views from our balcony

Another business class flight (domestic) – which was again amazing.

How did we score this, you ask? Optiontown!**

You register (and pay) for an ugrade on certain airlines and if seats are available, they’re all yours. If not, you get a refund. Our Cambodia to Hanoi uograde was AU$90 (combined) and the Hanoi to Danang AU$50 (combined)!

You don’t get all the business class perks – no access to the lounge for example – but you do get incredible service, real cutlery and china, huge seats and vast leg room. On both of these flights we got comfy business class buses to the terminal while the economy peeps were squished-up in the manner of a peak-hour Sydney bus.

I could very easily become accustomed to this mode of travel! Though probably not enough to fork out the vast amounts required to pay for a business class seat outright.

Unfortunately Qantas doesn’t participate in Optiontown, so no upgrade for us on the long legs of the trip. We paid for the majority of the Qantas flights with points though – we push about 95% of our regular spending (groceries, utilities bills etc) through the credit card and the points accumulate fairly quickly – so basically those were pretty much free.

xxx

** Clever Joan-intrepid-traveller (and our go-to for all things travel related) first used this on an international flight a couple of years ago. I’m happy sharing because there are like 10 of you reading and I’m pretty sure that the likelihood we’ll be competing for the same flights is less than 0.0000023%

Yes, I’m on holiday and it’s a time to be a bit less disciplined, but I really need to ease back just a little on the Cambodian/Vietnamese/Hanoi coffees, the festive fruit drinks and the very excellent croissants and pastries for breakfast.

I’m very fortunate we’ve been walking so much (racked up another 10km+ today), else I’d be really risking achieving #4 on the 50before50 list – stay (well) under 70kg. 

As it is, I think we’ll be easing back on the calories post-Easter!

That moon-like object in the sky is the sun – taken this afternoon.

Pollution has been nuts for the past couple of days and our respiratory systems are not huge fans. And we’ve been doing all the epic walking, so we decided to take a rest day today – a holiday from the holiday!

After a leisurely breakfast, we took some laundry to get done.

All this was washed, dried and folded was $2 – the equivalent for the hotel was over $50. They even clipped the socks in pairs with those little plastic price tag things** so they wouldn’t separate – which I think is genius.

We did a few other admin tasks and I had my first actual massage! Sure, I’ve had kinda sorta massages as part of body wraps and scrubs, but this was the first really proper one. I was so tight! I feel so relaxed! I must to this more often – it would do wonders for my running!

Sadly it’s our last day in Hanoi tomorrow. It’s a really beautiful city and we’ve loved wandering about and discovering it. We’re planning to eat all the phở and drink all the egg coffee (which sounds wretched, but is completely amazing^^) before we leave. Then we head off to Da Nang.

xxx

** apparently called tagging barbs!

^^ thanks Daniel!

It’s quite possible that we walked even further today than yesterday, but I’ve not had the chance to map it out – we’ve barely been around long enough to get near an internet connected device.

I’m currently backing up photos to the travel laptop from the DSLR, I think for every one I’d consider decent, there are about 20-30 which are just dreadful. Steep learning curve this! The challenge of the camera operation is possibly one of the reasons I’m missing the ease of the pauvre lost iPhone. This is one of those things I’m not great at that I’d really like to master.**

xxx

Oh! Future post idea!

Those SOScough tablets worked a treat, I don’t appear to have any side effects and I was only once awakened by a terrible bout of coughing. Must acquire some more to take home.

I’m now in the acceptance phase of the phone loss and am taking some pretty horrible shots with my iPad (such a bad camera) and loads more with the DSLR. 

Not having the phone makes me wish I was better at sketching because I’ve long thought I’d love to do it as a way to capture holiday bits and pieces. Don says maybe I should see the phone incident as an opportunity and do something about it. Possibly – though I’m already pursuing enough things that I’m terrible at without adding more to the mix.

Today we walked approximately 13km (probably a smidge more). I’m completely knackered, but this is definitely my favourite kind of holiday activity (including the exhaustion).  I think I may totally claim this as one of the 50before50 hikes – though probably not a hike in the strictest sense of the word. I expect we’ll rack up a similar distance tomorrow.

This was going to be the post where I recounted my exciting experience as a Business!Class! passenger on our flight from Siem Reap to Hanoi. My first time in Business!Class! And it was just as excellent as I had imagined.

