SEALED WITH Adventure

Matt and I spent our first mini-vacation away from our little one just a 4-hour drive from home in the beach resort town of Mũi Né. It's a charming coastal fishing area along the East Sea in the Bình Thuận Province in southeast Vietnam. A long holiday weekend was the perfect excuse to enjoy the sunshine and grown-up only time as we joined two other couples to help celebrate our friend's fortieth birthday! We arrived around mid-day and found a Jamaican-inspired beach bar for l

Metro Cash & Carry was described to me as the Costco of Vietnam. Um, no. That's about all I can say. It's maybe my least favorite place to shop mostly because of the strong seafood-meets-durian-and-jackfruit aroma wafting throughout the store, but also because rules don't apply. Despite obvious checkout lines, as per SE Asian norm many local people ignore the queue and quite literally put their stuff in front of yours on the belt. There is also zero personal space...so watch

Ok, so we had a real(ish) Thanksgiving meal later on with our Nike expat family...but it was a "holiday" so Matt and I took advantage of the day off and he took me to lunch at a rooftop restaurant appropriately named Secret Garden for some homestyle Vietnamese food. Located at the top of an old apartment building down an alleyway that smells like cat pee, I was beginning to think we may have been lost. A few cute signs amongst the trek up five flights of rickety stairs offere

Our first race abroad! Set in Saigon's District 7 (Phú Mỹ Hưng), we finished our first family race in Vietnam. #Vietnam #expatlife #healthychoices #activefamily

I liken crossing the street in Ho Chi Minh City to a game of Frogger. Remember that game? Jumping the little frog forward, backward, and side-to-side to "hop" him successfully to the other side of the street without getting hit by a car. That's my daily life here. In a city where motorbikes rule the road [and sidewalk...] crossing the street is not for the faint of heart. Throw a toddler in the mix, and it's downright treacherous. Nonetheless, we've walked quite a few miles o

We made it! 20-ish hours, a few tears, and too many pieces of luggage to handle later, we arrived at Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport just after midnight [Friday?]...it had been a challenge all week to gauge time passing, and this trip [plus a jump 14 hours ahead] has only exacerbated this. All in all, it was pretty uneventful, and we were grateful for that. Elijah blessed us with a few long naps along the journey, and while I was excited to spend that time catching up on m