$25 + 2 ice creams

For our 3rd trip to Vietnam we had to make a stop here to fill up on our favourite Vietnamese foods and wander the now familiar Ancient town.  One of us seems to really like Hoi An…. and understandably so.  It’s a lovely place with really great food, where you can have fun designing your own clothes.   


We stayed at the same Tea Garden Homestay as last year and as soon as we got out of the car, the owner, Than, immediately recognized Jen.  "Jennnnyyyy!!", she squealed out, and ran to give Jen a big hug.  It was super cute.  Than's family treats us like family while we're there... they invite us to join them for family dinner and make special trips to bring us the best Pho in the city for breakfast.  They even gave us gifts when we departed (a tie for Dom and silk scarf for Jen), and refused to charge us for the last night even though we stayed in the room until 1AM waiting for our overnight train (we still insisted on paying, and managed to settle at half).  Things like this are what keep us coming back even though Hoi An isn't exactly an "easy stopover" on the way to Mui Ne.


We were planning to give our favourite foodie tour guide, Neville, a shout to see what great new foods/restaurants he'd discovered since last year, but he was on vacation in Australia at the time.  Instead, we frequented our usual stops... the Banh Mi Queen and the Laugh Cafe (because White Sail is now gone :(( ).

During our past visits, we discovered that when getting tailored clothes made, it’s really hard to get good results when trying to explain any new or custom designs that you want.  This trip, we went with the flow and made the best of the tailoring culture here.  They are awesome at making copies, so we brought clothes that we like (that we can't buy anymore) and had them successfully copied!  


Our experiment from last year also worked out well, so we continued with our line of designer, convertible dress-pants :)  Being our third year making clothes here, you'd think we'd be able to get some real bargains, but they are really tough bargainers!!  Fortunately, they're also super nice and a lot of fun...

After a gruelling negotiation, Dom finally managed to settle his dress-pants for $25.. plus 2 ice-creams! :)

Growing Herbs in Winter

To keep ourselves busy while back home in Canada, we decided to take a stab at having a garden.  We discovered that our roommates were also wannabe green-thumbs, so it became a fun activity/experiment to do together.
- Guy grew some carrots
- Chris grew a variety of indoor and outdoor herbs
- Jen grew spaghetti squash, potatoes, and some herbs
- Dom grew raspberries, tomatoes, onions, and zucchini


Sadly, Calgary's summer season wasn't so great with several hail storms and an early-September snow storm! :(


Just before leaving for the winter again, we decided to help Chris with his winter grow-op experiment.  Jen had seen a documentary about LED agriculture in Taiwan, so Chris did some research on LED grow lights only to find that they were a bit too expensive to get.  Since Jen’s parents were visiting China, we sent them an email to keep an eye out for the type of LEDs that Chris had found online.  Lucky for us, they found some at a fraction of the cost, so they brought back some strips of red and blue LEDs.  Dom and Chris built a contraption to test the lights out over winter..  can't wait to see if they'll actually work!

Surprise Dinner with Rosemary

Jen’s friend's mom, Rosemary, was passing through London after a trip to Greece with her friend.  They contacted us and we set up a dinner date at a nice Thai Restaurant in Soho.  

It's always so cool/crazy when you manage to successfully meet up with friends (from home), at a location half-way around the world! :)

London Fish & Chips

London is known for its fish & chips so we dedicated our second weekend to finding the best fish & chips in London!  Actually we both find fish&chips a bit too greasy, so we just selected 2 local spots to try out and crown a winner.

Trip Advisor ranked “Baileys fish and chips" #12 out of 17,940 restaurants in London, so this was our first stop.  It's a tiny local shop in a residential area nearby our apartment with very few places to sit.  We arrived early for lunch and lucked out with a spot.. 20 minutes after our arrival, the place was packed with people waiting both inside and outside of the restaurant (and it was quite cold and rainy outside!).  For 5.65£, you get a piece of fish (the size of my forearm!) plus chips.  We were both stuffed and skipped dinner that night!


On Sunday we went all the way to the other side of town to “Poppies Fish and Chips”.  They were only ranked #297 on Trip Advisor, but we decided to make the trip because Jen discovered that they are one of the stops on the popular Eating London foodie tour.  The location we went to was in a commercial area, near a really cute market called Spitalfields.  The price was a fair bit higher at 10.90£ for a similar portion to Baileys, but the restaurant has a lot more tables and a fun 60's-diner-ambiance with funky memorabilia.  


