Happy New Year everyone!
I hope you all had a great christmas and nice new years! I still dont know where 2007 went!
Mike and I headed, as planned, to Ireland for Christmas. 7 days of doing not much at all! Lots of eating, drining, sleeping, lazing by the fire and generally hanging out! It was great to see our friends Dave and Katie who are about to have a baby.
We arrived in London Heathrow airport with -1 degress. Thank goodness we didnt stay too long before boarding a plane for Dublin! We spent most of our time in Tipperary county. Dave`s parents live there in a 100 year old school house that they have recently extended and renovated. Its in the Irish countryside and the scenery is absolutely lovely. They live in between two mountain ranges in a valley called the Glen of Arthelow. I got some great pictures thanks to the fog that would come in of an evening. The weather was quite good most of the time. Blue skies and unfortunaltely no snow...no white christmas! Most days were just chilly (4-11 degress) and good days for sitting inside and hanging out! We took a day trip to the city of Cork. It has a population about the same as Launceston and it looked lots like Hobart! As lots of people say about Ireland, it reminded lots of Tasmania. Especially the drive down to Hobart and also small towns like Ross and Deloraine....they have a real Irish feel to them now!
We had a few drinking sessions in `real` Irish pubs. Locals are hard to understand, a really strong Irish accent! The Guiness tastes better in Ireland to! We managed to see wuite a few little villages including one called Cahir (pronounced Care) with a really old castle, thousands of years old. On Christmas eve we went on a ghost hunting trip to an old cemetry and church yard. An strange fog-mist had just settled on the valley so we headed to a church that was 1000 or something years old. It was in ruin now but a new church had been rebuilt 200 years ago. At the back of the yard there was this well that had a tree grown out over it. There were all these rags and personal belongings tied to the tree over the water. Apparently the locals believe that if you put something that belong to the dead over the water you are able to pass messages on to those that have died and ensure they rest peacefully. Kinda freaky if you ask me. Its been going on for 1000s of years and with the mist settling around us, made the whole trip kinda spooky! Superstions!
Christmas day was great fun and much food was consumed! Dave`s mum Lorainne cooked the BIGGEST turkey I have ever seen! She is a bit of a fancy cook so we had all sort of great traditional christmas fare done with a nice gormet twist - potatoes in goose fat - mmmm, yum!
Mike and I headed out of Tipperary on the 28th and spent the day and night in Dublin. Dublin was heaps of fun. We wandered around the city with the grey raining skies above! Just like you would picture it! All the buildings are so old. We really have no idea what an old building is when you consider how old some of them are in Europe. We had three pub meals while we were in London. A bit of a shortage here so def needed to remind ourselves why we love them!
We took a trip to the Guiness Brewery! The home of the good black stuff! IT was a great tour and at the end we got a free pint on the top of the building with 360 degree veiws!
We landed back in Bankok on the 30th to meet up with Mikes mum and sister in from home. Us girls had a day of pampering on New Years eve. Nails, massages, the lot! I unfortunately, decided to have a haircut. Short - kinda like Meg Ryan. I walked away with a hairdo taking more of a resembelance to Bert Newton. It is short, short, short. Language breakdown. Hopefully in a few months it will look better because at the moment it looks crap.
I am off to Vietnam on Sunday for work. Only for a few days but it should be an interesting trip. Ill be looking at how the factory functions and trying to find places to improve procedures. My good friend August will be here when I get back. She is moving to the UK after a stopover with us, so it will be great to catch up before she leaves. With all of us apreading out it could be a long time before we see each other again.
Hope your all well. I am at work and its Friday arvo and I want to get out of here early so I shall leave this here....
Until next time.....
