Well, you’ll finally be done with us after this message, save our inevitable upcoming messages regarding our photos.

Our internet connection at home went down a few days ago, so we were able to write from Hong Kong.

The second day of our Mekong Delta trip was good, but a bit boat-heavy. We started the morning in a bunch of rickety row boats rowed by women who stand at the stern. I find it very odd that all rowboats in Vietnam are rowed by a person at the stern. I personally find it much easier to row backwards than forwards. Anyway, our boat was more rickety than the rest. Right next to me, there was a little jet of water coming in, about as high as a drinking fountain. It was spraying water about 3 inches into the air. I discovered this and pointed it out to Ian, who wasn’t too pleased, given that he can’t swim. When I showed it to the German in front of me, he spent a few minutes trying to plug it with his finger, but I guess only the Dutch can do that successfully. The boat lady took some goo from one crack and tried to plug the hole with it, but all it did was stop the jet, the water was still seeping in. When the boat with our guide pulled up, Ian asked how long we’d be in the boats and he said it would be another 30 minutes. This is when Ian really got nervous. I had visions of making floats for him out of empty water bottles. I yelled to the guide that Ian couldn’t swim (something he studiously avoids mentioning). Luckily, we had a scheduled stop at a floating village just a few minutes away, so we boarded a different boat for the rest of the journey.

We stopped in a Cham village later during the rowboat ride. The people in this village are Muslim, not Buddhist as elsewhere. It was odd to see a mosque. The kids in this village were just dying for pens or gum. We’d encountered kids in the town where we stayed with the same requests. Our guide told us that they needed pens for their schoolwork. I found this particularly frustrating because we have one zillion pens and I considered bringing some on our trip so that I’d have something to give to the kids that wouldn’t have a terrible cultural impact, but then I figured that they wouldn’t be interested in pens. Oh well. We had three pens with us, so I gave one away.

Once we got back to Saigon, we picked up our bags at the tour operator’s office where we left them. When we got back to the room, I was taking some clothes out and discovered ants on my trousers. I’m not a bug-lover, so this was very displeasing. We couldn’t figure out where they’d come from. After we managed to pick them off of everything in my bag (they were reasonable localized to a single area), we discovered a hole in the bottom of my bag and quickly realized that a rat had clearly eaten a hole in my new bag to get at the power bars that were individually sealed and stored in a heavy-duty ziploc bag. You’ve got to be impressed by the rat’s nose. There was a half-eaten bag of power bars in there, hence the ants. I’m not happy about the hole in my bag, although the rat did pick a decent spot to make a hole in that it didn’t compromise the structural integrity and it was pretty easy to avoid having stuff fall out of it due to where it was. We got the bags at REI. I’m told that REI is like Nordstrom’s in their dedication to customer service. Who knows, maybe the lifetime guarantee covers rat holes.

We arrived in Hong Kong in the afternoon of the 29th. In Hong Kong, the immigration people each have ballots on their desks for people to vote for the most courteous immigration officer. I voted for our guy because he smiled, more than I can say for most immigration officers who speak only the language of grunt. We got to our hotel in record time, thanks to the very efficient airport transit system. Our hotel was marvelous. The lights, air conditioning, and do not disturb and make up the room indicators were all controlled by a panel on the bedside table. There were real towels, full-sized and not like sandpaper, and, best of all, a down comforter! Of course, the price tag was somewhat higher as well.

Hong Kong is a shopper’s paradise. I like to shop, but only for bargains. Not just for stuff priced at or above its value. So Hong Kong wasn’t all that interesting to me. It is very beautiful, but most of the beautiful areas are residential, so access to them is limited to time spent on the bus. The weather was pretty crappy for our whole visit to Hong Kong, so we missed out on the view from the Peak

We went to Macau on our final day. We got there via a very nice, very smooth, very fast ferry called TurboJet. On the way there, we were mistakenly seated in Super Class, which was aptly named. It was just like first class on a 747. You go upstairs, someone smiles at you and kisses your butt and you get a big seat. The bathroom was fabulous. It was all marble and gold.

