Some good friends invited us to join them at their local "neighborhood bar," the 1TwentySix on East Coast Parkway. We sat outside in the warm Singapore evening. The bar had a band and a DJ to help us ring in 2009. You can't see from this picture, but we danced so hard we had sweat spilling out of us.
Or maybe it was wine spilling out. The bar had a voucher system. The cover charge came with five tickets, each ticket good for one drink. Or you could combine 6 tickets and have them bring a bottle of wine. When you ran short of tickets, they cheerfully let you "top up" the difference with cash. I lost count of the bottles of wine the waiters brought, so its a good thing I was busy dancing most of the night.
We just got back from spending our Christmas holiday in Vietnam.
Normally, we like to arrange our own travel, but we got a late start organizing this trip. That, combined with the holiday rush, we had to rely on a travel agent to make the arrangements. I never used a travel agent before, and they definitely made our planning easier.
But they also made the trip more expensive. And the more busy. Normally we’d leave ourselves tons of free time to just explore whatever and whenever we feel like. But the travel agent crammed all kinds of activities into our trip.
We’ll plan our next trip ourselves, now that we know the basics of traveling in Vietnam.
We started in Hanoi, where we stayed at the Melia Hotel. This was a Spanish-owned hotel (or at least a Spanish-themed hotel), as all the facilities had vaguely Spanish names, such as El Patio Restaurant, Cava Lounge, and the Latino Bar where we finished most evenings with tapas and cocktails.
For our first day in Hanoi, we took a rickshaw tour of Hanoi’s Old Quarter and walked around the shops.
We also learned how to cross the street. There are almost no traffic signals, and the few in place are largely ignored. You learn to walk slowly but confidently through the traffic, don’t change pace, don’t hesitate. The motorbikes and cars will flow around you like water. Nobody can move fast anyway, so you won’t get hurt too badly if you get hit.
The next day, we visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and His Former Residences.
We also visited the Vietnam War History Museum. As Americans, we immediately think of "The" Vietnam War, meaning the American war in Vietnam.
But for the Vietnamese, their war history begins long before that, with the battles against Mongol and Chinese generals thousands of years ago, and continuously through hundreds of years under Chinese rule.
Of course, the War History Museum eventually makes its way to the French colonial wars leading to The Vietnam War that we Americans think about. We all have a general familiarity with the facts of the Vietnam War. But it was enlightening to see it conveyed from another point of view, as perceived from the Vietnamese side.
We took a two-day side trip from Hanoi to visit Halong Bay, at the mouth of the Red River Delta.
The bay is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites, filled with thousands of limestone rock islands.
We climbed to the peak of one island. Some of the islands have large caves. We explored one island cave by foot. Some caves open only to the water, and I explored one bat-filled cave by kayak. While I was out kayaking in the dark, Deanna visited a floating fishing village.
I also attempted squid fishing, without any luck (or skill, I might add).
For Christmas Eve, we spent the night on the bay, cruising in a wooden junk, designed and furnished in traditional Vietnamese style, but fitted for leisure travelers like us.
They offered nice comfortable accommodations, better than many hotels I’ve stayed at. We had Christmas dinner on the boat, with Vietnamese/Asian food and a traditional western-style holiday feast of turkey, stuffing, gravy; everything you’d expect for Christmas dinner in Vietnam.
The next day our fellow boat-mates took a Tai Chi lesson on the sun deck. We ignored them and slept late.
After breakfast on the boat, we cruised back to the port, where our guide and driver met us for the journey back up along the Red River Delta and returned us to Hanoi. Along the way, we marveled at the locals carrying their goods on motorbikes to sell at the local markets.
What is the most you’ve ever carried on a bike or motorcycle?
A flock of ducks:
A clutch of chickens:
Three dozens dustbrooms:
A roll of six foot-high fencing:
A small cow (yes, a cow, there were pigs too, but I didn't get the photo):
A flower garden:
Several barrels of water:
A carton of toilet paper:
Seventeen cases of bottled water (including 3 cases on your lap):
Your two best friends:
A nuclear family:
Everything else:
Back in Hanoi, we checked back into the Melia Hotel for the next two nights. We spent our last days in Hanoi wandering around the Old Quarter. We bought some local art to bring home. We hung out at various cafes. We watched the traffic. We practiced crossing the street. We saw a water puppet show (which was touristy but surprisingly good, even though we didn’t understand any of the Vietnamese). We got caught in the rain.