Instead this is a post about how I lost my phone this morning. And all of my holiday snaps along with it – for of course they had not been backed up.

I’d spent a good deal of last night coughing, so we agreed it was imperative that we find a pharmacy and do something about it. I’d been hoping it would just go away, but seems to be getting worse – especially after another flight.

It was raining, windy and quite cold (comparatively) so we grabbed umbrellas and headed out. I looked at my phone to confirm route as we stepped out the door of the hotel, pocketed it, turned a corner, ran across a busy street and half the other at a 4 way intersection – all up, maybe 200-250m. I patted my pocket** halfway across the second street and realised my phone was gone, we turned back immediately, but couldn’t find it. The whole thing happened in just a few minutes.

There were absolutely no pedestrians around, so we assume one of the approximately 37,897 scooter riders at the intersection snatched it up as they rode past. It was so quick!

I don’t really give a toss about the actual phone, but I am incredibly upset about the loss of the photos. Fortunately it is *only* the holiday photos (I think) and I do have a bunch I took with the proper camera, but I’m really sad to lose the spontaneous shots of things like funny signs, shots out the window of the plane, all of my festive non-alcoholic drinks &etc.

Go back up your photos RIGHT NOW, I’ll wait.

Needless to say there were many, many (many) tears.

We reported it to the hotel in the incredibly naive hope that someone had handed it in, but of course they hadn’t. We later received a call that they’d looked at the CCTV footage (now that is going over and above!) and didn’t see anything fall out of my pocket within camera range.

I’m trying to be zen about it and really it is absolutely nothing in the scheme of things and first world problems and all that, but I’m totally wallowing. Of course I will do neither, but I’d really just like to either Go Home or drink All The Wine. Maybe I will eat All The Chocolate.

On the upside, I later purchased drugs for my cough by using mime! Of course we later googled to make sure they weren’t anti-convulsives^^ or something similar – my acting skills being rather questionable.

Expect some pretty ghastly iPad photos in all of our futures.

xxx

** I’m always worried about losing pocketed stuff, so I pat the pocket constantly – clearly I need a different approach.
^^ yeah, the SOSCough was probably always going to be for coughs

It’s very late, we just checked into our hotel in Hanoi and I am completely knackered.

We had an utterly amazing flight – which I’ll cover in excruciating detail tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, here’s a hint:

For the first time in a very long while, I missed my daily post yesterday. And just like the last time, because of ill-health.
We’d scheduled a tour of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom (Bayon temple) and Ta Prohm. All was peachy until we got there when I was overcome with nausea and felt very faint – it was also incredibly hot which didn’t help at all. Despite my reluctance, we cut Angkor Wat short and I napped in the car while Don checked out the Bayon temple with our guide. 

We came back to the hotel around midday for a rest, a shower and some anti-nausea drugs and we headed back in the afternoon to see Ta Prom – which was really quite amazing. 

Don was feeling none too fabulous either, so we skipped dinner and spent the rest of the evening sleeping and recovering. 

Now thankfully feeling about 85% (as opposed to the 2% of yesterday morning) and managed to get out and about today.

We’re back to Angkor Wat tomorrow for a second attempt before we fly on to Hanoi.

(It’s almost like I need to plan a week of pre-holiday to acclimate health-wise before I start the actual holiday)

Today:
➕ we went for quite a long walk along the river
➕ lazed about by the pool, lazed about in the pool, lunched by the pool
➕ don took his iphone swimming
➕ i lost my voice apart from squeaks – possibly the most peaceful day Don’s had for years
➕ i read and read
➕ don got a fabulous massage
➕ my back improved tremendously (thanks to very good sleep on nicely firm mattress)
➕ brilliant dinner at malis
➕ drank many fabulous non-alcoholic drinks!

It’s 9pm. My body thinks it is 1am.

Woke with a pretty sore throat, but I did go to the gym this morning and felt Very Smug for doing so. 

This probably exacerbated the sore lower back I’ve been gestating which is, well, damned annoying. I think this is mostly due to too much aeroplane, though picking up Don’s fully laden suitcase (not using my knees!) probably didn’t help either. A lovely pharmacist in Changi airport hooked me up with some voltaren (equally as complicated to buy as it is in Australia).

We flew to Siem Reap this afternoon and owwwww. I plan to get a massage tomorrow which hopefully will make a dent in the pain. We’re here for a little bit, so hopefully that will let things settle too.