Macau was a bit of a disappointment, though there were good parts. The architecture is nice, but run-down. We found a great bakery and had yummy pastries. Pastries in the rest of our destinations left a bit to be desired. We went up the Macau Tower, a big Space Needle-looking thing. It was very funny there. In the floor of the observation deck, there were two areas with glass floors. I walked up to this, looked down for a moment and stepped on it. After all, I know that it will be fine — I’m certainly not the first person to walk on it. Ian had a different reaction, which was made doubly funny by the fact that he claims to want to sky dive and bungee jump. He got one look at this thing and said “I can’t do it.” I kept trying to get him to walk on it but he wouldn’t. Finally, I coaxed him into doing it, he inched his way on while I got the camera out to take a picture. We were at the end of a set of batteries, and the camera refused to take the picture, as it sometimes does when the batteries are sluggish. I told Ian that I had to rotate the batteries and he yelled, “Sarah, just take the $%&*@# picture!” He was a real grouch. His hands were almost as sweaty as they were during our wedding ceremony. That’s the only other time that I’ve felt his palms sweat. Later on, I stood on the biggest glass panel and jumped, just for the effect. It’s fun to be the brave one.

Our flight home was uneventful, other than the whiner sitting in the seat behind Ian. At the beginning of the flight, she asked him if he usually reclines his seat. He said that he usually did on an overnight flight. She asked him not to so that she could see the movie. I told her that the little screens imbedded in the backs of the seats swiveled a bit to counteract the effects of the reclining chair, but she seemed to already know about this. Ian never really responded either way to her request and just left it as he told her in the beginning, that he usually reclines his chair. After all, who doesn’t? So he reclines his seat an hour or so into the flight. We both hear her say something, but we have headphones on and don’t know what it was. Clearly something indicating displeasure. Later, Ian told me that she had clearly just woken up because he felt a big thump on his seat and heard her say “I can’t move!” Of course, the person in front of Ian (and everyone else on the plane) has reclined her seat. At the end of the flight, she said, “you know, it was really frustrating the way you reclined your seat for the whole trip. I couldn’t move.” He reminded her that everyone had the same amount of space and that she must have known prior to purchasing her ticket that the seats recline. He suggested that she fly first class next time. She grumbled some more and said that she didn’t recline her seat out of respect for the person behind her. She kept talking about it being disrespectful to recline your seat. So folks, keep this in mind next time you board an airplane: don’t press that recline button! It’s there as an aesthetic feature only.

Since we got home today, we’ve had too little time to sit around on our butts, so I’m going to sign off now and do just that. Work tomorrow, ugh. Oh, I almost forgot. So far, the homeopathic jet lag pills seem to be doing an equally good job for the return trip as they did for the outbound trip. We recommend them. Get them at REI or Whole Foods.

Hong Kong is the world’s biggest shopping mall. Wherever you look, overpriced shops and restaurants beckon you to enter.

This is clearly a different part of Asia to the area that we’ve grown accustomed to. Judicious use of funds is required to avoid spending more money here in a single weekend than during the previous month of our honeymoon combined.

In many ways, it reminds me of London here. Glitzy, ostentatious, the traffic on the left-hand side of the road, familiar road signs, markings and traffic lights.

As one would expect, excellent Cantonese cuisine can be enjoyed here, but as with all other things, the price reflects this.

The Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China doesn’t seem to have changed that much on the surface since the departure of the marauding Brits after their 99 year lease expired. The roads still bear their English names in addition to the Chinese names, English as a language is still used widely (though apparently on the wane), the currency is still the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) and the region still prints its own stamps. Besides, capitalism is clearly more at home here than in many places in the West.

We arrived late in the afternoon on Friday, which left us just enough time to be very impressed with the efficiency of the airport, the train to Kowloon (travelling at around 135 km/h) and the connecting bus shuttle to the hotel.

After checking in, we wandered out for a walk around downtown Kowloon. As hinted at before, the main thoroughfare of Nathan Road is not dissimilar to London’s Oxford Street: an endless parade of tasteless, designer tat in large window displays; nose-to-bumper double-decker buses, etc. Hong Kong competes admirably with Las Vegas for the sheer amount of neon signage.

Temple Street market was worth a quick look, if only because the corny cheap-and-nasty crap on sale there is different cheap-and-nasty crap than the stuff I’ve seen on sale before.

London has its Thames and Hong Kong has its own stretch of water, too, in the form of its harbour. The eponymous Hong Kong Island can be seen across the water from Kowloon, its own neon frontage reflected in the water and illuminating the low-lying cloud from below. It’s a most impressive sight, combining the spectacle of Las Vegas with the natural coastal beauty of San Francisco or Vancouver.

