Time to get a new belt

I’ve been away, in England and Scotland, for an annual visit.  I’ve been to Brighton where you think that any two men seen together are gay  ( probably they are ).   The town is full of red faced street drinkers and seagulls.  It deserves it’s reputation for supporting an alternative lifestyle and is full of characters.

I’ve been to Portsmouth where every other shop is a take-away.  It’s one of the most densely populated cities in the South with more people, take-aways  and tattoo parlours per square mile than any other city I’ve ever known.

I’ve been to Surbiton where the Travelodge runs a hotel with no staff.  It’s totally automated and allowed me, for a very reasonable £19, to spend a comfortable night.  TV, kettle, even a bath included. WiFi was 8 pence a minute for the unsuspecting inmate but free in the pub next door.

I’ve been to Northampton where you can buy a 3 bedroomed house for under a hundred grand.  1 hour from London, about the same to Birmingham and less to Milton Keynes.  With all  those easy commutes why don’t people move out of London and buy a house in Northampton.  Something dark must be happening there!

I’ve been to Wakefield where you can visit the new Barbara Hepworth museum and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.  Wakefield is the Portsmouth of the North.  Barbara had the right idea, she moved away to London and then Cornwall.

I’ve been to Edinburgh where the clouds come down to the ground.  This weather happens often and they have a special word for it.  It’s still a great place to see though, with its castle and parks and squares.  There’s a  nice view from the adjacent hill too, at least if the sun shines.

And now to the belt.  I’ve been criticised for my belt before.  It’s old and has lost it’s gloss.  The worn notches on it show the expanding and contracting of my  waistline over the years ( no, I’m not fatter than before )  but it still holds up my trousers. But you know when it’s finally time to get a new one.  The security man at Heathrow stopped me at the scanning machines and held it up for closer inspection.  I thought for a moment that it was now illegal to wear belts on aeroplanes but no, he just wanted to say how old and worn it was.  I felt like saying “it’s a bit like you then” but stopped myself in the nick of time.  After all, with the current state of the security laws, he could have me rendered to Guantanamo Bay for a spot to water boarding for a remark like that.  Instead I smiled weakly and headed for the duty free. 

Early one morning

I don't like to get up early in the morning.  Most days I'll lay in bed reading the paper on the internet and drinking coffee for a couple of hours.  Nine seems a sensible time to move out of bed and onto the sofa.  Not today, as a friend from work said he gets up at four thirty every morning and was planing an early trip into town.  Stupidly I said text me before you go.  Staying healthy has a whole new meaning in this part of the world.  Back home some of these people wouldn't look out of place in my local mental hospital. The results of this mad jaunt are here.

Some say this is a bit voyeristic but I all I know is, it's a fascinating socio-cultural phenomenon.  

Tomorrow I'm staying in bed 'til noon.

Rain

The sky goes grey, the light goes dim and the rain smacks to the ground and bounces of the window ledge, through the open window and into my room.  The ground outside the window has turned into a wide brown puddle of mud and battered down vegetation.  Only the frogs enjoy the weather, spending the evenings croaking to each other.  The insects have been smacked to the ground and the bats fly pointlessly around searching for food.

Even the never ending stream of motorbikes slows a little as the drivers stop to put on their rain covers.  Tropical storms are supposed to come in the late afternoon to relieve the heat of the day.  These come whenever they like.  I can watch the clouds rotate around the city until they head in my direction and drench my suburb.  But somehow the ground soaks it all up and drains it all away.  If the sun can creep through the roads and paths dry off and the children come out to the play park outside my building again for their evening’s playtime.

I’ve got some protection against the weather.  I have a collapsible umbrella suitable for a London commuter and so almost useless here and a large plastic cape that the university gave me.

This particular storm, the second of the day, came and went quickly so now the clouds are thinning a little and the remains of the day’s light has returned just in time for dusk and what might turn out to be a spectacular sunset.

And its going to do this until November. 

I've been playing with my video camera

Green Grass Jelly Drink

Previously on my blog I have extolled the virtues of grass jelly, the healthy alternative to raspberry or strawberry with their artificially enhanced red colour and synthetic taste.  Grass jelly was sure to be a big improvement on those with its ‘green’ environmental agenda.  But I understand that there’s a drawback and that was the lengthy cooking process that grass jelly in a packet required.  The instructions on the grass jelly sachet expected consumers to add the contents to water and boil them for three minutes.  This may well be too much for the modern consumer with their busy lifestyle.  It was certainly too much for my daughter Charlotte to whom I sent a packet ( on request I may add ).  When I asked her what it tasted like she informed me that she hadn’t even tried!  And that, after the lengths I went to to send her some.

