Friday, December 30, 2011

Holiday Update

Whew! It's been another crazy couple of months. Good times continued with our friends Amy and Anthony through November. We spent Veteran's Day weekend riding Vespas along the coast from Ho Chi Minh City to the town of Mui Ne, stopping off to check out rice fields, fishing villages, and slide down sand dunes. Next we took a week off to travel to Borneo, but not before spending a couple days in Singapore. We splurged for rooms at the swanky Marina Bay Sands Hotel, mostly so we could hang out at their awesome rooftop pool overlooking the city. Sufficiently pampered, we hopped on a plane to Kuching, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo. We spent the week doing crazy hikes, kayaking, and checking out wildlife, from proboscis monkeys, to carnivorous pitcher plants, to orangutans. The food was also delicious…mmm, roti canai….

After bidding adieu to Amy and Ant, we rushed back to Saigon in time to meet up with my mom, dad, and brother who came to visit for 2 weeks. In typical Fox fashion, we packed the itinerary, touring Hoi An, Hue, Dalat, Nha Trang, and of course Ho Chi Minh City. We also fit in time for riding Minsk motorcycles through Central Vietnam, rappelling the Marble Mountains, and riding bicycles from the mountains to the coast. But wait…there's more! We flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia as well, so my family could see Angkor Wat. We also made time to run the Angkor Wat Half Marathon, where I was runner-up for the second year in a row.

Nikki and I have kept up our rigorous travel schedule since my family left. Nikki had a week-long training course in Thailand in early December, while I ran a marine spatial planning training in northern Vietnam. We were able to meet up in Bangkok for the weekend, taking a dinner cruise and touring a floating market. For Christmas we returned to Singapore where we enjoyed all the Christmas decorations on Orchard Row and saw the musical "Wicked" on Christmas Eve. We spent Christmas day riding roller coasters on Sentosa Island and stuffed ourselves on a self-designed food-tour of Chinatown.

The adventures continue with a trip to Langkawi, Malaysia for New Years and then a month of travel for Nikki's R&R break. Happy Holidays everyone!