There are a lot of high-rise buildings in Hong Kong, but somehow they never seem to engulf you in the way that New York’s ugly, discordant skyline inspires claustrophobia and leaves you gasping for a glimpse of the firmament. The big city filth is also conspicuously absent in Hong Kong, with litter bins strategically positioned on every street corner.

Hong Kong traditionally enjoys gorgeous weather at this time of year, but apparently not on days when we’re known to be in town. The city has been plagued by low cloud cover and sporadic showers since our arrival.

Yesterday, we were up early for the tram ride to Victoria Peak (more commonly known as simply The Peak. This is on Hong Kong Island, so we caught the Star ferry from Kowloon, a crossing that takes just a few minutes.

he tram ride up to The Peak ascends some 439 metres with a gradient of 27 degrees to the horizontal in some places. You can feel the seat digging into your back during the ride.

The view from the top should, judging from the placards on the viewing terraces that label the sights, be one of the best cityscapes anywhere in the world, but, sadly, it was not destined to reveal itself to us today. The same thick veil of mist apparent on Friday kept Hong Kong harbour’s majesty well and truly under wraps. We’ll return on Monday if the weather improves.

The next stop on our list was Stanley Market, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. The bus ride there from Central was nothing short of spectacular, even with the inclement weather working against it. Parts of the ride reminded me of Gibraltar and the old valley area of Luxembourg City.

On the way, we passed through Repulse Bay, with some beautiful beaches giving some clue of what Hong Kongers get up to at the weekend when the sun is shining.

After shopping in the rain at Stanley Market, we took another bus to the town of Aberdeen, on the south-west side of the island. This is a place with very little in common with its Scottish namesake.

The light was beginning to fade, so we chartered a sampan (a kind of motorised boat) for a 30 minute ride around the harbour. It wasn’t terribly interesting, but perhaps that’s because we’ve been spoilt by all of our other boating adventures of late.

After an unremarkable dinner, we struggled to find a bus back to Central, but eventually managed to locate a suitable bus-stop. Back at Central, we took the ferry back to Kowloon, where we had dessert and called it a day.

We allowed ourselves the luxury of not rising until 08:30 today.

We left around 09:30 for a last walk around Kowloon, our hopes of returning to The Peak dashed by the fourth consecutive cloudy day since our arrival.

Attempts to find a good place to enjoy dim sum failed, leaving me feeling grumpy and dissatisfied. Oh well; we’ve eaten splendidly during the rest of our trip, so I can’t really complain.

A short walk through Kowloon Park, stopping to look at the bird garden and impressive aviary, were about all we had time for. Back at the hotel, we checked out and proceeded to the airport, enjoying as much efficiency in this direction as we had upon our arrival.

A 12 hour plane flight ensued, followed by an interminable wait for our baggage, a bus ride to the train station, and finally the slow, rickety Caltrain ride to Menlo Park.

We’re now at home, preparing to go out for pizza, hoping to get back before the effects of this 40 hour long 2nd December (that’s what you get when you depart from a country that’s 16 hours ahead of Californian time) start to take hold of us.

Beyond Kowloon and Hong Kong Island lie other islands that also make up the Hong Kong SAR. It would take quite a while to see these in any detail, so we decided to opt for a day-trip to Macau instead.

Macau is less well known than Hong Kong, but bears quite a few similarities. It was colonised by the Portuguese some 300 years before the Brits wrested Hong Kong from the Chinese, but unlike Hong Kong, Macau was never formally ceded to Portugal. Rather, its colonisation was peaceful and the consequence of an agreement made with the Chinese in 1557. The Chinese government of the day allowed the Portuguese to settle and trade from here in return for rent and customs dues.

The Portuguese handed Macau back to the Chinese on 20th December 1999 and now it, too, has become a SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China, guaranteeing it notably different treatment from the rest of the country for a period of at least 50 years.

We had tickets for the 08:30 Turbojet ferry crossing, a high speed catamaran that makes the 65 km crossing in around an hour. Our being mistakenly categorised as ‘turbo class’ passengers and led to an extremely comfortable upper deck (with a toilet sink whose tap was cast as a fish head) with reclining seats pretty much made Sarah’s day before we’d even left port!

