New Apartment

After living in 68 Crown Street for about 4 months we really liked the area but there were a few things about the old place that were bothering us, so the best solution was to move about 5 doors down to 63!! The new place has a bit more room and is more modern with better facilities (it even has a spare room for any visitors !!)The only problem was it came completely unfurnished so we had to pretty much buy everything but the kitche sink. We've gradually been picking up furniture here and there for all the rooms and thankfully we are now pretty much done, so here are some pics ...

Our First Aussie Holiday!

We took a few days off work (well Ro is changing job so has a nice break in between), rented a jeep and headed north. We stopped at a Koala Sanctuary in Port Macquarie and then drove onto Byron Bay which is absolutely beautiful with some great restaurants and lovely beaches (even if it is a bit windy). On our way home we stopped off in Hunter Valley for 2 nights and did lots of wine tasting! We also purchased our biggest holiday souvenir ever...a wine barrell for the balcony!!

Melbourne June 2008

A savage time was had by all in Melbourne, despite the fact that we lost the rubgy (but had front row seats and lots of green stripes on our faces)! It was great to see Deirdre and Danny again before they head off on their travels back to Ireland. There was an awful, awful lot of alcohol consumed (the bono debate being a sure sign of too much drink!)! The slight problem of Ro and Danny carrying the massive "for lease sign" (for their apartment) inside and up two flights of stairs into Dee and Danny's apartment (it was funny though!) and hilarious that Dee, despite being cross, praised Danny "for all his effort in the lifting"!!!!! Thankfully Ro was sober enough to drag Orla, Duff and Aine out of the bar and to the airport in time!

Thanks for the lend of the jersey Dee!

Pictures of Sydney Apartment

Here are some pics our apartment in Sydney our new address is :

2/68 Crown Street,
Woolloomooloo,
NSW 2011
Australia

What really attracted us to this place was the numeber of o's in the name!!

Unfortunately its only 1 bed but there is 2 comfortable couches if anyone is planning a visit, I also have the added benefit of being able to see where I work from the balcony.

Dublin - The Return

Well to everyones great surprise we arrived home early as a little Valentines Day treat for all our family and friends. With Ro being home for only 10 days before heading back to Sydney there were some busy busy days (filled with job and apartment hunting) and even busier nights - far too much school night drinking went on. Orlas back for a few more weeks to study so hopefully now that Ro's headed off a lot more studying and a lot less drinking will be the result (haha!!). Thanks to everyone for reading the blog, we hope it didn't depress you all and instead made you want to do some travelling and come visit us in Sydney, there will always be a bed, couch or floor for any of you!xxx p.s. if anyone knows of a cheap way to get some 4000 photos developed do let us know!!!!

Bangkok

Thanks to the generosity of Orla's parents we were treated to the luxury of 3 nights in the very fancy Marriott Hotel. The Hotel was really spectacular with amazing furnishings, but have to say the prices for food & drink were a bit of a shock. Normally in Thailand we'd spend between $2/3 each on our dinner, but in the Marriott you wouldn't get a sandwich for less than $6.

Between 11 trips to the tailors , picking up a few things for our families and trying to post the majority of our things to Australia we really didn't have enough time for the touristy things. We visited wat pho which is pretty spectacular, but as were planning on returning in the not too distant future we'll get to see that grand palace!!

Hanoi

Not even worth a blog entry after 14 hours on a crappy night bus with next to no sleep we had to argue with taxis for bout 30 mins in the cold to get a fair price for a taxi to the airport (as we didn't have much money we could only afford $15). Then we sat miserably in the horrible airport for 6 hours waiting for our flight to leave.

Have to say the flight was grand and we were delighted to arrive in Balmy Bangkok.

Hue

Brr...its cold (and rainy) in Hue. Got in late and so had a few beers, a feed and Ro greedily held the pool table in a local bar for the evening! Next morning it was still cold and rainy (thank god we invested in winter coats in Hoi An), so off we set with socks and flip flops (the style) to visit the Citadel. The Citadel is pretty impressive but harder to enjoy while avoiding the puddles of mud and water (and the people looking at us strangely in our socks and flip flops!).

