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Have been working a lot over the past 2 months. I started a tour just before Christmas, which took me from Hanoi to Saigon in 18 days overland. During this tour I spent Christmas in Hanoi and New Years in the small town of Quy Nhon.

Christmas eve in Hanoi was awesome. On christmas eve, I was out with pax attempting to walk from a restaurant in Hanoi’s old quarter to our hotel about 1 k away. Now you must understand that in Hanoi there are 4 million people, and probably 2 million motorbikes. On christmas eve, everyone in hanoi came out on their bikes to cruise around Hoan Kiem lake, the center of town, to see and be seen. What would normally be a 10-minute walk took us well over an hour. But it was awesome seeing so many people out just for the sake of being out!

My colleagues were teasing me about being stuck in Quy Nhon for New Year’s eve. And they’re right. The town in dead boring. Luckily, on tour, we stay at a pretty posh hotel, the Saigon Quy Nhon, and I was able to rely on them for New Year’s entertainment for me and my pax. We jumped on the hotel’s NYE party. $10 for buffet dinner and free flow rice wine. The was entertainment, including singers, dancers, games and even a magician. Of about 200 people in attendance, my group of 15 + me were the only foreigners. It was a uniquely Vietnamese and pretty cool New Years.

That tour finished in Saigon and a few days later I picked up a new bunch, 12 Aussies and 1 Canadian, and led them back up to Hanoi in 14 days. This was my best tour yet — the most fun, and the one where I most felt at-ease. My confidence in my role, and my local knowledge is getting much better. And I’m still having fun.

On this tour, among other flights, we fly from Nha Trang to Danang early one morning. Like usual, we check out of the hotel and load everyone’s luggage on the bus. We arrive to the airport and one suitcase is missing! Shit! The passenger swears he saw it get loaded on the bus. We phone the hotel and nothing. They check the rooms, the lobby, the street outside and nothing. We’re 35 minutes from the hotel and 30 minutes until the flight leaves. No time to go back, and no idea where the bag is anyway. I call my office and get them on the case with the management of the hotel, and get the passenger to start making a list of contents for insurance purposes. We have to keep moving so we board the flight and land in Danang as usual. We all gather around the baggage claim, as you do, and guess which suitcase was first off the plane? Yup, the missing bag. I have no idea how the bag got on the plane, how it passed security, or how it made it, but it did. It didn’t go through check-in with anyone in my group. A happy and potentially scary occurrence considering the unaccompanied baggage aspect!

All was good, until the hotel rang me. While they were searching the my group’s rooms for the missing bag, they found a wallet and sunglasses belonging to another of my passengers! The pax hadn’t even realized they were missing yet! This was easier to solve, since I could simply have the hotel post them to my Hanoi office, where we’d be in a few days.

Thailand!

After a few days rest here in Hanoi, I’m heading to Thailand to do my first Thailand tour. It’s called the Trails of Thailand. I’ve been to most of the places before, on holiday a few years back, so I won’t be completely blind, but I’m still a little anxious about working in a new country! But more than anything, I’m excited to get out of Vietnam for a breath of something different for a few weeks.