Conclusion:
Both meals were delicious but taste-wise, we both preferred Poppies because the fish batter was lighter and less greasy, and the chips were less starchy.  We do want to mention that we really enjoyed Baileys for the cozy local feel and great service - the staff there were all super friendly and welcoming.

The Book of Mormon

Of all the great musicals in London, we decided to see “The Book of Mormon” by the creator of South Park. 

Similar to South Park, it has some overly crude parts, but overall the show is quite clever and finishes on a really nice note.  We both enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone over a certain age, as long as you have a good sense of humour and aren't easily offended!

If you want a glimpse of the show, watch the following:


Working in London

Within hours of booking our next winter escape to South-East Asia, we received a request to go to London to work at a customer site, ASAP.  We raced to get our UK work visas, which actually required us to go to Edmonton to get all of our fingerprints taken!  2 weeks later, we found ourselves in London, UK for the next month.

The customer's office is located right in central London (Piccadilly Circus) and they put us up in a cute apartment only 5 stations away from the office, so we got to experience the full-on London ambiance - pubs, shows, tourists, endless night-life, shopping, and a huge assortment of yummy restaurants.  What a great experience!

Food-wise, our highlight was an amazing raw-vegan restaurant called Tanya's Cafe (www.tanyascafe.com).  Since the restaurant owner is our co-worker's wife, we were fortunate enough to get a sneak-peek tasting of the upcoming new Christmas cocktails.  They were so creative and the flavours were amazingly interesting!  We also sampled several raw-vegan snacks including kale-chips, a variety of vegan "cheeses", cashew "sour-cream", and raw nachos.  Everything was SO tasty and we were all blown away by the unique and delicious experience!  We had no idea raw food could be so amazing and we can't wait to go back - Jen's really hoping we will have time to take some un-cooking classes there next time! :)

Since we worked a lot while we were there (plus it rained a fair bit), we didn't get a lot of sight-seeing in, but we did manage to fit in one day of checking out the typical tourist sights.

We really enjoyed the trip and were sad that it ended so quickly... but hopefully we'll get to return again in the spring! :)


Arianne's Visit to Calgary

When Dominic, his sisters, and cousins were kids, they were all sent to Vancouver to spend a summer with his Aunt learning English.   Since we live in an English province and Dom's sisters now have children of their own, we wanted to help keep the tradition alive with the next generation.  

We welcomed Dominic's 10 year old niece, Arianne, as the first one to visit.  We kept her entertained from making sushi, salad rolls, and fresh pasta, to playing frisbee golf... and, of course, we had to bring her out to visit our beautiful mountains.

As part of her stay, we helped Arianne create a blog (in English) to share her experiences and adventures with her family back home... (wish we had a uncle and aunt like us! ;) )  

http://beyondlafleurdelys.posthaven.com

She stayed with us for a total of 3.5 weeks and although learning a new language isn't always the funnest thing to do, it was a great adventure for everyone and we look forward to hosting another niece or nephew in the future. 

Cape Hatteras

Before returning home from Montreal, we took some time off and made a 5-day detour to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina with Dom’s good friend, Yves, and his family.  Cape Hatteras is a well known kitesurfing spot, unfortunately we were a bit unlucky - rain and no wind for 5 days! 


But we still had a great time playing in the waves and hanging out with everyone.  We even managed to get a short rain-break which was just enough time to show Mathieu and Yves how to master a traction kite.

Grandma's 90th Birthday

This summer we went to Montreal to celebrate Dom's Grandmother's 90th birthday.  His family came to Montreal, from all parts of Canada for the occasion (Baie-Comeau, Calgary, Vancouver). 

It was a full day of fun spent hanging out by the pool, playing volleyball, etc., finished off with roasting marshmallows over the camp fire, beneath a beautiful full moon.



Back in the Canadian Cold

We thought we planned our trip perfectly so that we'd be back just in time for Spring!!

… sadly, Mother Nature had her own plan, so our first week back in Calgary was snow, Snow, and more cold SNOW!!!  :(