Saigon

My first trip to Vietnam, one of the fastest emerging economies in Asia close to India and China.

First stop Hanoi.

Architecture is quite nicely preserved in some places.

The weather was great (~15%)!!

Next stop Ho Chi Minh. Had to fly Vietnam Airlines of course. The experience was better than expected... then again, maybe I was tired. Anyway, throughout the streets of HCM, you'll find nothing but loads and loads of motorcyclists on the road - men and women, both blue and white collar workers. It's like the ONLY way to get around. As a result I guess the air quality isn't quite good. But overall, Vietnam was a good experience. Beef pho was good. Hospitality was good although English is a problem to many and translation takes ages.

My last "reunion" dinner

Tomorrow is chu xi, or the eve of CNY. Besides remembering how janice was frantically looking for new clothes last year at this same time, the good thing for me this year is, it's a half day!!! That's always something to look forward too. I have decided what I am going to do tomorrow at work and hopefully I can finish that off quickly before noon and I'll have 1 thing off my to-do list too!! Next thing I need to do is to draw money from ATM to prepare an ang bao for my parents. Then next I've got cell group (really weird timing but somehow it ended up being the most convenient for all of us as a "after work-before dinner" timing since everyone has 1/2 day). We're starting a new book entitled "How do you walk the walk you talk". Sounds interesting! And next would be reunion dinner. This year is the last time I'll be having reunion dinner with my parents and extended family (dad's side) on CNY eve.. which is quite sad if you think about it negatively. But well, we all grow up and things change. For starters.. next year will be canton food for me I guess. Haha.

Meantime I received a wedding gift from ken's mum!! This is how we did it. Ken & I settled on 1 that we really liked first (his mum was not around).. then in order not to sound too forceful, we chose another 3 designs that were also nice and then asked her to pick 1 amongst 4. Thankfully she chose the same one that we chose!! Phew. So yeah we settled on that pretty quickly and bought it the same day. Happy happy! Anyway, that'll be the necklace that I'll be wearing on my wedding day. Earrings from my mum and necklace from her so it's all fair. One more thing to tick off the list.