a driver and the driver could not locate us…. no wonder as we were negotiating with Vietnam’s border protection officials…. this took us some more time and the driver got nervous 😬.

This is also a reason why Vietnamese callers “The Prussians of Asian”. Vietnamese people are very disciplined and most of the things they tell you really happens.

As we were in Hanoi 10 years ago we tries not doing the same things – so we moved in a Airbnb apartment in the middle of Hanoi Old Town – and had a lot of fun.

Street view – in the third floor sharing the house with 4 Vietnamese families.

Some views from our apartment….

Breakfast on our balcony

Having fun in our main room…

Multiple use of our over the street neighbors…. toilette and shower on the right…. laundry on the balcony ….. and behind the laundry kitchen…… very efficient use of one balcony….

For every non believer – kitchen in the cupboard in action…..

On the other side – another fully equipped kitchen….

Street Business in Hanoi

Most of Hanoi’s Old Town Business is street business – you find everything what you need for your day to day life, handyman, Street cooking, grocery dealers and many more …. mostly on very pragmatic ways on bikes …. scooters…. or just open the front door and start a business ….. nothing has changed to much here in the last 10 years…..

Some nice examples …

The Beer 🍺Street

Believe it or not in Hanoi you find a beer street ….. the main party, eating and drinking street in town. You can choose between a known brand e.g. Heineken, Tuborg, Tiger made in Vietnam etc. or s.th. brewed in the living room of the family to get commercialized on the street….

When we visited Vietnam last time this was our favorite ….. it was served on tap e.g. granny went around the corner and filled up a container to fill up empty glasses …. the scenery was impressive especially as one glass was for CHF 0.20 ….

We hope we can find this kind of tradition again…

Beer Steet at 7:30pm

A bit earlier …..

Introducing Tim with banana juice 🥤 ….

And finally we found our traditional home brew beer 🍺 again……

A glass of home brew 5000 VDN (Vietnamese Dong)

And this is…..

…..more to come from Hanoi and its people ……

5 Days on the Road

111 to come

Welcome 🙏 to Vietnam

Our journey to Vietnam 🇻🇳 started with some bumps at the immigration. As we changed our plans some months ago – we decided not to visit India – our Vietnam Visa was valid from 15. March 2018. But we already arrived on the 12. March 2018 and got blocked at Immigration…….

Not a pleasant situation ……

But after long discussions with the border officer 👮‍♀️ and his boss we received an exception ….. we are in….

The alternative would be – fly back to DUBAI – Thailand etc. for two days and come back at the 15. March 2018….. well negotiated Team Frank

In Hanoi we rent a two bedroom flat in the center of the old quarter ….. as the old quarter is very confusing we made a picture of the entrance of our house 🏠….

And the opposite shop ….

And geolocation the place in our cells in Google Maps…..

After five days of hotel luxury we are packing to get of to Vietnam 🇻🇳 …… looking forward to be back again after ten years….

Entertain Tim

Enjoy 😊 the last view from our room …..

And receive a last surprise from the Sofitel team (The World 🌎 Eatery)

It is a pity but we had to go …..

There are many things to do – we decided to go to the Kite – and Food Festival.

Unfortunately no wind at all but other things to do at the beach….

Some Kites were Around

But the cool Stuff happened because there was no wind…… mega Soap Bubbles ….

We tried to catch them….

Better than Kites …..

Food Festival

It seems that most of the food offered was non local …

Therefore we ended up with …..

Hamburger and French Fries …. enthusiasm looks different…..😊😊😊😊🍔🍟🍔🍟

Arriving in Dubai was already an experience as we booked a never used driver service bringing us from DBX to our hotel.

We received a call from the agent a day earlier, still at home, telling us his driver is waiting for us at the exit gate of DBX. This call did not increase our confidence in the transport service.

When we arrived we already worked on option two getting us to the hotel.

Big surprise – the driver was at the gate when we arrived at 11:30 pm in Dubai an brought us to our first stop Sofitel The Palm

Some images from the city

To our surprise we got a room upgrade and we lived the next days in a great apartment.

At the Beach and in the Hotel Pools