Most of the public information in Macau is bilingual in Cantonese and Portuguese. Although the Portuguese is fairly easy to decipher if you know any Spanish, this doesn’t seem to help much when questioning the locals, as there are very few Portuguese speakers remaining in the territory. We did overhear a few in a cafe, however.

After a bus ride into the centre of the peninsula, we marvelled at the facades of old Portuguese colonial buildings on Largo do Senado (Senate Square) and the bizarre sight of road signs containing both Portuguese text and Cantonese characters.

We then visited the ruins of an old church before paying a visit to the Museum of Macau for a couple of hours.

In the afternoon, we took a taxi down to the southernmost tip of the peninsula, where Macau Tower soars 339 metres into the sky. For a ghastly high price, we rode the lift to the top of the tower and were treated to some fantastic views of the surrounding area. Even the mist, that we’d hoped to leave behind in Hong Kong, could not obscure the great views here.

The inner observation area of the tower has a glass floor for its outer ring, meaning that you can walk in a circle around the tower, all the while observing the 339 metre drop below your feet. Creaking sounds under my feet did not exactly inspire my confidence and I was surprised to find the experience unnerving.

The views from here once again offer a tantalising hint of a new frontier, this time mainland China in the form of Zhuhai SEZ (Special Economic Zone). A SEZ is basically an area of China that has been designated a capitalist zone, to cash in on its close proximity to the sea (and thus trade with other countries) and the SARs in the area. Chinese people require an internal passport just to visit Zhuhai and the other SEZs.

Sadly, we had no time to visit, so we had to make do with the panoramic views.

In the failing light, there was just enough time for a quick visit to the A-Ma Temple, before settling down to dinner in a close-by Macanese restaurant.

We’ve used many currencies on this trip: Thai Baht, Lao Kip, Vietnamese Dong, Hong Kong Dollars, and now also Macanese Patacas (and the Avos, 100 of which make for 1 Pataca). Not wanting to get stuck with Patacas (you can spend HKD in Macau, but Patacas are unloved in Hong Kong), we used up our last banknotes on a taxi to the ferry port (where you can even buy Lucozade, Ribena and Fruit Pastilles!) and then took the catamaran back to Hong Kong Island, where we made the quick ferry crossing back to Kowloon.

The last full day of our honeymoon had drawn to a close

We’re back in HCM after our three day trek up the Mekong Delta.

Sarah is off, getting a haircut, so it’s down to me to fill you in on the last couple of days.

Yesterday, we had another very early start as we headed out by boat to a floating market. Our boat pulled alongside a vendor’s boat, so I clambered from the roof of our boat onto the roof of the vendor’s boat to purchase some fresh pineapple. A whole pineapple was skinned and then presented to us for the princely sum of $0.20. Delicious!

We then visited a village where rice is transformed from the grain into thin sheets. The sheets are then cut into thin strips, commonly known in the West as noodles. Once again, the Vietnamese let nothing go to waste. The husk of the rice is used as fuel for the furnace that heats the rice paste. The rice itself is made into noodles, and the ash of the expended husk is used as fertiliser for the new rice plants. Absolutely nothing is wasted in this process, leaving the casual observer (us) in awe of the harmonious relationship it’s possible for people to have with the land on which they live and work.

Yesterday saw us switch between a variety of boats, including a mid-size vessel on which we would spend the entire afternoon navigating the branches of the Mekong.

For some of the journey, we were allowed to ride on the roof of the boat. When the boat in front of us passed under a low bridge, we observed as the people on the roof lay down and cleared the underside of the bridge with a good 25 cm of leeway. Confident that we could do the same, we began to lay flat on the roof of our boat.

Now, perhaps the boat in front was carrying more kilos of human cargo than we were and that was the reason that the boat sat lower in the water than ours, but when we came within a metre or two of the first beam of the bridge, I really thought we weren’t going to clear it. I was in a good vantage point to judge this, too, as I was at the very front of the roof and was mentally preparing myself to be ground into a pulp and sold on the floating market the next day.

Not to worry, though. We cleared the bridge with a good 8 cm of space between my nose and oblivion, and we were treated to what was probably the best close-up of the underside of a Vietnamese bridge that we’ll ever see.

Eventually, we arrived in the town of Chau Doc after dark, just 3 km from the Cambodian border. 3 km as the crow files, that is; the actual border crossing is two hours upstream by boat and a lot further by road. Apparently, there aren’t so many places where you can cross the border from Vietnam into Cambodia.

