Category: Australia/Vietnam Revisited 2025
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Australia and Vietnam Revisited 2025 – Hanoi day 1
I felt as flat as a pancake today. This is only to be expected, a usual reaction of mine when saying goodbye to loved ones and moving on. I always feel like just going home. This time also not helped by a sad anniversary and the bloody awful weather. The weather! Foggy, wet and cold.…
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Australia and Vietnam Revisited 2025 – Adelaide Ooma’s 100th birthday
Family gatherings are intimate things, and when the much loved, but frail matriarch of that family reaches one hundred years old it’s emotionally charged. It’s far too intimate to be discussed in this blog but I do feel a novel coming on which will be written in my dotage. Maybe. What I can say is…
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Australia and Vietnam Revisited 2025 – Ozling time Days 4-8
Ian and Kylie have generously used some of their precious leave to spend time with us. Kylie in particular has assumed the role of Entertainments Executive. When she isn’t guiding us around various local hotspots, she’s pointing us in the right direction of various walks to do and places to see, giving us full instructions…
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Australia and Vietnam Revisited 2025 – Ozling time Days 1-3
We have arrived in Australia on the weekend before Australia Day, also the last hurrah of the kid’s summer holidays. It’s going to be busy. On our last visit to Oz in 2016, Ian and Kylie lived in Noosa. The house they rented got sold for redevelopment and a care home for the elderly has…
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Australia and Vietnam Revisited 2025 – Sydney
Luckily, the sick lady on the plane appeared to survive the night as we didn’t have to turn tail back to Vietnam. Unluckily the premium economy seats this time were nowhere near as comfortable as our previous flight. Furthermore, the strength required to adjust the chair and footrest was that of an athlete and I…
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Australia and Vietnam Revisited 2025 – HCMC day 2
Sleep didn’t come easily last night so when the alarm went off at 7.30am I requested an emergency half hour addition to our allotted wake up time. Jet lag is one of those things it’s better not to succumb to, but this morning it was very tempting to just keep sleeping. A workout at the…
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Australia and Vietnam Revisited 2025 -Ho Chi Minh City Day 1
After a very comfortable and easy flight, we did the usual “how come passport control all over the world is so uniformly slow?” routine at HCMC airport. It’s the ultimate in a display of passive power over people who can’t do a damn thing about it. We were so long, most of the luggage from…
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Australia and Vietnam Revisited 2025
How can we tear ourselves away from our babies for a whole month? Babies include not just our delightful grandsons but our whole family group – boys and girls – to whom we feel inextricably linked. Is it nature that makes us feel this way? Like chimps living in a big family circle. Whatever it…
Middle-aged flash packers 