Barack Obama is elected in the United States, but who manages to get her photo on the front page (above the fold, no less) of TWO newspapers in Singapore?
I'm still in awe. I witnessed history today as Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.
Its Wednesday in Singapore but still Tuesday night in the USA. Deanna went to the American Club this morning to watch the election results. They were hosting an elections party. Both sides were there together, Democrats and Republicans, watching the results unfold slowly as each state closed their polls and CNN revealed their projections.
I was working and trying to keep from being distracted by the elections.
But the internet always distracts. Throughout the morning, I clicked back and forth to CNN.com to see what was going on.
By mid-morning, the eastern states had all been predicted. McCain hit the end of his road when CNN announced Pennsylvania for Obama. McCain could not win without Pennsylvania.
At this point, it was officially still an open election, but the reporters were all waiting until the west coast polls closed to make the call.
The networks called it simultaneously the moment the west cost polls closed. Obama clinched the presidency.
It is the most important and most anticipated election of my generation. But it was unreal. The victory didn't sink in. Not until CNN streamed McCain's concession speech did I realize that Obama had really won. And then I couldn't work any longer.
I took a taxi to the American Club, and I arrived in time to catch Obama's victory speech. I was standing in the back. I couldn't find Deanna in the crowd. I watched from the back.
Lisbon was our last stop in Europe, before returning home to Singapore.
We were here for a week, but we were not here for fun. Deanna had to attend a business conference during the day, and I spent most of the day in my hotel room working remotely from my laptop.
I don't have any good pictures of the hotel room because it was too stylish to photograph.
Like a ninja. Our hotel room was completely black. So much black that there was no reflected light. So much black that even in the bright of day, with the blinds open and the room lights on, you couldn't see yourself well enough to shave in the bathroom mirror.
Not just the guest rooms, Deanna said the conference rooms were also all black.
See, this hotel was a self-described "style hotel." And to prove it, they made sure that their style superseded your function. They celebrated the geometric flat surface of the bathroom walls and doors by refusing to install hooks or towel racks. And to make sure you keep your towels to yourself, they made the doors go all the way to the ceiling so you couldn't even drape your towel over the door.
They suffered no power outlets or handles or knobs or any other clumsy devices that might interrupt the perfect flatness of the perfectly black walls.
Even our room number was banned from the door. You had to look along the floor to find your room. Walking to your room was a featureless corridor of black. Like a morgue. Or Princess Leia's prison cell on the Death Star.
Other useful things for which the stylish have no need: irons and ironing boards. I don't know about you, but when I travel for business, one of the first things I do when I arrive is unpack my business shirts and give them a quick touch up with the iron. Feel free to call the cleaning service.
One plus: they had good wireless internet access (extra charge), and I was able to work without too much trouble once I also discovered how to access the concealed power outlets.
It was a strange hotel, but it was was comfortable and it made a good jumping-off point to see Lisbon because it was just a short walk to the local metro station.
In addition to seeing Lisbon, I made one day trip out to Sintra, which was about an hour's train ride east.
I had never heard of Sintra before. But when we were back in Barcelona, the clerk at the hotel said that Sintra was the most beautiful place in Portugal, and we had to see it. So I did.
But mostly I went there to see the castles.
Everybody loves castles, don't they? Especially boys like me who grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons and medieval war games. But its not just us Ren-Faire geeks and gamer boys. You will find tourists of all persuasions out to see the castles.
Its not just the castle itself that draws you, but everything that a castle implies: swords and shields, knights in armor, moats and siege engines. Everything that castles were built to withstand, all of the manual and mechanical devices of medieval warfare that became obsolete with the introduction of gunpowder.
For some reason, it seems more romantic, more honorable to fight wars with swords instead of guns. And castles represent this romantic ideal. As the great sage, Kool Moe Dee, teaches:
Guns, we don't like to use them Unless, our enemies choose them We prefer to fight you on like a man And beat you down with our hands
Some good friends invited us to join them at their local "neighborhood bar," the 1TwentySix on East Coast Parkway. We sat outside in the warm Singapore evening. The bar had a band and a DJ to help us ring in 2009. You can't see from this picture, but we danced so hard we had sweat spilling out of us. 