Not much else here so we found some warm coffees (with fresh milk!!) and hot chocolate. Heading to Hanoi on a night bus tonight where it promises to be even colder.

Hoi An

We got a night bus from Nha Thrang to Hoi An which was fine and luckily our hotel let us check in at 6am. Hoi An is a lovely town that feels really authentic and the people are so nice and welcoming. It is also probably the tailoring capital of the world as it seems that half the shops here make clothes, we were warned that it gets addictive. By an amazing stroke of luck we arrived just in time to get our orders in before tet (the New Year festival), Orla got a lovely suit and shirt made in about 2 days, pity her dress didn't turn out as expected (a bad design choice)!! Ro got some trousers and shirts made, we both have to say the tailors were really lovely and they are very cheap compared to Thailand but still seem to maintain a high standard.

The food in Vietnam is great, so we decided to give one of the cooking schools in Hoi An a go. They had different dishes for the half-day & full-day classes so we decided to split up so we could get the most out of it. Orla's class covered starters and garnishes (she now knows how to make a rose out of a tomato skin!) and Ro's prepared mains, the classes were great (were both looking forward to trying out some of the dishes in a normal kitchen).

The Tet festival is based on the Lunar calendar and normally falls somewhere between the end of Jan and Mid-Feb. This year "The year of the Rat" began on Feb 7th and we were in Hoi an for the celebrations. After enjoying a few free cocktails in our hotel we headed to town for the festivities, there was a carnival near the river and a really impressive fireworks display. Nearly everything shuts down for a few days after tet and it was really good to see the Vietnamese be able to relax and enjoy there holiday (most people seem to work from 6am-10pm 6/7 days a week) so they defo deserve one. So "Chuc mung nam moi" (Happy new year).

Next stop Hue.....

Nha Thrang

Nha Thrang is a nice place. The beach is grand but a little dirty and the waves were seriously huge (bigger than Bondi) making it impossible to swim! The place we stayed in was great with a nice roof top terrace.

The snorkelling around here is supposed to be great so we headed out on a snorkelling trip to visit some of the nearby islands. Unfortunately we picked a windy day and so at the first snorkelling stop we spent more time helping/rescuing people from the water (while the staff watched and shouted in vietnamese!!!). Despite the poor snorkelling we had a great time and the lunch buffet served on the boat was fabulous, we were then treated to the "floating bar". This consisted of our guide sitting in a tube with a crate of red wine bottles floating around him. We all jumped off the roof of the boat, were thrown floating rings and then fed free wine until it was all gone. I'm sure the boats insurance company charged a lot for this level of safety!!! It was great fun though! Next island stop allowed Ro time to display his volleyball skills andthen we headed to an aquarium where we got up close and fed some sea turtles.

That night we got in some roof top poker, a few beers and some ipod music - felt like we were at home. We then headed for Hoi An.

Dalat

After a reasonably pleasant 5 hour bus journey we arrived in Dalat. This town really does feel like a town in the French Alps in the Springtime, absolutely lovely. We even lucked out with our great accommodation "Dream 2" which is for nothing and comes with the best breakfast ever!!!

We decided to brave it and booked ourselves an "Easyrider" countryside tour. Basically this involved each of us riding around the Dalat countryside on the back of our guides motorbikes. Sometimes a little scary with jeeps and lorries flying towards you on the narrow roads. We have to say it was a fantastic day though. We visited some coffee plantations, flower greenhouses, rice wine making (saki) sheds, mushroom factories and even a silk factory. We also climbed around (and under) the Elephant Waterfalls and visited a "Crazy House" Hotel - very hard to explain, perhaps a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter land (how this ended up in Vietnam we have no idea)! Our bus leaving Dalat literally drove at 100 miles an hour even over one lane bridges, and interestingly enough had a large tree strappedto its roof!!!!

Mui Ne

Mui Ne was such a great surprise. It is a small town build along a lovely beach in South Vietnam and not totally overrun with tourists. We found great accommodation with a pool, which was great as the weather was amazing but sometimes the sea was quite rough. We liked the place so much that we instantly upped our stay from 2 nights to 3.

