what pastaholic ate for breakfast.

i recently wrote a story for the travelettes about ha long bay. i mention that one of the main reasons why i decided on vietnam was because i love fresh spring rolls so much and wanted to eat as many as i could. and no, before you care to correct me, nobody calls them summer rolls there. pastaholic me however was thinking about pho before going there and got ridiculously excited by the idea of travelling to a country where it was perfectly acceptable to have pasta for breakfast. not even in rome did i eat pasta for breakfast, though i should have and next time i go, i totally will. and while i am very well aware of the difference between noodles and pasta, i was still excited and looking forward to 'pasta for breakfast'.

in case you don’t know what pho is – pho is a broth with rice noodles, usually served with chicken or beef, and notoriously mispronounced by foreigners who end up ordering a hooker for breakfast. i tried my best not to, but i also think that the vietnamese are used to the stupid westerners now and have learned to differentiate if someone is hungry for one or the other.

so we arrived and i ate pho. i ate pho on my first night in vietnam, i ate it at pho 2000 where clinton ate his pho, and at 6.30am after getting off a night train in nha trang with a dodgy stomach at a little side street cafe, barely avoiding pigs feet and blood sausage in my bowl. so i think i ate my way around and really gave it a fair chance. but in the end i realized again, because i kind of knew that already, that i am not a soup/broth fan. it doesn't get me excited at all, ever. unless it’s lobster broth, but even then i would prefer the actual lobster. but i didn't make a big deal out of broth dislike, i just started to eat only the noodles, the chicken, and at pho 2000 the funny, round mushrooms that looked like exploding shrooms from mario brothers, but that were actually super delicious. this was an okay solution for me, but i always felt a bit bad for leaving all the broth. it felt like i was insulting the chef's pho by not eating the broth.

 

the other thing that i realized is that eating noodle soup for breakfast is freaking weird. i really don’t want to sound like a horrible tourist here and i don’t think that my breakfast choices are making the world a better place, but for my palate noodle soup was weird. i thought i was going to be in heaven, being allowed to have noodles all day long, but for breakfast my stomach was like “what the heck? ever heard about eggs? ever heard about a croissant? a dry piece of baguette?”. it got very confused by my repeated attempts to feed it noodles at 7am, something it had clearly marked and stored away under lunch and dinner and after midnight snack foods.

then came the morning when we arrived in hanoi. again we had gotten off a night train which for a change hadn't arrived earlier, hurrah, but nobody had woken us up and so we had to get up, get our luggage, and get off the train in less than 5 minutes. then we had to walk to our hotel for about 10 minutes, backpacks and all, through grey morning streets and high humidity. at our hotel we couldn't check in yet, so we freshened up in the bathrooms, and went off to find some breakfast. even in busy hanoi not an easy task this early in the morning and at least the eggs benedict were still fast asleep. we went to a little corner cafe to have a coffee first and wait for the breakfast place to open.

my stomach was still dodgy, but i decided to ignore it and have an iced coffee with condensed milk. why anyone would drink coffee without condensed milk ever is beyond me and since i knew my days in vietnam were numbered i went for it. eventually more places opened and we had the choice of ordering pho from the stall next to the cafe or to have said eggs benedict for breakfast. my stomach and my wallet both decided that a little chicken noodle broth would be gentler for every party involved. i asked tam, our one vietnamese in the group, to order me a bowl. he did and in return i didn't growl at him when he wanted to take my picture eating pho. which i think says a lot about how mellow i am on holiday, because let’s repeat:

it was before 8am.
i was not feeling well.

implied that i wasn't wearing any make-up and that i don't like to have my picture taken in general. i think i was temporarily mollified though by my pho and by tam's camera, which is a fancy one in a cool, old school cover. and in the end i must admit i quite like it the picture. blame the filter, i blame the pho. the vietnamese seem to have it right – pho in the morning is good for you.

 

to think or not to think.