Well now it’s all different because new, convenience grass jelly drink is available in cans.  I was excited by this find in my local supermarket so bought a can and rushed it home. The ideal mixer for one of my weird bottles of rum or fake gin I thought.  But now I’ve checked the ingredients and found synthetic sweetener and synthetic green colour and synthetic flavour listed on  the side of the can.  In fact, if you remove those from the list all you are left with is water and something called ‘gelian gum’.

So it seems that you can’t beat the traditional method if you want the real taste of grass jelly.  It looks like I won’t be rushing off to the post office with a consignment of canned grass jelly drink any time soon.  Sorry Charlotte.

A long weekend

Ho Chi Minh is a big, sprawling city full of motorbike noise and people squeezed onto pavements so, from time to time it’s nice to get out and see something of the countryside.  Last weekend was a long one, a bit like England the week before, but for us it wasn’t a wedding it was May Day coupled with the liberation of Saigon on 30^th April.  We had Monday and Tuesday off, so to make my escape I joined three other teachers  on a two day trip to the Mekong delta where the towns are smaller and the air fresher.  These trips are cheap and easy to arrange from one of the many travel agents in the backpacker ghetto of Pham Nu Lao in the centre of the city.

The highlight of the two days came early with a boat ride from the Saigon River through the city down murky waterways cutting through the surrounding countryside to the town of My Tho.  For once this was a comfortable boat ride in a speedy boat.  Most of my other boat experiences in South East Asia have been long, noisy and involved hard wooden benches crammed with too many people.  This one whizzed across the murky water even going past the university on it’s two hour journey to the delta.

The truth about the Mekong is that there really isn’t much to see.  They take you to every small scale production facility doing things to the local crops that they can think of.  So we visited a coconut candy factory, a nice noodle factory, a plain rice factory ( which was closed ) and a fruit orchard complete with folk singing locals.  On day two they delivered boatloads of tourists wholesale to the floating market to eat pineapple and watch the river traffic go by.  But the towns are small and quiet, with fewer motorbikes and cleaner rivers.  It’s cheap, relaxing and simple and very well organised.  We all came back happy and thinking about the next weekend away with the tour guides.

Shopping

I’m usually quite careful with money.  I’ve had a few years of training recently when I haven’t had much cash to thank for that.  My new job, coupled with a very low cost of living, has meant that now, for the first time for a while I can buy most things that I want.  Most within reason of course.  I still can’t afford an iPhone 4 or an iPad but as I don’t want either of these things I’m not bothered.  ( well I could be tempted by the iPad ).   So it was a surprise to me that on Sunday I had a bit of a splurge. 

There’s a bus from Phu My Hung into town that drops and picks up along Dong Koi Street, right in the heart of the expensive tourist district and I often take it at the weekend.   When you get off the bus there’s always a group of motorbike taxi guys touting for business and various people selling cigarettes and newspapers to the rich foreigners.  Amongst these there is a bunch of fruit sellers with baskets mangos or oranges or melons depending on the season.  I love mangos but they are usually sold green and eaten either soaked in spicy oil or dipped in salt and chilli so I don’t usually buy them.  Along the street there’s a woman who must have realised that Westerners like mangos sweet as she has a basket of them just about on the turn.  They are soft, slightly bruised but if you get them home in one piece and eat them up quickly they are fantastic.  They make for a very messy eating experience, with mango juice dripping everywhere, but a very rewarding one too.  

I’ve become a bit of a regular with the lady who sells the mangos now and always stop to say hello.  She knows that I’m going to buy from her and makes a big show of selecting the ‘best’ ones from her basket.  I always get a free sample and sometimes a free banana too.  For about £2 I came home with five squashy mangos, which are now in my fridge ready to be dissected and eaten over the next few days.  I hope they last until Thursday.

Next to the fruit sellers and motorbike guys there’s a small indoor tourist market.  It’s much less hassle than the main market in the centre of town but sells more or less the same stuff.  It’s has the things that tourists are assumed to want, joke t-shirts, ethnic bags and fancy scarves.  The people there have a photographic memory for faces as I discovered yesterday.  I bought one shirt a few weeks ago and they still remember me and the price I managed to bargain them down to.  So, as I walked past the stall yesterday the woman dragged me in and somehow managed to sell me not one more shirt but three!  For £8 each I now have three silk shirts.  They are large, baggy and very comfortable in the heat and humidity and quite subtle in colour.  The trouble is they don’t all go with my trousers so I may have to go back next weekend for more clothes.  