We rented bicycles, unfortunately Orla was forbidden from photographing Ronan on his girlie bike (the only one available) with a lovely basket at the front. They did the job though and we got to cycle out to a great sunset spot and then the next morning we got up early and cycled 15kms out to view some red sand dunes. These were great but the views along the way were also lovely, especially the small fishing village and harbor.

Mui Ne is a great place to chill for a few days with tasty seafood (at fantastic prices) and even some Vietnamese wine, which to our surprise is very drinkable indeed, so after tasting a bottle it was only right that we headed to the source about 1500m above sea level in the mountains of central highlands!

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) - Vietnam

We left one large city for another, so it was very unlikely we'd be overly taken by Saigon (as the locals call it) but it was fine. The border crossing from Cambodia was surprisingly pleasant (prob the best land crossing we've done) but despite the fact that there are literally hundreds of guest houses and hotels nearly all of them were booked out. We eventually found some grand accommodation and set about finding information on transport through Vietnam (we eventually organised an open bus ticket to travel up the country for ourselves).

Next morning we had an early bus out to the Cu Chi tunnels. This is where some of the Vietnamese soldiers and civilians lived during the war (some babies were even born here!). It is amazing how they even managed to build these, never mind live in them (the photo is a minature version of their layout). Obviously the set up and tour in this place is very anti-American (the tour guides are very proud of the methods they used to trap, injure and kill the American soldiers). Orla had no interest in crawling through these teeny and dusty tunnels (super claustrophobic!), Ro gave it a shot but the returned because the dust was really getting to his chest. The trip was really worth doing and the tunnels really are an amazing piece of history.

We then visited the War Museum which again was extremely anti-American and showed some violent, vicious and heartbreaking pictures of Vietnamese civilians being injured and some joyous pictures of captured American soldiers. The effects of the Agent Orange material was also heartbreaking to see (especially as this is still affecting the generations after the war).

That evening Ro was particularly delighted to catch a live Liverpool FA cup match (scraping a victory against a bunch of amateurs, no sign of the glory days returning to Anfield!!) . Next morning we headed off on the worst bus ever (the 5 hour journey felt like 25 hours - unfortunately as its new year soon the trains are all booked up!).

Phnom Penh

We got the boat from SR to Phnom Penh which was a little cramped but only took 6 hours, so was grand. We passed the floating villages on the way and saw kids walking the plank to go to school on little boats!!! We didn't really like Phnom Penh that much, but we did the tourist think and visited The Killing fields and S21 school and as inappropriate as it seems we were brought to a shooting range on the way, so I (Ronan) decided to fulfill a lifelong ambition and try my hand at firing a machine gun, I have to say it wasn't a particulary enjoyable experience especially knowing what was coming next.

The Killing fields are quiet haunting and despite watching the movie before we visited its still incomprehendible what motivated Pol Pot and his followers to kill 2 out of 9m people (mostly adults) at the end of the 70's, which explains why currently 40% of the population is under 15. We can't say they were really enjoyable places to visit but would have been wrong to skip them.

We also thought it inappropiate to take photos at the killing field so everyone will have to make do with this photo of a fine selection of machine guns!!

Siem Reap - Cambodia

After dreading the journey from the border (Poipet) to Siem Reap (SR) for so long it was no surprise that it wasn't too bad (a bit bumpy) but the road has been slightly improved in recent times and we saw the construction of the new road so future travellers to SR are in for a treat ! Even though our bus slyily dropped us off at a guesthouse out of town, we decided to stay as it was really nice and only $4 a night. The main attraction of SR is definitely Ankor Wat but the town itself is quiet nice and almost tranquil. We took the first day to relax and headed out to the temples for sunset which wasn't too bad but we were shocked by the number of tourists (come to think of it there is an unbelievable amount of 5 star resorts in the area).

After sunset it was only fitting that we also visited for Sunrise (only about 5000 other tourists came up with this plan), love those 5.30 starts!! The temples come with quiet a reputation but I have to say they were incredible (easily on a par with Machu Pichu), we visited about 8 different sights over the 12 hours and still weren't bored even if we got a little tired. I could well imagine spending 2/3 days there but we were happy enough with what we saw even if we missed out on some of the temples on the outskirts. We were also privlidged enough to visit the temple that featured in tomb raider (something to be really proud of!!)

Here are a few of the literally hundreds of photos we took.