Fi and I were up here in Byron on Sunday so we thought we’d go to church. We had no idea what, where, or when that would be until Fi saw a sign on the local notice board for a church in Byron that had a service at 10am (10am was a good time for us because we were sleeping in…) and seeing as these guys had a notice and we knew their service time we thought we’d give them a shot…

But I must admit that the location gave me some hesitations…

This church wasn’t located in the main centre of Byron but in the industrial estate on the outskirts of town. Now, geographical position doesn’t always tell you much about a church but to my mind the industrial park is a melting pot for everything that’s weird and wacky in the Christian church… Just think about some of the churches you know that are located in industrial estates… Yeah.

So I was tentative about what we mind find…

I don’t mind trying something different for church but we really weren’t up for anything too out there… you know, like wild prophesies, tongues, and a 2 hour sermon…

We probably should’ve made a different choice.

When we arrived we found it was quite small… Smallness is fine. Nothing wrong with a small church, but it does mean it’s harder to escape un-noticed if you need to bail.

They were quite welcoming, but when we walked through the door it felt like people just stared at us in a way as if to say “What the Hell are new people doing here? We don’t have new people?” That just felt kinda awkward…

Then we sat down to begin the service. The opening line went something like:

“Wow. Awesome. Great to see so many people here this morning… must be for my birthday (?). OK. So umm, we were hoping to have a prophetess speak to us this morning but she can’t make it - caught up in a revival somewhere - so if you came to see her sorry about that. We got some other guy instead…” Not an exact quote… but something like that.

At this stage I was, let’s say… ‘curious’ about what was to come. We sang some songs that I knew and that was comforting. We sang a 20 minute version of “How Great is our God” and I was cool with that. People started shouting out “Jesus Hallelujah!” and I was cool with that. Then people started chanting “Jesus Jesus Jesus! Hallelujah Jesus Jesus!” and I was cool with that (basically people just replaced the word “um” with “Jesus” when they spoke…). Then the dude in front of me kinda had some spasm and started laughing in short loud bursts… I was kinda cool with that but a bit freaked.

We did communion after singing. It seemed kinda spontaneous because someone just volunteered to do it out of the blue, and I was cool with that. The format was casual and pretty normal. Good quiet contemplation and reflection.

Now it was time for the sermon.

Cue sermon introduction: “Good morning folks. I forgot my guitar and I forgot my notes.” Good intro.

The “speaker” borrowed a guitar and burst into a song. His wife came up and joined in. They finished by speaking in tongues and then encouraged everyone to join in. Most peoples “tongue” sounded alot like Hebrew or Arabic. I don’t speak in tongues, so I just watched… The tongues bit went on for a while. Some of it was interpreted and some wasn’t. The crazy thing is that people would speak loudly in a tongue for a bit and then interpret themselves (for our benefit I guess), but it did make me wonder why they wouldn’t just skip the tongues bit and just give us the interpretation bit? There’s no benefit for me to hear their tongue when I can’t understand it. (cf. 1 Corinthians 14)

I thought the songs and the tongues might be the sermon seeing as the speaker forgot his notes, but… I was wrong.

Instead the speaker’s wife got up and gave a 30 minute talk followed by the “speaker’s” 30 minute talk without notes… I say 30 minutes but we actually left before he finished and he’d already been going for 35 minutes without any indication of finishing anytime soon.

It was kind of awkward walking out in full view of everyone and we smiled and said goodbye and thankyou and then took off.

Fi and i are just spending the week up in Byron on a “Babymoon”…

“Babymoon?” you say…

Yes, well apparently that’s what you call a pre-baby holiday… It doesn’t really roll off the tongue, and it sounds a bit dicky, but… it’s a holiday… and our last one ever without kids.

So we’re up here in sunny and warm Byron Bay for a week. So far so good. Even though I’ve travelled through Byron quite a few times, I’ve never actually stayed here, and it’s quite a nice place… Kinda expensive, but we got our accommodation cheap.

Our plan for this week is to:

• eat
• sleep
• watch Le Tour
• go to the “lounge cinema” ($7.50 tickets to watch new releases at the cinema on a lounge!!! woohoo!)
• more eating
• more sleeping
• And more of Le Tour…

I’d like to be reading a novel up here as well, but since finishing Dracula I haven’t thought of another good book to read… I feel alot of pressure when it comes to choosing a good holiday  book because you really want something that’s good - to really draw you in… know what I mean? Maybe I should’ve brought up another Victor Kelleher book…

OK, so after watching tonight’s (repeat episode) Top Gear African special, I’ve been inspired… instead of spending a YY weekend in a house somewhere drinking beer and solving the problems of the world, why don’t we do some form of road trip?

