Hanoi, our last stop!

Hi all,
Well we've arrived in Hanoi and our tour of Vietnam has officially ended. Not only that, this is the last stop on this grand adventure before we go back to the NZ!! But the blogging won't stop here!! please keep up with us as there are tons more pictures and vids to put up plus more travel stories to tell.

Some quick thoughts on The Trip...
While on a snorkelling excursion in Cambodia I was talking about our grand adventure to a Dutch girl and she asked "Voot you ever do dish again?" Although I've never asked myself that question, without hesitation I answered "No". While 7 months travelling has left me with experiences I will never forget, has taught me things about myself, has brought me closer to Gay in ways that only stressful travelling can, had hands on learning experiences with exotic cultures and religions, got fat on great food, got great pictures and stories and bought some cool silk wall hangings and a tailor made jacket....I will never do it again. Truly a once in a lifetime experience for me. Exhausting to say the least and I'll be glad to be back not only on familiar soils but also amongst familiar people. The next time we travel it will be for a shorter duration, maybe only 5 months ;-)

Thoughts on our Vietnam organized tour...
Our Intrepid tour was great in the sense that it was exactly what Gay and I needed which was to have all the difficult parts of traveling handled for us. Of course it wasn't all stressless; there are minor things that pop up (mostly regarding money and tipping) and also you're not sheilded in any sense from the ever present people in your face selling you crap and trying to rip you off. Now that we're at the end of the tour I get the feeling that we didn't experience the country in the down and dirty way that we would have if we were to have planned it ourselves. I think it's because we weren't travelling the way a local would travel, we didn't have a lot of time to explore areas, plus we were definitly on a well traversed tourist trail. Would I do an organized tour again? Yeah, I probably will eventually because it does have major benefits, first and foremost is that you get a guide which can answer any question at any point of the trip. But you trade that for not being able to experience a place by finding your own way through.

Whats Next...
A flight to NZ on Dec 3rd, so a couple more days here to hang around and do some last minute shopping..anyone need some cheap silk, some fine bamboo products or some dog meat? We'll spend a couple weeks in NZ and then meet up with Gay's family for 5 days in Tahati!! We've been talking and thinking about Tahiti for longer than we care to admit. In fact, at one point in India, we made a pledge to ourselves not to talk about Tahiti until we were back in NZ. After that we still talked about it but just referred to it as "that which should not be mentioned". After Tahiti it's back to US, not sure when though.