The three musketeers

Hosea, Kai and Yuuki. They play several afternoons a week and on Friday all came home with Kai after school.

Hosea is practically a Kung Fu master and Kai and Yuuki do Karate every Sunday, so a lot of the activities are sort of centered around those themes. But oh, how great it is when kids grow and it actually becomes easier to have friends over - they just entertain themselves - than not!

Art for All

Some nice graffiti up a partly abandonded apartment building on the street around the corner.

And some on our back yard wall.

Think we need even more graffiti for the people!

Perhentians - what we did

As little as possible.

As little as possible, definitely...

Perhentians - how to get there

And this is probably why it is still paradise... For us, it went something like this:
1) We flew down to Kuala Lumpur, had time for some Malaysian fast food lunch at the low cost terminal, before it was time for a short domestic flight up to Kota Bharu in north eastern peninsular Malaysia. There we learned that sometimes check-in closes thirty minutes before departure, not opens ... but managed to get through, arguing it was just very very little past thirty minutes.
2) Overnight in KB, including a visit to the muslim night market. No major incidents.
3) Next morning we woke up half an hour after the prearranged taxi, that was supposed to take us to the morning ferry, had arrived (of course no-one called us) and learned (remembered) there is an hour time difference between Vietnam and Malaysia. No time for breakfast - just threw in all stuff in the trunk and the kids in the back and off we went.
4) Hana's favourite rabbit got left behind in the lobby.
5) The drive to the ferry terminal took one hour and we just missed the morning boat, had to sit and wait for the next at the resort's office. Kai threw up on the floor, Hana peepeedd on the floor.
6) As it was still low season, they explained they were not yet using the regular speed boat, but would take us in a slightly smaller motor boat. No worries, just wear life jackets and sit at the back, next to the captain, the sea is a little rough today... A little rough? The swells were meter high, the only good thing there was absolutely no time to get seasick, busy as I was holding on to whatever and my kids.
- Roller coaster, screamed the cool teenage captain.
- Slower, screamed the terrified mother of two (me).
Back and forth.

7) Finally, we made it, and as good as immediately realized it was worth all the efforts! Considering the long car ride and roller coaster like boat trip, we even concluded it was good we overslept and missed breakfast. And seriously, I really dont think there was an earlier boat.

Hana's rabbit then travelled by itself and arrived/was delivered already next day. Going back was a piece of cake. Big boat, no waves.

Back from Paradise

A week doing nothing on a small, tropical island was exactly what the Taketanis needed after a too long and grey Hanoian winter. Think we all would have loved to stay another week - but it is nice to be back home again as well. Hm...

February

Another month has almost passed by, at the speed of light, just as previous ones. Tomorrow we escape the Hanoian winter for a lazy week at the beach on a hopefully sunny Malaysian island, and when we are back it will already be March. Meaning we'll have about three months to go before Keisuke's contract comes to an end and we dont know where to go... Should we stay or should we go?!? Life sure is exciting.

Happy Valentine's day from Keisuke. Although it was pointed out that in Japan it is acutually the women who should get the men a present. Didn't know about that...

Without doubt, the outfit of the month.

Taking a break down at Sedona playground.

With Swedish-Vietnamese friend Theo, about to move to East Timor. Hana sure will miss him - and I his mum.

Part of our living room, and kitchen. Starting to look rather furnished, almost normal, slowly waking up the nomad in me. Time to start thinking about moving?

Mosaic wall

If you take the main road from town out to Tay Ho, you will pass the mosaic wall; several kilometers covered with amazing mosaic. On sunny days it is all sparkling but it sure does light up all these grey days, too. Of course, no spot is left without plenty of vendors trying to sell whatever it might be.

l'Espace

This week I started French at fancy - but cheap and definitely super subsidised - French cultural center l'Espace in town. Downstairs they normally have some kind of exposition, too, right now showing works by a contemporary embroydery artist, taking silk embroidery to a completely new level.

There is also a little cafe where you can have a coffee and croissant, while doing the homework.

Lazy days, kids paintings and termites

Trying to enjoy my unemployed days again, I do all sort of important things, like cleaning up old book shelves (which right now came to an abrupt end as found a box full of stuff now half eaten by termites, very disgusting and crawling and has to be handled later by Keisuke) and going through packs of drawings kids have made in school, thinking I better take photos and save them in the computer before termites find them as well. Maybe after lunch.

Engraving by Kai. Mysterious animal.

By Hana. Blue and orange period (day?).

Tet-o the cat

What to do what to do? Maybe it is just natural that we get a cat now that we enter the year of the cat. We cant keep it though but still havent found a new home for it and meanwhile the kids have adopted it totally, made it a little house and all. We call it Tet-o. Can be picked up anytime!

Hidden Hanoi

During our Hanoian Tet holidays we also went for a bicycle tour through the little alleys across the dyke road, and discovered a lovely neighbourhood made up of a mace of tiny alleys often no more than a meter or two wide, stretching all the way to the Long Bien bridge. Especially lovely now that it was empty.

"Keisuke, do people buy all these flags, or do the government provide them?"
"They buy them."
"Oh. But why?"
"Because they love their country so very much"

Money burning

During Tet everyone who can leave the city, the Vietnamese go home to their towns and villages and relatives, the foreigners go on vacation somewhere warm. Almost everything shuts down, only a few places in the Old Quarters catering for tourists remain open, and here and there a small street stall outside of one of the many pagodas where you have to go to ask for a prosperous, happy and healthy year. And burn some insence and money. Of course, we did it all.

It is not only at Tet you have to burn money, but also on other special moon calendar days. Outside your house or your shop or business. As the more you burn, the more prosperous you will become, the fires sometimes get quite big. In our friends' apartment building there were signs in the lobby asking people to please not burn money inside the apartments...

Bamboo ladders

I guess you can get these at Ikea nowadays, but next week I will go down to get a couple of bamboo ladders for myself. Straight from the source in the old quarters where they are supposed to be very cheap.

Taking a break

From what I am not sure, but in good company they seem to think.

I especially like the white tea pot someone must have brought from grannies house...

"1000 dong for the photo!" the young man shouted, and I thought that if I'd gotten that from every Vietnamese who's taken pictures of my kids without asking I would be a multi millionaire by now, and ignored him.

Happy New Year!

Today is the first day of the Lunar Year and Tet (the "Chinese" New Year) is being frantically celebrated all over Vietnam. Here it will be the year of the cat, while in China and Japan the year of the rabbit is coming up. I dont know anything about the difference but am sure that either will be exciting.
The best thing about Tet is that everyone gets a week off work, including Keisuke, and for the first time since we moved to Hanoi, we are on vacation without travelling. Tet is also the only time a year that the city actually shuts down, as everyone is busy visiting relatives and eating special food - or going to the pagoda to wish for a prosperous, healthy and happy new year. We took the opportunity and went for a bicycle ride into town. Almost empty the old quarters looked lovely.

Happy New Year! - or Chúc Mừng Năm Mới as they say here.