Sunday, April 10, 2011

The Long Wave Goodbye

First off, a very special thanks to my cousins Adam, Justin and Dana. A couple of months ago they sent Huyen and me a Flip video camera as a wedding present. In all of our moving and finishing up work over the last month, we haven't had a chance to play around with it. However, we're about to have lots of time and reasons to use it.

Huyen and I have decided to do a big motorbike trip as a farewell to Vietnam. We had talked about this for a long time and debated on it up until we took off. In fact, we SOLD our Honda Win when getting rid of all our stuff. Those unfamiliar with motorbikes and motorcycles, the Win is a MUCH more comfortable bike for long trips than the Wave that we own and are now taking. There's many many many advantages to the Win over the Wave. However, the Wave does have two advantages:
1. It can be repaired in any town in Vietnam
2. It allows me to call this trip, "The Long Wave Goodbye."

We have a rough schedule of what we want to do but it's really all up in the air. We've got our plane tickets to leave Hanoi and to arrive in America but before all that we're taking it day by day.

Before we left on our trip, we had to get rid of all our stuff. We sent a ton home to Huyen's house and gave a lot to her sister. We thought we had everything we needed for a bike trip but it turned out to be way too much. This meant we had to drop some stuff off at Su's apartment before we left. Some things we left behind were our mosquito net (so far every hotel has had one), some clothing, my camera bag (the camera is wrapped in socks now) and other odds and ends:


You might notice that disgusting facial hair I'm sporting at the end of the video. I've decided to try and grow a beard over the next few months since, well, why not. I'm married and jobless so I don't need to look good for anyone!