Choose a vehicle and off we go… Great Ocean Road? Somewhere North? Somewhere West? (East isn’t really too much of an option)

We could camp in the evenings if it’s nice weather, or go to a motel, or…?

So I’m back in town, and back into the swing of things.

The house we stayed in was really nice, just across the road from the beach with very nice views of the ocean and an island (which was pretty much in the ocean). On our first trip to the beach I caught my first ever fish (it was a ‘respectable’ whiting, according to the family fisher-types), which we then cooked and ate. The following evening I caught a crab on my line, which bit Nadia and then scurried off to safety back in the ocean. Jamie caught a flathead around the same time as my crab was making his dash for freedom, but apart from that our rods were barren for the rest of the week (although we did get some abalone which tasted pretty good).

I managed to get in quite a few swims, some kayaking, a decent run (which produced a number of blisters because I ran in shoes without wearing socks), quite a few walks, some board games (I love my new Christmas (no x-mas’ here, Michael, although I do like the look of ‘x-mas’, because it looks like the name of a superhero or something) copy of Risk), quite a bit of guitar playing, and plenty of reading. All in all, a very relaxing time away, with loads of good food and drink, and nice time with the family.

I made the trip home alone so that I could get back to work, and Vanessa has stayed with the family for a couple more days. I expected to be tired after the drive, but instead managed to get the washing done, catch up with a few friends, then ended up getting Thai takeaway (Kee Mao noodles with duck, one of my favourites) and a couple of DVDs (Shooter and 300) with a friend. The downside to this was that we didn’t finish watching 300 until about 1am, and then I had to get up early this morning for work, so I may have undone all that good relaxing… especially seeing as tonight I just got home from seeing Kings of Leon (who were pretty darn good) at the Hordern (which has been significantly tarted up since I last saw a band there).

…mainly because although I took the camera, there wasn’t much to photograph. The weather was a bit wet for most of the weekend, so a lot of our time was spent indoors in the loungeroom (or at McDonald’s).

Much FIFA was played, much iPod listened to, and much (?) card games were played. We ate, drank, and relaxed, and as usual, I’ve come home from a holiday needing to sleep in and spend some time relaxing afterwards (I’m such a wuss).

The house was fantastic (although a bit leaky in such a heavy downpour), and we were very fortunate to have access to it. We sampled the Big Macs of various suburbs across the Central Coast, and managed to look / sound / feel like idiots in various other social settings.

Thanks especially to the corner shop lady who charged us about $8 for a loaf of bread and 2 litres of milk.

Chris - can we start a digital countdown to next year’s event now?

Well here is just a taste of some of the pictures we took in Vietnam…

And these were just in the first 24hrs!!

I’ll get around to putting the others up at some stage.

We’re back in Aus!!

Good flight from HCM City to Sydney. Got 3 1/2 hrs sleep (not bad…).

I must say the weather is slightly cooler here, and Nathan and laura didn’t meet us at the airport in disguises…

Now for the photos, the stories, and of course… back to college tomorrow.

I may even have some more blogs of Vietnam in retrospection, and there’ll definatley be photos in the gallery!

Good to be back.

We flew in from the lovely Hoian this morning, saying farewell to the lovely hotel pool, the beaches, the tailor shops, and more relaxed atmosphere to say hello to the crazy, busy, filthy, HCM City…

Well maybe HCM City’s not that bad, but Hoian is definately the best destination we have had the privilege to spend time at on this holiday. Second would have to be Ha Long bay…

We fly back to Sydney tomorrow night at 10pm and arrive in Sydney 8:30am. I think the jey lag will be a killer. We’re 3 hours behind over here and we’ve been going to bed at midnight, which is really 3am EST Australia.

It’ll be good to get home and tell the stories and show the photos, but really we’ve probably only seen 1% of what this great country has to offer.

I think we’ll be coming back here again, especially if Jetstar keeps the low fares, it’s very do-able.

We went to a cafe for lunch today called Sozo (Greek meaning: salvation, restoration). It’s a cafe run by some Christians to help, train, and equip street kids and people with disabilities to break the cycle of poverty. They train them in skills to setup, run, and sustain their own business.

I think tonight we’re about to go to one of their projects called “the english corner” where westerners meet up with Vietnamese students wanting to practice their English. We’ll see how that goes.

That reminds me, we also went to the Hoian Orphanage for an hour and a half yesterday. We basically just hung out with the kids and played games with them. I was the walking jungle gym for 3 kids with Cerebal Pausy, they dribbled all over me, but we had a ball.

