An Albanian Wedding

If I ever meet an Albanian from now on, at least I can surprise them with the fact that I've been to a three day Albanian wedding extravaganza where dancing is the order of the day.

Friday night : Cocktail party
Saturday : What can only be described as a continuous banquet dispersed with bouts of dancing and music. 6 hours, 12-6pm.
Sunday : Church wedding at 5pm, onto the Colloseum for pictures, dinner and party (more Albanian dancing) 8-late.

On Saturday the poor old groom, already the tallest man in the room by probably a foot, was the centre of attention the whole time and dancing like this for 6 hours. Here you can see family members of the bride placing money on the happy couple as they dance for the well wishers.



On Sunday the church wedding took place at a quaint chapel hidden down some Mediterranean looking back streets.



After this the entire wedding party, 6 inch stilettos and all, traipsed to the town Colloseum for some photo ops. This is all in Durres, the second largest city in Albania.





Then it was on to the party, 'Club Tropicana'. Yes, drinks were free.



All that's left is my before and after comparison. Here we are on Saturday, sat around the table at about 1pm thinking 'What the hell...'



Here we are on Sunday night...can you spot the difference (the alcohol level could have had something to do with it as well).

Connections Vietnam going strong

We've had our best couple of months so far since starting up with Connections Vietnam, including a group of 20 (mostly teenagers) from Australia. This was our biggest group so far by some distance! They had a great time.

They went to Chinatown:



And they had lunch at one of our Chef's houses. Luckily she has an enormous kitchen and we managed to accommodate them all.





Despite our absence from Vietnam our determination to continue the business has been rewarded. Our guys over in Saigon are all doing a fantastic job, what a great team we have! Through weekly meetings via Skype and our makeshift office (in my mother-in-laws house) things have ticked over nicely. Sometimes I come home and Chi is on the internet phone arranging something whilst suckling Louisa at the same time...

We are currently sub-contracting for two of the biggest tour operators in Vietnam. We haven't really seen bookings drying up which, touch wood, is a good sign considering the economic climate at the moment. Most of all, we can't wait to get back to Saigon and get behind the wheel again, we have many more ideas to expand what we offer.

Check out some of our Customer Testimonials.

Dinnertime

For some reason video recorded on my camera makes a bloody awful noise. Anyway, who cares! 5 months and already gobbling porridge. Apparently she can't wait to try some Pho stock.