Ice Creams

Henry loves icy poles and they are a sure fire way to keep him happy but finding a suitable ice treat proved very tricky. The green icy pole Geoff is holding is apple flavour, smelt and by all accounts tasted like shampoo (mmm, tasty). Many varieties were tried by the way they looked on advertising which just about always bore little resemblance to what was presented and ingredients were never a known quantity as it was all in Vietnamese.
Eventually the kids discovered drumstick like creations (chocolate for the older two, strawberry for Henry) that were deemed acceptable.
Hanoi had an ice cream cafe called fanny's. Meaghan loved it but Henry's strawberry ice cream was a sorbet, more disappointment for the boy.
Cambodia had a few surprises. Around the temples we found one (and apparently one only) ice cream seller, who sold Callipo's, Henry's favourite. The high light restaurant for the entire trip was a place called the Blue Pumpkin (aka Heaven after along hot day) that served the best vanilla ice cream I have tasted anywhere. So very yummy.
With anticipation of something smilar, we ordered ice cream at our hotel but were to experience the other end of the ice cream spectrum due to the interesting addition of frozen corn, I can't even begin to guess what they were thinking. (Matt ate most of it...)

traffic

After deciding the last post was too boring I am going to break the trip up into little things that stand out - traffic is the first experience you are exposed to after getting through customs.
We had a taxi meet us from the hotel in Hanoi and although it was our first trip and we weren't used to Vietnamese driving, I still think it was the wildest ride we went on (although Ho Chi Minh traffic was a step up in eye popping behaviour again).
Seat belts are rare, esp in the back and mostly the only cars on the roads are taxis/minibuses. taxis always have ornaments on the dashboard (this one had an assortment of nodding creatures - more likely are religious figures, all the help they can get I suppose). There are five lanes on any road, no matter how wide, the outside lanes are for the millions of motorbikes and pushbikes, the inner lanes for cars, trucks and buses and the white line lane for general travelling, overtaking and avoiding the people also using the white line coming the other way.
Overtaking is easy, come up behind the car/truck/bus in front, blow your horn, flash your lights and in extreme cases (as on the first trip) use your hazard lights and they will eventually move into the motorbike 'lane' (hooting at motor bikes as they push them out of the way). The bizarre thing is with all this noise and lights and so many bikes, we only saw one or two accidents (and then only low speed dings) and there was absolutely no road rage. If someone cut off any of our drivers, they would just shake their heads and give a wry smile. it actually works.
Crossing the road as a pedestrian can be heart stopping, as zebra crossings are on the road, but more as if Vietnamese had seen them on tele and thought they looked good, rather than any notion of what they mean. Unfortunately we didn't get any decent photos of this as we were hanging on to whatever we could grab most of the time.
Crossing the road tips, just avoid any four wheel vehicles and the motorbikes will generally go around you. easy, Geoff reckons this is the way I walk around malls (maybe..) so I had it down pat, Matt thougth about it too much and was left behind more than once.

24hrs in Kuala Lumpur

After overnighting at the Gold Coast (cheap Air Asia flights out of there and also the busiest airport we encountered on our trip - due to lack of organisation rather than volume handled), we flew to Malaysia for one nights stopover in KL. Just a side note, due to last minute booking we fluked extra long seats (ie business class seats without the service), a very nice way to get over the claustrophobia I had always associated with plane flights - but also the unfortunate effect of all other flights seeming very cramped,. Sigh, just a brief look at the good life only to be cruelly snatched back into reality...
We didn't fly into the main airport - another good thing about flying el cheapo, very quick to get through customs etc. Grabbed a taxi (with seat belts - a rare occurrence over the next weeks) and headed into town. It was really odd, brand new roads and hardly anyone using them, no-one on the streets, just lots of palm oil forests and heaps of building works. All a bit spooky.
Arrived at our hotel and it was great - probably the nicest we stayed in the whole trip. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, pool and walking distance to the twin towers (unfortunately they were closing it in the new year to turn into into a traditional hotel - ie small cramped rooms to make more money).
Henry was desperate for a swim but was not allowed as they were setting up a reception next to the pool - total devastation.
Went for a walk and found out everyone hung out at the park and mall at the bottom of the twin towers. We were offered money for Henry (not sure what for - don't really want to think about it) and shamefully had Hungry jacks for tea :(
Next morning, after very yummy brekky, Henry got his swim and made friends with a family from Singapore. It was here we discovered that Henry knew he was from Australia and he was aware that he was in another country. I'm not sure we had explained this to him at any stage, just we were going on a long plane ride.
We found one of the largest playgrounds I had seen in the middle of the city with a great kids water park, free for all, next to it. Hard to pry henry away.
We walked most of the way to the Menara Tower (4th tallest in the world) with a mini bus taking us up the last steep bit, thank goodness as it was very hot and something like 90% humidity - killer. Nice views, mostly of all the other tower blocks being constructed 24/7, not much more to it. Mad rush back to hotel, back to airport and fly on to Hanoi.

Back home

We are finally back from our overseas odyssey (well, family holiday actually). Everything went pretty much to plan and nobody got sick (a bonus!).
Henry was treated like the superstar we all know he is, with the rumours of blonde headed children being treated like royalty all true. Henry tolerated photos taken, cheeks tweaked and and many questions asked for the first couple of weeks and then went into 'Tom Cruise being chased by the paparazzi' mood.
I hope to put a few of our many, many photos up over the next few weeks starting with these few taken of Henry in the first couple of days, (the army man refused to be photographed unless Henry was in the picture with him) an indication of Henry's experience anyway.
By the way, the other 4 of us had a great time as well but just not quite the attention henry had (although if Matt was just a bit older we could have had a bride for him). We would all reccommend Vietnam and the temples of Ankor in Cambodia as a great place to visit, very cheap once your there and always something to do.
Glad to be back home though.

4 sleeps to go

Time is rushing now and I still have a too large list of things to do before we leave on our holiday. After finally sorting flight from Vietnam to Cambodia and back the travel company has told us of additional fees by the bank (???). I can't even be bothered to argue with them at this stage but at least we don't have to deal with that until we get there.
Unfortunately I will have to nag the airline we are flying with to get to Vietnam as I booked with one passport number (long story) and went to change it to my new passport but can't do this easily. Nightmares followed about watching my family fly off without me, hopefully this will be sorted today or things may get ugly.
We are having our family Christmas on Wednesday night as we will be wandering around Angkor Wat (tomb raider territory) on the actual day - haven't quite worked out how Santa will find us yet...

fishing

Last weekend Geoff took Henry and Meaghan across to visit his mum on the coast (yay, much needed quiet time). While they were there they went fishing. Henry loved it. To top it off he caught two fish - too small to keep but great to keep the interest up. Meaghan was not so keen but still was game enough to put bait on hooks and sit still for quite a while.
A couple of days later we were in the news agency and Henry was staring intently at a magazine (very near the adult magazines). I hurried over to make sure it was nothing inappropriate and sure enough it was a fishing magazine - he has his eye on a big fish now.

School visits

Henry and his friends are readying themselves for Kindy next year by a couple of visits to Curtin School. They were met by there yr4 buddies who showed them around the school, finishing with a play outside. I am not sure Henry is quite ready to think about it yet - he is a take one day at a time boy but he will enjoy school I think (hope!!).
Tomorrow they get to go to the canteen to spend 10c all by themselves as well as having a lesson with a kindy teacher. Should be fun - Henry is keen to wear his uniform "just like Meaghan's".