Money? What's Money?

Another Forward to Today's Post
The Baron was once again unable to post and has thus asked me to post on her behalf. Today's post is predominantly about the things Laura and her have been able to buy for discount prices, including a vast array of cultural commodities and glasses for Laura's eyes. The Baron also briefly details turning 27 and generally wandering around. Apparently she spent most of the day at a boxing match, watching a wide array of athletes from every age, race and gender category beating each other senseless. She doesn't talk about this till right near the end, so you'll need to read the entire post to make sure you don't miss out on it. It really is most enthralling.
Also, you will note there is still a distinct lack of talk about her hat. I realise I may seem to be harping on this point but believe me once you see Ashley wearing said hat you'll understand why.
yours,
Ianto Ware

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so tomorrow morning we're heading to halong bay, whichhas been heralded as amazing and awesome etc. as wewill be cruising about on our VIP boat tour overnight,we presumably wont have internet so i thought i'dbetter catch up to where we're at now.yesterday was a very quiet day as laura continued toexperience a range of symptoms, for which we wereunable to determine a cause or cure, although in thenend bed rest and cable tv did the trick. we hadattempted to visit the women's museum in the morning,but a combination of it being freezing cold, us beingunder dressed, laura experiencing stomach cramps, andthe museum being largely closed for renovations, meantthe trip was a bit of a let down.having returned laura to her bed i spent another dayout wandering the old quarter, which if i didnt feellike i was in constant threat of being bowled over bya motorbike, would be one of the best things i couldpossibly hope to do. i wandered through the streetfresh food market, which strangely, inspite of beingoutdoors, and involving lots of butchering meat onwoven mats on the ground, felt surprisingly clean andenticing. the seafood is kept in large tubs eitherfull of ice, or with pumps where the seafood is stillalive. it has so much potential to be gross, butreally isnt.last night i went out to celebrate my 27th birthdaywith dinner at a local vietnamese restaurant. thefood wasnt as fantastic as i'd hoped, but i was kepthighly entertained watching the staff dote on a frenchfamilies baby, which was amazingly well behaved, andquite enjoying being passed around the restaurant. icame outside and discovered a small french patisserienext door, so bought myself a mini chocolate moussethingy and a plain looking butter cake for laura(because of her stomach being dodgy, not because i'm abit meany) and went back to the hotel to eat thesetreats while watching yet more cable tv.today laura was bouncing back so we decided to make itto at least one of the 5 museums we'd orginallyplanned on going to and went to the museum ofethnology, which was well set up and quiteinteresting. we then taxied back to spend theafternoon completely laura's shopping list - after 2days of lying in bed she had a pretty clear idea whatshe wanted. i'd also come across a street full ofshops selling glasses (the seeing variety) so lauraspent some time agonising of the vast array, whichincluded some interesting dated 2nd hand numbers, ofwhich laura naturally chose a pair. at $15 US withlenses, who can blame her. she also managed to chooseanother pair of prescription sunglasses, which at $20US were again a pretty amazing deal. Those of uswho've witnessed laura lose her glasses for days at atime should hopefully find things much easier into thefuture...laura's list also included DVDs.... so we returned toa place we'd found the other day, where lauraconsidered by the complete set of every series ofeverything thats ever been on. The guys sales pitchwas largely the more you buy the cheaper it gets...which is all well and good in theory... and somewhatof a trap... someone how i too became caught up in theexperience, and started deciding i too needed to buydvds, in spite of the fact that i've never bought advd in my life at home....the guys sales pitch was also largely about the "newtechnology" which means you can get 10 times as muchstuff on each disc, therefore meaning an entire seriesof a show is one disc - so much better for our excessluggage!! each disc was therefore at a starting priceof $10 US... which roughly equates to the $1 a discprice thats popular in Saigon for the oldtechnology... yet when you're buying 5 seaons ofsomething, still works out to $50... so the guyconvinced us that if we bought all 29 discs we wereconsidering, he'd do us a super deal of $6 a disc, andthus we'd get away with all of them for the bargainprice of $176 US. for reasons we both now stuggle tocomprehend we agreed to this. damn visa cards. so inow own the entire 5 seasons of six feet under. whichi've never seen a single episode of, but am takingeveryones word i will love. I also own 12, yes thatsright 12, seasons of ER. For those of you doing themath you will have noticed that i bought more dvdsthat laura, who gotta a wider array of programmes, buti wont spoil her surprise by telling you what. Shedid resist getting the entire buffy, even with thebest ever spelling mistake on the cover whichproclaimed it to be the story of "Buffy - the VampireSlaper"we then journeyed off in search of warm clothing,having discovered that not only is it damn cold here,but that its likely worse in halong bay. Somehow thisbecame a reason for laura to buy an old school adidastracksuit in black with gold trim, with a Missy Elliotlogo thing on the back. apparently this isntshamefully hideous and is infact seriously cool. i'mnot convinced. meanwhile, i bought a very plainpurportedly lacoste mens tracksuit, in pretty much thelargest size they had. these people are tiny. or i'mvery fat. either way.another pleasant dinner, this time as a place"casablanca" with entertaining bob marley music and aterrible looking american movie which i concluded mustbe called "beverly hills cops go to miami and getattacked on the beach by ninjas". Amazing.so our stay in hanoi may appear to have lacked anyserious cultural experience, but i say we've justfocused on culture for sale - besides, we're doing abunch of that cultural stuff with the bike group.oh, i should give recount the background to our halongbay saga... so i'd read that there were a range ofhalong bay tours on offer, from super budget to superfancy... i immediately encountered this when the firstplace i asked were charging $120 per person, while thesecond place were charging $30.... i've asked at somany places in the last few days, and every time itsbeen the same -- either super cheap or superexpensive... when all i really wanted was midrange...so finally it dawned on my yesterday that maybe ineeded to ASK about whether places had more expensivetours... this was a pretty weird concept, going insomewhere and saying, "i know you can give me thispackage for $30, but could you give me a package ofessentially the same things but let me pay $60 forit?" Anyway, this is basically what we did today...and so the lady got out her VIP tours brochure. whichbasically appears to involve chucking a few extrasuperlatives in to the descriptions... when asked toexplain the difference between the budget and the vip,the lady assured us that on the budget everything wasvery cheap and on the VIP "everything" was better...so we'll have to wait and see if we've just paid twicethe price for the same tour, but hopefully it will allwork out for the best... will keep you all updated.