I've known my mate Jet for something like 15yrs, so getting on to nearly half my life now. He's the type of guy that you'd be lucky to know and a friend you'd be even luckier to have. He's a typical Aquarian which means that he's got a great sense of humour, is witty, always has his heart in the right place, is emotional in an undirected sense and can be, at times, flaky. That's why the Aquarian/Cancerian combination works, sometimes our conservative ways (that of the Cancerian) keeps them in check, at other times it's that Aquarian left of field thought process that provides us with the scope to see things just a little differently from the typical hard line, logical progression.
Quick background check then. Jet made his way up to Sydney back in 1995 and found himself doing a little tele-marketing work for a place called Heidelberg Roof Restoration in late February of that same year. I had beaten him to the punch by a week and had already been losing my mind there in the evenings doing part-time work whilst filling my days with a B.Bus degree at UTS , which by the way was none too successful. Our first few encounters/discussions did not particularly bode well for any sort of mutual respect, let alone a friendship. I was a little uni upstart, snobbish, thinking that I knew so much more than anyone else (what's changed right!?), and Jet was the Uladulla boy, bright eyed and bushy tailed with a pinch of naivety (all of which have gone, although he's still an Uladulla boy at heart). Without going into too many stories the most amusing is the one where he sold me the idea of wearing a suit and I sold him on the idea of wearing casual clothes exactly a day after we'd both worn the opposite form of clothing, (laughs out loud - insert here), Heidelberg, good times hey.
Fifteen years down now and during that time we had always discussed doing a trip together. Sure, we've done a few NYE's which have included rides down to Thredbo and Melbourne but not a journey through another country. So when Jet was considering heading off at the end of this year I tried to convince him to jump onto the ride that I had already planned which just happened to be a revisit to a favourite country of mine, Vietnam.
Where this idea started for me however was a couple of years ago when Jase and I had ventured into Vietnam for the first time. Aside from the fact that I absolutely fell for the place, especially the north, I got suckered into the the tailored clothing bonanza that was/is the town of Hoi An, a place that's approximately halfway down the coastline, some 30kms south of Da Nang. With the idea that one day soon I needed to return in order to get my tailored suit on, I booked myself in for a Vietnamese excursion and hey presto, there we have it, Back in Black with my man Frichot - game on!
As I write this first update of our trip to Vietnam I'm guessing that Frichot is cruising somewhere at 35,000 feet, burning up the sky miles at 900kms per hour on a fabulous Air Asia flight into KL. He is of course the advance party and will be the main scout for new bars, markets and all things debaucherous in KL before I fly out to meet him sometime on Saturday evening. So with that said, Let the Games begin, this trip is now officially open!