 

technically i am still in my post-holiday-blues phase, but i am taking it one day at a time now and so this morning i woke up and after checking twitter in bed (yes, i know it’s sad…) i found myself with a sudden surge of energy. i not only took a shower and exfoliated my face, i even put on body lotion and drank my green juice without cringing. 

now i made it to the office and now sit in my boss’ slankie as she is away and i am FREEZING and do admin. hurrah for productivity.

remember when i wrote on holiday that i really didn’t do much thinking while i was away. my idea was to sit somewhere quietly at angkor wat, maybe reading my book, but rather contemplating life, meditating next to a monk, and definitely writing down some profound thoughts in my little notebook…let’s just say that i found it a silly plan in hindsight. angkor wat was way too crowded to sit anywhere quietly, being close to a monk now made me nervous after i had learned they don’t wear underwear, and i only used the notebook once to write down someone’s email address. and it continued from there; i was always just in the moment, always doing something, seeing something, and yes, usually eating something. and to my surprise that was delightful. being in the moment really rocks and thinking and pondering are a bit overrated.

but now i’m back. there is a lot going on in me at the moment and my head has decided to sort it all out in one go and do all the thinking all at once. so i feel a bit overwhelmed right now and the only time i don’t think is when i watch orange is the new black, so i have been doing lots of that to give my head a break. what i have not been doing in addition to all the thinking is tell you stories and show you pictures and while i feel bad about it and people have started to complain, rightfully so because i promised, there is not much i can do about it at the moment. i will keep pinkie swearing that the stories and the photos will come, because i can tell the thinking will come to an end soon and some decisions will be made. in the meanwhile i will share some pictures that my lovely and obviously more organized travel companions have posted.

 

from top:
halong bay after the rain. that one is from me. i am quite proud of it actually. how beautiful is this place even during typhoon season? (and no, we didn't have a typhoon, i just like to pretend because it sounds more exciting)
teletubbies at the cu chi tunnels. of course it started raining the second we got out of the bus. so we decided to at least colour coordinate our ponchos.
that's my "is that really a snake in there and i am supposed to drink it?" face. yes, it really was a snake and no, i politely declined.
beer with a view. almost got police raided too. excitement in saigon!
my milli vanilli leopard pants, tailor-made in hoi an. seamstress didn't even blink an eye when i chose my fabric.

yoga at its best.

yesterday i had the fun task to go and buy myself a new airbook. unfortunately it wasn’t as fun as i had envisioned it because i had to go to the v&a, i was hormonal, and the sales person at the istore wasn’t as clever as i would have hoped for so it took forever. no, actually scrap the first and the last – i was just hormonal. i watched glee afterwards and cried all throughout.

at 10pm after i was done with all the crying i decided i should do something useful and so i started to download over 2000 holiday pictures on the new airbook. for some reason that didn’t work immediately and once it worked, it took forflippingever. that didn’t help my overall mood. i thought i decided to write a little story about it all, only to realize that i couldn’t because i didn’t have a writing program yet. bleh. luckily that was the moment when i came across the pictures i am about to share and they made it all better. pictures from the bestest and most fun yoga class ever.

so my plan was to do lots of yoga while travelling. i bought a yellow sticky towel in lieu of a mat and downloaded the bikram dialog on my computer, i packed a set of yoga clothes and started to envision myself practising on a hotel balcony, bamboo floors, gentle breeze, overlooking the ocean, and all. alternatively i was being surrounded by some little vietnamese kids, teaching them tree and lion pose, laughing and giggling a lot. not sure how i acquired the kids in my vision, but i wasn’t questioning that at the time.

and then reality came along.

it started well enough in bangkok where i had made contact with a local bikram studio before and actually found myself in dire need of a good stretch on my first day. you’d assume that an hour and a half is plenty of time to get places, however in bangkok it is not especially if like me you can’t read thai and don’t trust directions. so after an hour and twenty-seven minutes i was already dripping sweat (thanks, humidity!), it was about to rain, and i was about to cry, because i had just spent an hour and twenty-seven minutes trying to find that damn bikram studio that didn’t want to be found. i was about to give up and look for a cocktail instead when i finally saw a sign “bikram this way”. it was after an hour and twenty-nine minutes that i arrived out of breath and by now completely drenched at the studio. hurray.

class was as it was to be expected- a bit underwhelming; after an hour and twenty-nine minutes i guess i really needed bikram himself to be there or for them to throw confetti at me for making it in time or something. nevertheless i got my stretch and thanks to the teacher took the boat back to my guest house which was awesome.

