Australia, Hawaii and then home.

Hi all blog readers, sorry for the break but we have been two busy bees.
After departing Vietnam we headed for Malaysia and spent a week in a Muslim resort that had no alcohol, people or up keep program...really spoiled after Vietnam. We did enjoy our time walking and on the beach and found a place or two to have beers.
We are now in Australia, arrived on the west coast in Perth and traveled south to the wine country of Margaret River. We visit a cave which was very cool and spent time watching the surfing and visiting a few wineries. We spent a few days in Perth where we had our most expensive beer of the whole trip ($17.50 for a pint of draft).
We then traveled to Brisbane and spent a couple of days with Judy a women we met on our Vietnam tour. Had a great visit with her and then flew north to Cairns and are now in Port Douglas on the north east coast- visiting and touring the Great Barrier Reef. It is beautiful, but very hot(32 c) and 90% humidity. We leave here in a couple of days and head back to Brisbane and will drive the gold coast for a few days.
From Brisbane we will head to Melbourne and meet up with 5 or 6 of the gang from Vietnam to celebrate Australia Day and Tet. We have booked a camper van and will tour the coast from Melbourne to Sydney for two weeks and then we will fly to Hawaii to meet up with Carol and Paul as a conclusion to our adventure.
We arrive home on February 16Th after four months and the most amazing experiences. We hope to see you all soon.

Vietnam continued

We have now completed our 17 day tour and in the words of our fellow travelers...we have eaten our way through Vietnam.

The trip was very educational, we now have the history from the Chinese in the 10th century,the French occupation, the Japanese invasion through to the American Vietnam war. We now know more about the Buddhist than most Viet people.

It was a great trip taking us from the rice growing areas on the flood plains near Ho Chi Min City to the mountain areas of De Lat where they grow flowers for export. Then to the beaches on the coast near Nha Trang and a day in the historical city of Hue. We arrived in Hanoi after a 12 hour train ride on Christmas night, where we had a secret santa gift exchange with our group. Hanoi is certainly not the most beautiful city, very grimy and congested with tons of traffic, just walking down the street was challenging in the shopping districts. We spent one night on a boat in Halong Bay which is a beautiful location, unfortunately they have these floating cities and the woman paddle out and and hound you relentlessly to buy something. Many of the the places we visited are World Heritage sites,they were beautiful and a once in a life time site seeing adventure.

Our fellow traveler were great and we had many laughs and will visit some again when we get to Australia. On our last night in Hanoi we went to a specialty restaurant and had some fried crickets for dinner, not that bad, and then went out to a karaoke bar which fortunatley is in a private room so no one else hears us. It was a fun way to wrap up our trip.