The concert

Finally after all the waiting it happened.  RMIT’s big move into show business has finally reached it’s peak.  Bob Dylan was appearing in front of a decent sized crowd in the sports field where I work.

I got there early enough to see something of the support act, a woman belting out some jazz apparently influenced by ‘the Vietnamese Bob Dylan’.  Between acts I moved as close to the front as I could and squeezed into a gap left by other people in the crowd heading off for food or drink.  This left me about 6 rows from the front and with a great view.  Where else could I get this close?

Dylan came on wearing a wide brimmed white hat and took up his place behind a small keyboard surrounded by a 5 piece band, 1 drummer and 4 guitarists.  They played for just under two hours running through the vast back catalogue which included ‘A hard Rain’, ‘Highway 61’ and ‘All along the Watch Tower’ to name just a few. It looked like he was enjoying himself and I certainly was.  From time to time he strapped on a guitar and came out to the front of the stage to join the rest of the band and occasionally he rasped into a harmonica.

And still the stupid press reports from China criticised him for submitting a playlist to be authorised by the Ministry of Culture and endlessly repeating the ‘protest song’ narrative.  With a repertoire of over 800 hundred songs how many are in any way political?  10 maybe 15?  No wonder the guy gets fed up with being asked about it.  They are about women, just like almost every other pop song!!

It ended with ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and  ‘Forever Young’, two of my personal favourites with the crowd joining in, shouting out the chorus ‘How does it feel/how does it feel/to be on your own/no direction home/a complete unknown/like a rolling stone/.  Well, to me it felt good all this way from home.

They say he’s lost his voice. They say he won’t engage with the crowd.  They say you can’t recognise the songs.  All true but to be there in the crowd taking part in rock history was a privilege. 

Bob Dylan is coming.

The news has been circulating now for a while.  First it was going to happen and then, later, there was more negative stuff about visas not being issued and that it wasn’t going to happen. Then the university hinted at it and finally a few Fridays ago they put it up on their intranet, so it must be true.  Bob Dylan is coming! Not just to the country where I live, or the town where I live but the actual place where I work!  Tickets finally went on sale last week but I handed over 900,000 dong to the owner of a local bar well in advance just to be sure.  I rushed down there as soon as I heard the news and signed up.  There is no way I’m going to miss this.

The concert will be held in the sports field behind the main teaching buildings. It’s where I pay tennis and where the gym I go to is housed.  Will Dylan use the same changing rooms pre and post concert as I do when I go to the gym?  Will he want to pop into one of my classes and find out how to write university style essays?

The pre-concert publicity finally appeared with posters up around the campus and a free draw of 30 tickets for students.  I visited the field yesterday to watch them build the stage and erect the beer tents.  Yes, there will be food and drink and yes there will be souvenirs but no cameras allowed.  I might try and sneak one in if possible.

They are expecting a small crowd, 6 to 8 thousand, mainly expats as the price starts at £35, a  lot for locals most of whom will never have heard of Dylan or his music.  I’ve just read this report in the Guardian where they had a similar size turnout for Dylan’s first ever concert in China and I’m hoping for something very similar here.  

Supply and Demand

I haven’t blogged for a while because I told myself that nothing interesting was happening but that’s wrong.  Even the most commonplace events, sights or activities have some interest if you look hard enough.  I’ve been busy with work and other things so have let the blog go a bit but recently I’ve been thinking about some of the routines of life that are different from home.  Drinking,  or more accurately, what to drink is one of them. 

I’ve worked my way through a range of drinks from the almost undrinkable to the expensively imported in the search for a reliable alternative to wine.  I like wine but recoil from the bottles of imported French wine as they are ridiculously expensive.  £10 for a rubbish bottle of Van de Paye which would be £4 tops in Sainsbury’s is a rip-off.  The local Dalat wine is thin, weedy and sour, borders on the undrinkable but is cheaper at £2 or so.  Beer is just lager really so it’s yellow, slightly sweet and generally flavourless.  Sapporo, the beer from Japan is the only exception to my general lager rule but still makes me feel uncomfortably full after a few.  For all of those reasons I now drink spirits but which ones?