A couple of things I’ve observed about Vietnam traffic…

Firstly, there’s lots and lots of motor bikes in Vietnam… LOTS!

Ho Chi Minh City alone has 4,000,000!

This obviously gives the traffic a very different flavour than that of Sydney.

Imagine if everyone in Sydney rode around on posty bikes… now imagine 90% of Sydney streets were as tight as newtown, and the number of people walking the streets was like that of the Sydney Olympics… That’s a pretty good picture of what it’s kinda like.

This also means that everyone drives slower (most people anyway) because of the crowds. And they don’t cahnge gears like we do…

They change into 4th gear when they’re only travelling at 30kph which sounds terrible for the engine…

I’ve heard there is a 175cc limit for the engine size of motorbikes, though I have seen a couple of 250cc bikes and only one brand new Honda 1000 CBRR street bike in Hanoi - I don’t know where you would use bike like that around here with that kind of horse power!

Secondly, the traffic infrastructure is alot different.

They have traffic lights at different hights - one set down low for motor bikes and one set up high.

They do traffic announcements over loudspeakers that are placed roughly on every corner, because Bikes don’t have radios for trffic reports (very smart, though annoying for public noise).

There is lots of motorbike parkin (this I like very much after my frustrations with trying to park in Sydney with a bike). Motorbikes can park virtually anywhere, it’s even OK to park your bike inside the shop! Couls you imagine jumping on your posty bike with no helmet, just shorts T-shirt and thongs, ride down to the corner store, ride your bike up to the fridge, get your 2lt bottle of milk, and pay your money to the cashier as you ride past on your way out? What a world!!

Thirdly, the Vietnamese are very creative with their bikes.

One Vietnamese guy commented over here that “The world has not yet made anything that the Vietnames cannot carry on a motorbike.” and I’d believe him!

I’ve seen a live cow on the back of a scooter (!), a bath tub, 2 pigs, 6.5m long lengths of Steel tube, at least a dozen boxes of fruit and veg stacked above the rider, and many more marvellous things…

One day I’m sure we’ll see a motorbike carrying a bus…

One might also say the Vietnamese are “creative” with road rules… They’re more like guidlines rather than rules, I think is the general interpretation…

It seems fine to drive on the wrong side of the road if it suits you, to drive on th footpath, and to drive down the middle of the 1m wide walking lanes in the undercover markets which are packed full of people.

Apparently it’s the law to wear helmets, ride on the right side of the road, and obey traffic lights, but what’s a law without any consequences? Nothing happens if you don’t follow the law, except you may die if you have a stack… a minor consequence really…

Fourthly, the car and bike horn is a completely different language in Vietnam…

In Australia, when someone beeps their horn it means “What the hell do you think you’re doing you #@%*head!!”… and if it’s not for that meaning, one might do 2 short beeps to say goodbye as you leave a friend’s house.

But over here theyuse the horn frequently - I mean ALL THE TIME, every 2 meters travelled.

And I think that’s because beeping your horn over here means something more like “Excuse me. For your own safety I just want to let you know that I’m passing by you and you should look out. Thankyou.”

The horn is the automotive language of love, not a device which is an accompaniment for flipping the bird…

My ears are still adjusting to this new meaning, so that every horn I hear is “I love you” rather than my automatic response to the horn of hatred and disdain.

This is true traffic zen and enlightenment.

Have we Westerners taken the pure and true meaning of the horn and bastardised it into something sinster?

One does wonder…

Very rarely have I seen any death stares from drivers to other drivers.

There is a kind of tolerant passiveness in their driving amid what looks to Western eyes like chaos.

There is darkness that lies beneath.

Under the surface they’re waiting to crack…

When we were driving to Ha Long Bay we drove past a recent car accident.

I can only guess what happened, but there was one injured man laying on the ground and another man (who I assume was the other driver) just beating the tripe out of this guy as he lay on the road!

Alls well driving in Vietnam until you crash into someone…

It’s got to be better to release some road rage more frequently rather than wait for an explosion of violence…

I was just writing a blog for this about an hour ago when the power went out and I lost all of it, so here is just a quick up date to say I’m in Hoian at the moment (Vietnam south central coast), and it’ sgreat!

A lot less crowded than Hanoi!

You can see where we are staying at here

It’s very nice. Swimming pool, close to town… $18.00 USD a night twin share!

I here the temp in Sydney is about 8c at the moment… mmmm, sounds cold…
I think it’s been about 35c everyday here…