• after that my yoga practise became even trickier and i could give you some excuses why i was so lazy for a month because of it, but actually i have solid, good reasons: 
• a sticky towel only sticks on a mat. it doesn’t stick on any other surfaces, something that i wasn’t aware of before i bought it.
• a sticky towel doesn’t substitute a mat. comfort wise you may as well be rolling around practising on a bare floor.
• most 1 or 2 star hotels don’t have balconies overlooking the ocean.
• people look strangely at you if you stick your tongue out at their kids. try to explain that you weren’t being impolite, but wanted to do yoga with their kids is hard in vietnamese.
• whenever there was time for yoga, there was also time for beer.
• drinking beer makes you less sticky than doing yoga.

so it should come as no surprise that the only sort of yoga class happened after two beers, on a junk boat, in swimsuits with more laughter than proper breathing. mind you, it was one of the best (and nobody pulled a hamstring or went overboard which always makes for a successful class!)

sorry no editing, no out-takes - they were all just too awesome:

between worlds.

i have almost been back home for a week. it feels like forever and like i just got off the plane at the same time.

i don’t have proper post-holiday blues, but i’m not really here either.

 i’m still so cold all the time and yesterday i complained about my melissa’s cappuccino for 10 minutes. what is the point of drinking coffee without any sweet condensed milk?

my first yoga classes teaching were lovely, but i just want to stick my tongue out at my own mat.

some of my friends were incredibly sweet and welcoming, but i also had an incident with someone i deeply care about that had me work on my don’t judge other people skills overtime.

when i was away coming home seemed wonderful. now being home is just okay.

my aunt and uncle both mentioned that my last posts from vietnam sounded sad. did it? was i sad? i actually don’t know, i don’t think so. my holiday was absolutely fantastic, but i think at times i felt it was all a bit overwhelming and now i’m trying to process it all and acquaint myself with the concept of home again at the same time. so therefore i’m still feeling overwhelmed.

yesterday i took a nap and i had one of these funny reality dreams. boy, that dream got me thinking…thinking and wondering if my world is becoming once again a bit too small for me. not that anything came out of all the thinking, except that it scared me a bit and made me feel even more in between worlds.

sorry. none of this is very coherent and since my airbook is still sick i don’t have the possibility to make it up to you and write a proper travel post. i will as soon as i have it back (and i have caught up on all the series i’ve missed), pinkie swear. but in the meanwhile my first and proper post about cambodia is out on travelletes, so check it out here and bear with me while i’m trying to sort out my life.

mozzies or not i wish i was back here just eating coconut ice cream. 

 

 

same same, but different.

it's my last night in hanoi and this is not a real post, but more a little putting thoughts on paper/ to computer ramble. i just returned from halong bay which was magical, but today was a just a travel day and nothing but annoying. now i have returned from a fancy restaurant where i went to out of sheer exhaustion because it was close and paid...well let's just say...a lot. i didn't even really enjoy the food anymore and would have happily traded it for a bottle of red and some homemade carbonara. yes, i am this traveller now and it makes me wonder if i'm a good traveller at all. is a good traveller supposed to want to go home? ever? or eat carbonara?

i recently read from a some people that they live to travel. and it sounds exciting and fascinating and it smells live unwavering adventure, doesn't it?

i think it's a load of crap.

i thought a lot about it for the last week or so once i started to look forward to going home. i think if you live to travel then you are doing something wrong with the living part. living to travel, implies not really living unless you travel and unless you are a proper nomad that's just a bit sad i think. i look forward to going home now, because i actually like my life a whole lot, i live it in a way that suits me. sure i also have times and events that are more exciting than any given tuesday, but in the end i don't want to live from one vacation to the next. that's not living, that's sort of just being...

last year i realized that i become a different person when i travel, the vacation me. that was a lovely feeling, but this time it didn't feel that new and out of the ordinary anymore, which made me think, maybe i am that person after all and all along. that person that smiles a lot, that goes with the flow, that doesn't sweat the small stuff. i am still me on vacation, i am “same same, but different” as the vietnamese say. and so i decided i don't need to live to travel. i will be quite alright just living and travel sometimes to remind me of it.  

puppy love.

today's post is brought to you by special request. i guess i could have written something about hoi an or how we got lost and had dinner in a dark alley (always get lost and have dinner in dark alleys!) or how this is turning out to be the journey of all the boat trips. but since i got a special request, i thought i should rather focus on another important part of travelling – meeting people – and introduce you to the post requester.

there is wifi all over vietnam, except in our hotel right now. so little social media addicts that we all are we sat over dinner with our iphones, checking facebook, and basically commenting on what the people across from us at the table were doing online. yes, i it is a bit sad, don't i know it...

ash – who, by the way, was my knight in sweaty armour from my last story - had not only started to read my blog and like it, but was now demanding more and when was the next story coming and what was i doing here eating dinner instead of putting down amusing words. and of course my ego was stroked and so here i am by special request at midnight.

meet ashley from london or ass as the vietnamese tend to pronounce it, which of course one cannot help but adapt. after spontaneously tricking him into being my today's travelette instagram on the topic of 'travel buddy', i thought he deserved a bit of a better introduction than this:

 

(though most of the pictures he jumped into are sort of like the above.)

we met on our first part of the journey in bangkok and to my horror i had to find out that there were people, well, one, who are almost half my age on this trip. this led him to tell me that he doesn't mind being organized and will i please organize him. my therapist would have been proud of me when i declined, but somehow it still stuck that he calls me his mum once in a while (thanks, ass!).

i never thought i would become friends with someone who does that or with whom i don't have anything at all in common with on paper. but sometimes wanting to squeeze someone's cheek will be apparently be enough to start a friendship. and before you shake your head or mentally high five me, i am not talking about cheek squeezing in a mrs robinson way, but rather in a puppy's cheek squeezing way.

ash, i'm not being condescending, but i will call you a puppy. because you can sleep anywhere and eat anything. but mainly for your enthusiasm you bring along for everything: rocking a dingy piano bar, enjoying angkor wat and angkor what, eating baked beans and pringles in the pool or doing homework with the restaurant owner's kid. i envy that enthusiasm, i want more of this in my life. thanks for showing me how it's done!

train of thoughts.

you would assume being on a night train in the top bunk is conducive to writing. it really isn't when you have to wonder who slept in the sheets before you, whether you might fall off, and if the roaches in the food carriage are any indication to what's underneath your bed. but then your travel companion brings out a $1 bottle of rum to make it all better and you decide that drinking is more of a necessity than writing on the night train.

however the a couple of days later the same thoughts are still here and i can sum it up neatly: i am starting to miss home. i am at the pinnacle of my trip, one cannot not love hoi an, by now i know everybody's name in my group and have learned how to avoid the motorbikes, and i prefer the vietnamese food to anything i have ever eaten. and now i am starting to miss home. how? why?

first of all my body feels a bit off. i have gotten sunburnt, had a cold sore, sport various bites from anonymous sources, and my left toe nail seems to be dying (which, dear wary traveller, had already started back home, so one cannot blame asia for it!), and for the past few days my stomach feels dodgy and since i have so far gotten away with eating pretty much anything, this makes me especially grumpy. it is probably punishment as i was secretly laughing at a couple who wiped their utensils with antiseptic at a fancy breakfast place. i obviously didn't and here i am looking for the happy house (yes, that's really how it's called!).

i am also starting to realize that even though i am travelling with a lovely group, i sometimes feel really lonely within this group. in certain moments i feel even more lonely than if i was travelling by myself, because being surrounded by people makes me more aware that they are not my people. though i have met some great girls, had nice chit chats and some good conversations, at the end of the day they are still strangers. i miss the non strangers in my life. i miss people that i have a history with, that i don't need to explain to, that still get my references.

i miss my brother, because he would love the fact that vietnam seems to love tin tin as much as he does. i miss julia to talk me in or out of buying giraffe print fabric for my tailor made pants. i didn't get them in the end, but i'm afraid i made the wrong decision, because i could have had giraffe pants! i miss my mother, because she would love all the different massage places and watching the chefs in the kitchens and the ladies on the markets. she would go into any restaurant kitchen if they would allow her and here most chefs actually wouldn't mind. i miss thekla, because she would enjoy eating all the food with me and i wouldn't have to feel bad that i can actually, without any problem, eat three full meals per day. i miss marie so she can check for me if something is really silk or not. i miss claire so i can proudly tell her that not me, but only the cover of my camera lens, fell into the rice paddy and luckily i had a knight in sweaty armour by my side to stick his arm into the muck and fish it out for me. i miss my father, because he would love taking pictures with me of our dinner before it becomes our dinner and because he is the best to order champagne cocktails in french. as it is i didn't have any because i'm not that fancy on my own.

but having that said, i will stop now. i have to collect my non-giraffe tailored pants, buy a bracelet, eat lunch at morning glory (no jokes please, i have heard them all over the last week), get a massage, attend a birthday party, and take a boat trip down the river for the lantern festival. so yes, i miss you guys, but i will see you soon, and life is too good right now to mope. 

eating asia: crickets, pancakes and coconuts.

i apologize in advance, but none of my travel stories are going to be in any chronological order. i just had some really amazing pancakes for breakfast and because there is internet, i feel the need to tell you about the food here right now.

i guess it was kind of a given that the food was going to be good, but really i had no idea. i am eating all the food and so far i had:

three plates of pad thai. after the first one i was wondering what it was they call pad thai in south africa, because it definitely isn't pad thai. basically i have been to heaven and back with each plate (okay, maybe not the one we had at the restaurant at the petrol station, but it was still really good for petrol station food).

lots of sugared peanuts as a pre-dinner snack. yup, they are sugared here and i like it.

sticky rice topped with coconut for breakfast and blue sticky rice as a topping on coconut icecream.