When it comes to the hard stuff my choice is wide.  At the bottom end of the market there’s Hanoi vodka.  Even as you drink it you can feel it’s bad for you.  I get an almost instant headache followed by a general feeling on unease, like I’ve been poisoned, which I probably have.  Koreans love Soju, a colourless, odourless liquid made from rice which tastes worse than the vodka but doesn’t seem so toxic.  I drink it in emergencies only.  Next up from those two is rum from the Philippines.  This comes in two colours, white and brown, but only one flavour which I would describe as bland but on reflection, and after trying Bacardi, I now realise that’s what white rum tastes like.  For those who are prepared to pay there is no limit to what you can buy but I’m mean and I like value for money.

The other problem I have is supply.  There are a couple of decent sized supermarkets in Phu My Hung and lots of small stores and  there’s a couple of fancy wine shops too for those with deeper pockets but there is no consistency in supply.  For a while now my nearest supermarket only has Hanoi vodka and I’m not drinking that.  They used to have a reliable supply of Philippino rum bit that’s run dry so imagine my pleasure and surprise when I saw a small shop nearby selling it. I was so pleased and surprised that I nearly bought two bottles but instead went for one plus  a probably fake bottle of Gordon’s gin at the knockdown price of £5.

what's in the freezer compartment of your fridge?

Inspired by my luck and the spicy tang of the gin, I wrote this blog entry.  Cheers! 

Tet’s Up

The holiday season is over for another year and I’m back at work.  The university is full of noisy students wondering what they’ve let themselves in for and depressed teachers back after a longish break.  ( Only 3 weeks, most universities would have more but we really work for our living here. )

The roads are full of rush hour motorbikes and that makes my ride home after work a lot more interesting.  I have to be constantly on the alert and practise my 360 degree vision skills if I want to get home in one piece.

Tet, or Vietnamese New Year, is celebrated a bit like we do Christmas.  There’s food, drink, relatives and gift giving. Money in red envelopes is the normal gift so there’s no problem having to take the unwanted present back to the shops the next day.  Instead of Christmas trees people have blossom clad branches, often a whole shrub but, as there is no discernable season here, the branches are stripped of leaves and have bright yellow flowers glued to them.  Yellow seams to be the colour of spring no matter where you live.  And just like Christmas trees, once it’s all over the branches are dumped somewhere and forgotten about. 

I’m back at work for the next 12 week with a new set of students but mercifully there is a short break at the beginning of May when we have a long weekend.  Cambodia gave me a taste for holidaying, relaxing and travelling which has taken a while to shake off.

Cambodia

We are back from our holiday, the girls are back in England and I’m starting to think about my next outing in just over 3 months time.

Although I’m back home I’m too lazy/busy to write a blog entry so pinched this from wikitravel or somewhere like that.  It sums up our holiday pretty well.

Get in

You can get there by plane to Phnom Penh or Siem Reap.  It’s inexpensive and runs frequently, but the bus is cheaper.  It does mean that you arrive late and tired but think of the planet and your bank balance.  You can save a bit of time and money by taking a sleeper bus but these can often be replaced by a regular bus with reclining seats so you don’t actually sleep at all and spend the next day recuperating.  The people in the reclining seat in front of you will try to recline their seat, crushing your knees and make sitting impossible.   If they attempt to do this, brace your legs and defend your space.

Sleep

The Green Garden Home in Siem Reap has a lovely pool.  The Cove Beach has great views but you pay a hefty price for them.  The Chhaya Hotel is a self contained backpacker ghetto and very cheap.

See

The ancient city of Angkor is well worth a few days and is so good they named a beer after it.  The vast Tonle Sap lake and surrounding waterways.  Serendipity Beach, which should be renamed Predictability Beach as every bar sells exactly the same as all the others.

Drink

Angkor beer at any time but especially during happy hour, which usually runs from 5pm to 10pm.  Try to ignore the taste and believe its tag line, “My country, my beer”.  You can also get Mojitos crammed with mint.

Eat

Cheese burgers, a mild creamy curry akin to Thai but different, crunchy salad with a mouth-numbingly volcanic chili dressing and fried eggs every day for breakfast.

