Die Hard Three

… no

One of the most annoying features of non-EU multi-country travel is having to deal with different currencies. It’s annoying. Exchange rates and withdraw fees and finding banking machines that actually work and don’t dispense bills that are too large to be accepted by the locals and aren’t modified to skim your PI Number and extra bills left over when you leave the country.

But on top of that there’s been some good comedy to be found with the various currencies we’ve encountered on this journey. I already made a funny about the Zambia money – Kwachas totally sounds like Quatloos (joke reprinted here for your reading convenience)

I’m going to bring some Zimbabwe money to the next poker game and watch the looks on Steve’s and Mark’s faces when I buy in for several thousands year’s worth of games.

You guys are going…. down!

And finally there’s the money in Vietnam. Comedy gold.

We were always running out of dongs. The Vietnam money is the dong.

So this is it – we’re heading home. Sort of. We left Hanoi a few hours ago and we are now on an eight-hour layover in Taipei. I was hoping we could pop out of the airport for a couple hours and grab something to eat so I could add a new country to my list but then two things happened.

First, I realized I’ve already been to Taiwan because according to China this is China and I visited China back in 2008*. Second Sarah scored us TWO all-you-can-eat passes to the Luxury Lounge at the airport. And this is where we are now. Eating free food and drinking free beers.

Originally I wanted this “vacation” to be longer. I said, Sarah, we should go for seven weeks or even EIGHT weeks. And Sarah was like, nah, under six weeks is more than enough. And then I was like seven! And then we booked five and four fifths weeks of travel and I forgot about it until just now when I was like – holy crap, I wanted this thing to go longer!? What the hell was I thinking?!!

We now fly to Vancouver. Canada is going to be so strange after being away for so long. I wonder if the Vancouver airport international terminal has a McDonald’s restaurant…

*also right now China is arresting Canadians left right and centre so I need to be as pro-China as I possibly can. I do NOT want to spend the rest of Peanut and Pepper’s birthday in a Chinese prison. All hail glorious China!

So this is our final night on the great continent of Asia. Tomorrow we fly to a new country in transit to a familiar country. And how did we commemorate this evening? By going to the “Obama” restaurant.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, back in 2016, chef Anthony Bourdain traveled to Hanoi to film an episode for his Parts Unknown television show. What made this one so special is that he had lunch with the President of the United States at this little hole in the wall restaurant.

We ordered the “Combo Obama” and it was delicious. Noodles, beef, and pork in a broth with beer and spring rolls on the side. Was a great final meal in a country that might have had the best food of the whole trip.

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For some reason I thought these were the James Bond islands – but then by some weird co-incidence The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) was actually playing on TV when we were on the boat and the film clearly took place in Thailand (which also has some similar-looking islands in the south).

And because of this experience I now totally understand why he was cast in the Lord of the Rings *and* Star Wars – Christoper Lee is a real force on screen – at 6’5” you can totally believe he could take down James Bond and/or various other hobbits and space/ground wizards. I mean, he never does but it is realistic in the sense that if he did you wouldn’t be disappointed.

Farming in the middle of the big island (Cat Bo)

More farming:

And the famous non-James Bond Islands.

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I’m here a week now… waiting for a mission… getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.

We landed eight days ago. Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam. I haven’t been posting because I’ve been ill. It started in Sri Lanka and it felt like pneumonia. I know this because last year I did get pneumonia and it had similar look and feel. Not wanting to make the CBC News back home “Canadian Man Falls Ill During Trip to Asia After Spider Egg Dare” (or some variant of), we decided to take it easy for a couple of days until the worst had passed.

I called Tele-Health Ontario and for the first time in the history of the service they didn’t send a caller to see a doctor. The nurse Stephanie was great. She took my list of symptoms (achy neck, coughie lungs, cloggie sinuses, painful everything else) and advised me to take the emergency antibiotics our doctor had prescribed proactively.

One of the side effects of the drugs however was to mess up the one part of my system that was working fine – the same part from that train ride back in India. The cure sounds worse than the disease? Actually no – the rest of me was in pretty rough shape – my head holes were killing me – so I welcomed the tradeoff. Our Ho Chi Minh City hotel was great so I was more than happy to hang around there while the Azithromycin engaged in a form of asymmetrical warfare against my lower colon.

Three days later I was feeling much better. But we had to cancel our thirty-six hour train ride to Hanoi. We stayed one extra night and flew north. This kinda sucked because I was looking forward to that adventure. The other train rides on this trip had been really interesting.

Once we got to Hanoi things returned back to normal travel mode. Local food. Local sites. The night market cometh. This city is very cool. Lots going on. Tonnes of traffic. Here are some photos.

Hanoi at night:

A meal – the restaurant served one dish, and one dish only, Vasily.

And the Vietnam Women’s Museum was amazing – a must see.

Next up was the Ha Long Bay luxury boat cruise. This deserves it’s own post.

Today is another travel day. This one was probably the most toughest because I have a cold and flying while ill, well, that’s no fun. But it’s not just the cold or the air travel – yesterday morning we had to catch our train at 09:20 but we were awake by 05:50 because our Air-B-N-Be was right by a mosque and the adhan (call to prayer) happens right around sunrise.

With our flight leaving at 23:00 we had plenty of time. The plan was to arrive in Colombo at around 15:30, grab something to eat, and then have a leisurely wait until our flight. Eight hours should be more than enough time.

Except our train was two hours late picking us up and another hour late dropping us off. And our ride to the airport was almost ninety minutes (double the estimate) and our driver was insane. By the time we cleared customs/immigration and checked in to our flight we had about an hour and a half before boarding.

Now we’re in another airport in another country in another timezone waiting for a connecting flight to take us to yet ANOTHER city in ANOTHER country in a new timezone.

I miss my dogs. At home when I’m feeling bad Pepper will come up to me on the sofa and be like, hey you – give me a belly rub, and I’ll do it and he’ll feel much better.

I’m totally behind on the blogging – sorry about that! The new country we’re leaving today is Sri Lanka. We had two nights in Colombo then we took the train to tea country – a city called Nanu Oya – which is where we are right now waiting for our return train to Colombo where we fly out to our next country. So here are some images (moving and still) of our time here.

It’s a great country. Highly recommend.

There are many waterfalls.

The train ride was great. We were at the back of the train and the train had this massive viewing window.

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Can you guess where? I’m too tired to come up with any clues. It’s a county that Sarah picked.

I suppose that’s sort of like a clue…

Bus picture unrelated (not a clue). Or is it? (it isn’t). Even though I’m sure where we’re going has buses. Still not a clue.

Tomorrow is another travel day and we have an early flight so we decided to get a hotel close to the airport for the night. Sarah found this one online and she must have been thinking about me when she chose it because it’s located about a hundred metres from the Indian Naval Aviation Museum.

I think I can honestly say I’ve never been in a museum this interesting. What’s cool about it is that it’s not generic to the army or navy or air force, but it’s focused on a specific aspect of warfare (naval aviation, basically doing army stuff but over water).

They had a tonne of great anti-submarine warfare (ASW) stuff and my favourite would have to have been this RGB-48 sonobuoy – the type that would have been used when the Red October was detected while navigating Red Route One. I’d never seen one before. Very cool.

Also tonight, instead of dogs barking we have the actual sounds of actual fighter jets actually taking off and landing. They are doing this literally a hundred feet from our room, three or four sorties per hour – the Naval Aviation Museum happens to be right next to an actual, operational naval aviation military base: INS Hansa, Goa – the home of Indian naval air squadron NAS 551.

Also some dogs are barking now.