Before arriving in Saigon, we spent a truly wonderful evening with Ari's high school friend Tim over Arabic cuisine, shisha and beverages. This is the one thing I miss about home, having easy going, relaxed and genuine company. Being in the Middle Eastern region it sometimes feels everything is overly manufactured and over the top to the point of being fake, it was lovely to see a fellow Aussie to help us bring a sense of normality and grounding to it all. Is that too deep lol? Anyway thanks again Tim, we must see you in Bahrain soon to repeat the above evening!

We also got a new Linda-proof camera to take better happy snaps of our trip. For those who know me, my clumsiness and skittishness knows no bounds but hopefully it will stay within the 2m drop, 100kg crush and 10m waterproof specifications. Given I'm vertically challenged, weigh less than 100kg and don't swim anyway, camera should be relatively safe, alternatively though I could just make Ari take all the pictures :)