Good Morning Vietnam!

We stopped by Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) before catching a flight to Nha Trang the following day. Even though our time here was short, we can tell you that this city is INSANELY busy! 10 million people, 6 million scooters. The traffic is chaos every second of the day and to add to it, we don't think there are any rules as to how folks drive around here! Amazingly enough, drivers are pretty good at dodging scooters, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, pedestrians and other cars when driving across 4-5 lanes of traffic!

Early morning traffic that wasn't bad at all; night before, completely saturated with 10x the number of vehicles (would've taken a picture but didn't want to get run over!)

The neighbourhood we hung out in for the day

Food was good in Saigon too of course...and the price was even better! We found a Vietnamese rice noodle chain restaurant called Pho 24...Hank got a decent sized bowl of chicken pho, springrolls and a coke for $4! We went back the next morning for some more before we left for the airport :)

Dinner at The Barge

We walked down the street the other night to check out another resort's restaurant called The Barge. It was such a beautiful setting - our table was right on the beach!

vegetables in crispy flower cups

duck & lychee curry, pad thai noodles stuffed in egg omlette, honey chicken in banana leaves

us getting ready to stuff our faces :)

You know you're too full when you have to pop some tums in the middle of the night! Post again soon, on route to Vietnam :)

Island Safari Day

We ventured off one day and signed up for an island safari tour. The jeep arrived promptly at our hotel lobby at 9am and we climbed our way onto the back seats and hung on for dear life due to the lack of seatbelts! The tourist destination was about a 35 minute drive through the city and a few turns later, we entered a jungle...a very green one that was lined with LOTS of coconut trees and filled with animals we wanted to see!


Our first stop was to visit the baby elephants...they're so adorable. I paid 50 bahts (just over $1 CAD) for a basketful of bananas and got a chance to feed them! I laid the banana on the palm of my hand and they'd use their trunks to sniff it out...kind of a weird feeling at first! They're skin isn't exactly the softest in the world and they'd wrap their li'l wet snouty trunks around the yellow fruit and would just toss it in their mouths like how we'd pop tic tacs. They're also quite greedy...and tricky! If you're trying to feed another elephant, the other one will just non-chalantly try to reach over and grab more bananas from your basket with its trunk! Bad elephant!


During the monkey show, we learned that aside from playing, eating and sleeping, they also climb coconut trees every day to help the locals collect coconuts. Thanks to their help, Samui exports an average of 3 million coconuts to the rest of Thailand on a monthly basis!


After watching a Thai boxing match, it was our turn to go elephant trekking. Back in the day, this was how their kings and royalty travelled around town! During the ride, our driver presented us with some jewelery he made as he was steering the elephant. He weaved two rings and a bracelet out of one long green leaf. Impressive...but even more so was how the rings fit our fingers perfectly!



Our day trip ended with a long drive to their famous waterfall. We were expecting something spectacular but instead, it appeared to be similar to the falls we can find hiking through Lynn Valley and unfortunately, nothing like the Niagra! We also took part in a canoe ride down a private river....which in fact was really just a hot pink blow-up rafty thing - nothing near an actual canoe at all but was still fun :)

Overall, our day was really eventful but we did question the reality of how our animal friends were being treated at this tourist attraction. After all the shows were performed, it made us very sad to see them chained or tied up to trees or their cages. We even witnessed some trainers whacking them on the head & tugging on their ears to obey their commands. We left feeling really bad and hope that the animals behind these gates are better off than we think...tourist's remorse is what we're calling it for now! xoxo safari friends!

Our day-to-day

Some more pictures of where we're spending a lot of our time in Samui:

Bhundari's entrance

another view of the lobby

swimming pools #3 & 4

swimming pool #5 with a bar

Our days here have been pretty routine now. We wake up early, enjoy a breakfast buffet, go out and find our tanning chairs, go for a swim, tan, play in the water again, grab lunch & snacks, tan a bit more then end our day in the jacuzzi before eating & drinking again :)

drinks, breakfast, canapes, thai fried rice, pad thai (it is brown here!), mango & banana spring rolls with ice cream

One day, we decided to indulge ourselves and enjoy a day at the resort's spa. We chose the couple's package which took up 4 whole hours!

• steam therapy
• detoxifying scrub/sea champagne body wrap
• orange blossom milk bath
• deep tissue/aromatherapy massage
• facial treatments
  

Yup...one of the best 4 hours ever!

2nd Leg: Koh Samui, Thailand

After a five hour plane ride to Hong Kong and then another 3 hour flight to Koh Samui...we finally made it to Thailand! Our resort was less than 10 minutes away from the airport (thank goodness!) and it appeared even nicer than what we saw on the Internet when we were booking our holidays :)

Here is where we're hanging out:

Bhundari Spa Resort, our bedroom, our balcony, our bathroom

our view from the balcony

our lobby

one of our favourite swimming pools

another pool & jacuzzi underneath our favourite swimming pool

Time to go tan on the other side of the resort now so we'll post again later!

Two-seventy...Again!

We decided our last dinner in Japan should be back at the 270 yen restaurant. They had a wide range of variety and there was so much more we wanted to try! Funnily enough, we had a different host seat us that night...he tried to explain to us that their menus weren't in English. Hank steps in and was all, "Don't worry! We know!" As he hesitantly sat us down, we quickly worked the touch-screen system pretty well and must've blown him away :)

Our dinner consisted of:

Slices of toast baked in cream cheese, tobiko & mayo on a hot plate of grilled cheese, calamari, more tako balls, deep fried octopus & tuna tartare with quail's egg

Potato salad with tobiko & toast, unknown fish sushi, and at the time & a very questionable dessert!

This was what we ordered for my sweet tooth:


Doesn't it look nice and fluffy? Maybe coconut-like or perhaps ice cream? I slowly unwrapped what looked like two sheets of wet Bounty paper towels and tried it anyways!

......it was good! I thought it was cold whipped cream cheese that was sweetened! (Hank just thought it was whipped cream!) The li'l dish of red sauce was still a mystery though. It definitely looked like chili sauce but was thinner in consistency...and it didn't taste like anything! Oh well, at least we tried it and had another fab experience at 270 :)

We 'Heart' Crepes

Crepes are EVERYWHERE in Tokyo. Small mom & pop shops, big chain shops, even small little stalls at the end of a street exist. It's too yummy not to write about! The variety seems endless and lots of food vendors tend to make plastic versions of their dishes and display it by their front doors to make your mouth water. How does one decide?!

You can order cold ones, hot ones, sweet ones, salty ones, spicy ones...whatever! They make it all :) I had one once a day. Wait. Let me rephrase...I stuffed my face with one once a day. Flavour of choice: fresh bananas, custard and hot caramel. YUM! In the photo below, Hank had one with lettuce, tuna, a hot dog weiner and corn! (Sounds a bit odd we know, but it was really good!)


So seriously, how do you go wrong with them? It's made in front of your eyes, it's fast, inexpensive and super duper yummmmy!