The people united will never... stop shopping

An Introduction from Ianto
Once again the Baron has asked me to post online for her because she is feeling lazy and appreciates my introductions. I've been trying to convince her and Laura to have a "Laura and the Baron" New Year's celebration at some point in the weeks after they get back, possibly blurring in with yet another Sophie Green and Ianto Ware Birthday Bonanza, but she doesn't seem too keen on the idea. Who would have thought the Baron would ever turn down a chance to kick up her heels and engage in a social activity!

Anyway. In this post the Baron and Laura make a failed attempt to visit the embalmed body of 'Uncle Ho' and she talks about taking some photos of her in her much discussed Credit Agricole hat. Unfortunately, Credit Agricole have not included Thor Hushovd as part of their team in this year's Tour Down Under. However, I'm sure the Baron would ask me to point out that Cyril Dessel will be part of the AG2R team. And Baden Cooke will be leading the Unibet.Team - who have just been granted their pro tour license. I'm not really sure why the Baron hasn't mentioned this in the below post herself. I'm sure she meant to.
yours,
Ianto Ware

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So last night the group trip officially began. thepeople from APHEDA vietnam welcomed us, and gave us abit of an overview of whats happening, and we met ourtour guide who will be accompanying us.we went of our itinerary for today - the ho chi minhmosaeleum, the temple of literature, and a cyclo tourof the old quarter. the clarification of "cyclo"rather than "cycle" was a great relief to those of uswho've come to fear the old quarter traffic. and aneven greater relief to those of us who are petrifiedof getting on a bike again. the group was, as was tobe expected, somewhat roudy throughout the meeting - ipredict two of the noisiest weeks of my life await me. we then went on to dinner at a very pleasantvietnamese restaurant, where large portions of thegroup began the evening with margaritas. i stuck withsprite, as i have been feeling a little under theweather (not tummy wise, just headachey) and as usualleft quite early after dinner. i'm feeling a littleout of my depth surrounded by such hardcore unionists,and find myself in the position of wanting to defendthings i dont necessairly believe because i feel likethe left side of the argument is so heavilyrepresented. anyway, it will be an interesting twoweeks.today we stuck to the itinerary, heading off in a minibus to the ho chi min complex. there was greatdissappointment at the announcement that as it ismonday the mosaleum (i really cant spell that) wasclosed, and so whilst we could walk around thecomplex, we would not actually get to see uncle ho'sembalmed body... personally i wasnt tragicaly upsetwith this reprieve, but others are now trying to workout a way to get back there at 7.30 tomorrow to seethis worthy site. we did see many other large andsignificant buildings, and, to satisfy my insatiablereaders, i even took a myriad of photos of me in thehat. however, still the downloading remains an issue,so you will have to wait a little longer for a montageof me, credit agricole, and the highlights of southeast asia.our tour guide quickly realised that he had an unrulytribe on his hands, who are far more likely to becomeengrossed in the souvenir shops than the actualcultural experience at hand. i'm not sure uncle howould approve of our wanton consumerism in his name.from ho chi minh we went to the temple of literature. this temple got a high rating from laura and i whohave a new system of temple ratings based solely onthe availability of chocolate icecreams.from here we went to lunch. our tour people took usto a very lovely, if somewhat expensive by hanoistandards, restaurant. in the interests of upping thevegetarian representation on the tour, and avoidingmercury poisioning, i'm attempting to eat vegetarianfor the next two weeks - a challenge when i've gottento the point of eating fish or seafood twice a day.after lunch we spent an hour meeting with some peoplewho are sort of from the government, sort of from theunions here. to be honest much of it went over myhead, but they spent an hour discussing with thegroup industrial relations and the union movement invietnam, and its challenges, which are of course goingto be significantly aggravated by vietnam joining theWTO.from here we were given our one hour (read 45 minutes)cyclo tour of the old quarter, which was verypleasant, if somewhat too late to be of as muchinterest as it would have been had i done it a weekago.which pretty much brings me to now. oh ,andyesterdays freak out about internet costs proved justhow out of it i was - when the lady told me 10 perhour, she meant 10 000 dong, not $10US, which worksout to less than a dollar an hour. arggh.ok, so now its time for me to rest up before anothergroup dinner. apparently tonight we're going to avegetarian indian place mmmmmm.