It was nice and cool in Chau Doc and dinner was partaken outside the motel-like hotel where we were staying. Corny insrumental Eric Clapton style music failed to ruin our appetite and we spent the evening talking to an Anglo-Swedish couple.

We rose again with the sun this morning and drove through Chau Doc to the outskirts of this small border town, passing many pagodas on the way. We stopped to view a particular pagoda, whose name escapes me now, but after ascending its stone steps we were treated to a magnificent view of the rice paddies, which sank away in the distance into a flood plain on the Cambodian side. Across from the flood plain, a few houses and small villages could be seen in Cambodia, although I have no idea what name those communities go by.

This rural corner of Vietnam was very lush and attractive. The town looked worth spending at least a day in and I found the sight of Cambodia a mere 3000 metres away quite tantalising. We’ll just have to save that for another trip, I suppose.

Incidentally, Chau Doc was the scene of the 1979 border dispute with Cambodia, when Khmer Rouge soldiers would cross the Vietnamese border on a daily basis and massacre the civilians. The Vietnamese fought back (as they always have), ultimately entering Cambodia and overthrowing the government.

Some museums in the area apparently document this history very well, but we had no time to stop and make a visit.

The bus took us back to the dock, where we boarded a small rowing boat for a visit to a floating village.

After five minutes, I was beginning to wonder whether my eyes were playing tricks on me or whether the small puddle of water present in the bottom of the rowing boat when I had embarked on it was, in fact, the same small pond that I was now staring at.

Glancing around the boat, I spotted a drinking-fountain like jet of water spurting into the boat on the front right-hand side. The simultaneously hilarious and rather terrifying thought occurred to me that we were actually sinking!

The waves caused by the wake of the motorised craft that occasionally passed us were lapping closer and closer to the rim of our boat, which was slowly but surely aligning its top with the surface of the water.

I shouted to our guide (who was in another boat) that our sieve-like craft was destined for a watery grave and that we, the occupants, had no desire to share its demise in the murky Mekong. Luckily, we were almost at the end of the first leg of our journey for today, so we were relieved to disembark just a few minutes later at a fish farm.

Steel nets are suspended into the river below floating, wooden houses and fish are kept and nurtured in these nets. They feed them some kind of fish and rice paste mixture. It was quite a curious site to watch them being fed through a trapdoor in the floor of this floating house.

From there, we continued our voyage through the floating village (on a different rowing boat!) until we reached another village, this time on land and home to the ethnic minority Cham people. The Cham people are Muslims, not Buddhists. They have their own language, but they also speak Vietnamese. Apart from some head garb worn by the women, I couldn’t immediately tell them apart from the everyday Vietnamese in the same area.

It was an interesting experience to visit the village’s mosque and see Arabic on the entrance; not something you expect in rural Vietnam, close to Cambodia.

Back on a larger boat, we began the journey back towards HCM City. We spent four hours on this boat, the sun scorchingly hot, the wind not even a whisper in the clear blue sky. Sweltering, it was; simply unbelievably hot.

We had lunch on the boat and made a short stop in the afternoon at a village where incense is made.

At about 15:00, we transferred to air-conditioned coach for the remaining four hour trip to HCM City. On the way, we made a superfluous stop at an ignominious bonsai garden, whose main attraction seemed to be some monkeys and apes that had been driven stark-staring mad by the confines of their inhumanely small cages.

We arrived back in HCM City in the pouring rain, which constitutes the second time the city has greeted us with a downpour. We picked up our luggage from the tour agency, checked back into our hotel, collected some laundry and then Sarah went one way to get a new coiffure, while I came here to update the home front.

Anyway, we leave tomorrow morning on an 11:40 flight to Hong Kong. As always, I’m excited to be going to the next place, whilst being simultaneously depressed at having to leave the current one.

I’m already trying to persuade Sarah to allow us to extend the trip by a day, so that we’ll have time to visit Macau, which would make a great day-trip from Hong Kong. We’ll see whether my persuasion bears any fruit.

We would like to finish this message by wishing Sarah’s folks a happy 35th wedding anniversary (on Saturday) and a fun time in New York. We’d also like to wish all of the Americans a happy Thanksgiving.

That’s it for now; more, presumably, from Hong Kong.