THE best coconut balls. it must have ranked up there was one of the best sweets experiences of my life.

sour mango with spices.

two crickets. which very actually quite nice. one guy said they tasted a bit like bacon and they actually do. i just feel a bit bad now whenever i hear the sound of crickets in the evenings.

i have sampled four local beers: singha and chang in thailand, ankor and cambodia in cambodia. and of course sampled is a bit of an understatement.

i have had original long island ice tea in a bucket on khaosan road and the head to match the next morning.

lemongrass icetea! that deserves a special mention because it come very close to the thyme tea in the atlas mountains in goodness.

two of two breakfasts consisting of pancakes. america, go away! -your pancakes have nothing on cambodia's. they are doubly as thick, doubly as fluffly, and they are usually served with sweet milk, butter, and fresh fruit.

of course i had lots of coconut juice, most of it served straight up from a coconut which you can get in most restaurants and from the street stalls. but even the one they sell in cans here is not bad at all, because it is unsweetened and has little bits of coconut floating in it.

khmer food in general must be one of the most underrated cuisines ever. it is absolutely fantastic and has its own set of spices, herbs, and flavours. so far i had beef with starfruit salad, fresh springrolls, chicken amok served in a coconut, flat white noodles with vegetable, and have successfully declined to eat a dried snake snack.

to my demise i have realized that i have no problem with eating three full meals per day, even with the constant heat and humidity of a bikram studio all around. i also have not unrolled my yoga mat once. and i have no idea how i will ever go back to eating simply asia or chef pon's. however for now i don't care, because i'm on holiday and there is some more pancakes waiting for me – with fresh fruit, which surely counts for something!

p.s. i have since added the following: the hottest, most delicious green papaya salad, more fresh spring rolls, one with bacon which was a bit odd, a platter full of fresh fish, a home cooked meal with deep fried mushrooms and morning glory with lotus seeds, a shot of spider wine, and this morning i actually ate a spider leg (probably tarantula, it just looked like beef jerky). okay, it was actually more the quarter of a leg, but still, i felt quite heroic and wouldn't be surprised to meet tobey maguire any moment now. 

to eat or not to eat.

yesterday in class we were in half tortoise and i forgot to get out of the posture when everybody else did. well i didn't really forget, i just didn't hear sy when he told us to come out of it. why i didn't hear him? well, i was thinking about my arrival in bangkok and if there were still restaurants open late at night close to the hotel, oh but surely i can get a bowl of pad thai anytime in bangkok, right? so now i apparently not only think about cupcakes but also about pad thai in my yoga classes. next time you worry that you are not focussed enough or that your mind wonders, don’t worry about it, because there might just be a teacher practising next to you who is thinking about noodles.

for this mental slip i blame the fact that i haven’t eaten pasta in 4 (!!!) days for pre-holiday toning reasons and that my mind currently revolves around little else but the planning of my upcoming trip. as you know i am a planner. i plan for a living and i plan for fun and yes, sometimes to a fault. it leaves little room for living in the moment and being spontaneous and all the crap wise things wise people tell you to do if you really want to be happy. but my happiness levels are okay most days and so i continue planning.

at times like these i enjoy the planning immensely because it is like having a mental holiday before the actual holiday and also because planning calms my nerves and i am slightly freaking out here. freaking out because i am going to asia and i have never been and i have always wanted to and what if i hate it and get homesick and cold and and and… so i am planning and since most of my trip has a set itinerary, i am focussing all my attention on the few days that i have added before and after. the amount of research i have spent on junks in halong bay and pondered on the question of how much titanic pre-sinking luxury i can afford is extensive. tripadvisor and i have gotten well acquainted and also my good, old friend google came to the helping when i simply asked: how to pick the best junk in halong bay?

google is like the reincarnated oracle of delphi. it actually found me a blog post comparing three different cruises that the author had all done himself. i like that kind of enthusiasm and effort put into the story and after i went on reading. eventually i found a post of how he went to eat dog in vietnam. let’s leave the question of whether one should eat any animals aside for just a moment and dear vegetarians would you just indulge me for a story of pure adventurous foodie spirit? i need a little food challenge in asia. what should i eat? it’s a given that there will be an entire pastaholic story about the art of eating noodles for breakfast, don’t worry. but here are some of the more … exotic options on the menu which are to be considered:

pets. i don’t want to eat a dog or a cat or a hamster. i completely understand that in other cultures they are considered food and that is fine, but for me they are pets. also hamsters have tiny, little bones and unless it’s a quail tasting likewaffle i am not fan of tiny, little bones.

