Anne's blog travel 06-07

Well of course you can't see anything on these photos but just pretend...

Had a lovely diner last night with Donna and Marc at a beautiful Indian restaurant. Over ten years and it seems they haven't changed. It's a strange story how we meet Donna and I. I may not have told you but Donna and Marc's family name is "de Champlain". This is not a common name and indeed had I ever met anyone in a French speaking country, let alone Montreal with that name I would have been absolutely flabberghasted. Yet I met Donna in Perth one day in a shop. I was working there and within minutes somehow I'd asked her what her husband's name was. She'd told me she was married to a French Canadian from Edmonton (English speaking part of Canada) and only mentioned it because she thought I didn't have much of an accent. And to make the coincidence even more unbelievable, when she realised we had the same name, she asked me whether I lived in Fremantle (which I did). In a bizarre twist of fate, Marc had checked the Perth phone book the day before and noticed my name spelled exactly the same as his and wanted to call me to see if we were related. Probably thinking better of it, he didn't. He had left for the field where he worked a month on and a month off that very morning.

And so it went that I met Donna several times and even spent Xmas at her place that year and it was only about 6 weeks later that I met Marc. They were suddenly going to be transfered to Thailand and so we had diner one night. I felt like I'd known them all my life and Marc definately had some familiar traits. However we never looked into our family trees as we said we would. We stayed in contact occasionnally but it took over ten years for me to come and meet them again. I mentioned one of my ancestors to Marc last night and he said: "He's also my ancestor." So now, I'm really hanging to get the family tree he's promised to send me so we can really look into that.

Anyway...Decided to sort myself out today rather than do some sightseeing. I really needed to take some decisions appart from also picking up my visa and getting my shots done at a hospital here and delaying this process was not a good thing. I stopped at a travel agency after going to the hospital in the morning. The lady was showing me different options for traveling with flying here and there, and this area is not good by land, and this will take you so many days and blah blah blah. I ended up leaving more confused than when I got in. I really couldn't feel any of it. And yet there must have been something that would pull at my heart. I went to do a bit of emailing and managed to clear my head. I realised I didn't want to travel all over four countries staying a few days here or there and dragging my things from one place to another in an attempt to see whatever shouldn't be missed. I knew in my heart that had I had the choice I would probably have gone somewhere (like home if I had one) and just enjoyed that. And I also realised that there was one place that had really been calling me and that was Hanoi. When all this became clear, the choice was obvious. I went to pick up my visa at the embassy to see which dates they'd given me. 16 January to 16th February. I then organised to have ADSL connection in my room and started some research.

And I've now booked to fly to Hanoi from 16th January to 16th February. Easy! Got someone from a local hotel in Hanoi picking me up at the airport and he promised that should he not be able to accommodate me for the whole period, he would find somewhere for me to stay. So I'll base myself in Hanoi and perhaps do a few side trips. And that my friends feels so good to me.

I feel so relieved. So a bit more practicals to go and then I can really enjoy the rest of my time in Bangkok since I'm here until Tuesday.

Hope all is good in your lives...

Bye for now

# posted by AdeC @ 5:49 AM