snake. i think i have ophidiophobia and that extends to eating the things. i sometimes gag just seeing a snake on tv, so i don’t think the attempt to eat one would go down well.

critters and insects. anything that looks like a maggot, and a worm is just a big maggot, is a no. sorry, but i don’t care about their protein content, if you ever had maggots in your house, you wouldn’t pay money to eat some either. but maybe something crunchy, cricket-y as long as it is fried. i like fried and crispy things.

feet and stuff. i have once vetoed a mexican thanksgiving stuffing with chicken feet, but have eaten pigs’ feet and ears, so i am not sure where that leaves me on the issue of feet and other body parts like that.

blood and gore intestines. i would not necessarily say no, unless hanoi in august smells the same as nyc meatpacking district in august.

and that leaves me with the crème de la crème of exotic asian food:

the fertilized egg. a vietnamese speciality. it gives an elegant twist to the conundrum of which came first – the chicken or the egg? and no, as much as i like chicken and eggs, i don’t want chicken in egg. i would however very much like to see some fertilized eggs when they hatch. apparently it happens on the markets in summer sometimes and i think that would be awesome to see. the chicken totally wings it and gets away. sorry sir, but your lunch just hatched and ran off! now i would pay money to see that.

to summarize one could say that though i eat quite a few things, the asian, exotics might not be completely up my alley. but i like a challenge. you tell me what and i take a bite and have a picture taken to prove it too!

camel burger in fez. delicious though i felt slightly bad as we were riding camels 

the next day.

i ate some of henry's brains. the picture does them justice - they were unexciting and mushy.

And this is what you missed - the happy edition.

Guys, I’m suffering from serious writer’s block today. I had one of these weeks that just flowed past with ease, grace, and bubbly. Though I thoroughly enjoyed myself, I think it makes for uninteresting writing. Maybe because I feel little inspired to rub into your face how perfect my week was. I shall anyhow, but just a tiny bit…

I taught lots of classes and got a big head from all the kind words people told me in response. It made me feel truly blessed and this is not a term I use lightly.
V day, the most dreaded day of the year for a single girl, ended over dinner with not one, but two guys. Yes, you heard me and please feel free to envy me, because there was wine and pasta and cupcakes too.
The highlight was probably an unexpected phone call from my Mum giving me some unexpected funding for my Yay-I’m-Going-To-Vietnam-Fund and my Dad who basically emailed me an entire travel guide with food tips already (No thank you! to the fertilized egg omelette though). Thus I have been whistling One Night in Bangkok a bit too much – again!
Then there was also a Biscuit Mill followed by sneaking to a hotel pool afternoon, a bachelorette party, luckily sans penis straws, and a stargazing evening on my balcony.

It seems I am a lucky girl. When I realize that I’m too content to even write much about it, it makes me a happy one as well.

And this is what you missed II.

What got me excited…

 

 

Remember that one? Yes, this was unfortunately playing over and over in my head last week. Probably because I finally decided on my travel destination for August…drum roll please… Vietnam. Yes, I am perfectly aware that Bangkok is not in Vietnam, but the trips I’m currently looking at all start there. So when this song got stuck, I thought it could be exciting to add a crazy night or two in Bangkok to kick-start the adventure.

What made me nostalgic…
My first boyfriend got engaged. It didn’t come as a surprise, yet it still hit me just a little bit. I haven’t really thought about him or even spoken to him in years, but it’s still somewhat strange to realize that he is really and officially not mine anymore and that our plans for happily-ever-after didn’t come true. I guess I just felt sorry for a moment for my former 17-year old me, who so believed in this first love.

What made me pretty…
On Saturday I got a haircut at The Lobby for the first time. I was a bit scared upon walking in; if there was ever a place made in hipster heaven this is it. But to my surprise I learned that you can still entrust your hair to a stylist who is so hip(ster) that he wears a little hat while he cuts your hair and serves BOS ice tea. My hair now looks awesome and yes, I let it down big time at night!

What made me sad…
You also missed my Mum’s birthday yesterday. And so did I. I hate the fact that I am always far apart from at least half my family, especially on those days when there is roast beef and bubbles. Happy happy, Mami!