Do

Get a massage from trained masseurs who really know what they are doing. The next day your back will feel like it’s had a tough workout.  Swim in a crystal-clear, turquoise-blue, coral-filled tropical sea.  Cycle around and clamber over ancient ruins and marvel at the carvings. Travel by boat through a birdwatchers paradise to Batambang, Cambodia’s second biggest, but quietest, city.

Get

A pedicure on the beach.  A foot massage in a night market.  Various hippy bracelets sold by children everywhere.  Cheap t-shirts that won’t survive the first wash.  Sunburn after swimming too much swimming without sunscreen.

Happy New Year

It's Tet, Vietnam's equivalent of Chinese New Year and  all the indications are that it's best to get away from the transport chaos and inflated hotel prices that come with the holiday period .  I've taken a very long bus ride to Siem Reap in Cambodia this time joined by my daughters Charlotte and Alice.  The bus journey was long, tiring and very, very cold as the driver had the air conditioning turned down to an icy blast for the 15 hours it took us to make the trip. 
Siem Reap and the templates of Ankor are worth the journey and the hotel had a pool.  We had two days looking around Ankor and a day resting in the town. We took a tuk-tuk on the first day and cycled on the second.  It was hot but not too hot and cycling down the shady roads was a pleasure.  You pay a lot for the access but once in you can clamber over everything without anyone stopping you and they are impressive.  The souvenir sellers can be annoying, pushing postcards, guide books and t-shirts at you that you don't want but otherwise it's a very peaceful experience.  The whole area is kept clean by a small army of workers in green uniforms who spend their days sweeping up leaves on the sides of the roads in a vain attempt at  tidying up a tropical forest.  At least some of the $20 a day fee goes into the local economy.

We left Siem Reap by  boat to Battambang crossing the massive Tonle Sap lake and winding through a narrow river to the town.  Eight hours of bird and village life watching along the bank, engine noise and hard wooden seats.  There were scenes of unbelievable poverty along the way where families live in crude wooden shacks and catch the tiny fish that fill the water.  Sadly plastic bags are everywhere marking the high water mark on an otherwise very natural scene.  Perhaps the cleaners of Ankor would be better employed here.

After a long, noisy day we arrived in Battambang and walked the few hundred meters to the hotel area taking pleasure in stretching our legs after sitting so uncomfortably on those narrow benches all day. For a fraction of the price and half the time we could have taken a bus but, as I keep telling the girls, we wouldn't have had the experience.

Battambang is a town for locals with a handful of backpacker hotels and restaurants in contrast to Siem Reap whose sole function is to cater for tourists of all pockets many of them rather deep judging by the number of 'international spas' springing up all over the town.  It's a bit scruffy and dusty but very cheap.  The main street is busy with cars and motorbikes but the side streets are quieter and the restaurant owners are happy to see tourists sitting in their restaurant chairs reading and not buying much throughout the hot afternoons.  We had a ride out into the countryside this morning to a couple of temples on top of small hills with great views of the countryside around them but other wise the day has been lazy, with us not doing much at all.  Tomorrow we leave for Phnom Penh on the 8am bus for a mere 6 hours.

A bike ride to Hiep Phouc

The original plan was a ride out to the Mekong delta and an overnight stay down there.  Nobody was up for it ( except me and the organiser ) so we agreed on the softer option of a ride out of Phu My Hung into the countryside. 

There’s masses of building work going on here and the first part of the ride was through vast, under-construction towers.  One day this area will be occupied by the affluent escaping the cramped conditions in HCMC but right now it’s a world of construction traffic grinding along in a cloud of grit and dust, not the most pleasant of riding conditions.

But that soon gave way to a smaller village strung out along the single carriage road.  Shops, cafes, hairdressers and motorbike repair shops on both sides selling the same stuff as everywhere.  The going was better here with less traffic to dodge.  Some of the local kids waved at us.  They must think we are mad, why aren’t we in air-conditioned taxis like all the other foreigners?

Eventually the road ran out  at Hiep Phouc a sleepy village on the banks of one of the main rivers.  We looked at the river, had a rest and coffee before exploring a little further. The whole area here is a watery maze of rivers and tidal channels, all murky brown with a collection of floating debris being washed backwards and forwards with the tide.

The land is very flat and criss-crossed by muddy ditches between fields that look like they get a regular flooding.  Some of the village houses are simple wood and corrugated iron affairs and some are huge villas guarded by heavy gates and barking dogs.  The divide between rich and poor reaches down to this little village from the city quite easily.

We rode back on a different route, past an industrial estate and through more local districts before returning to Phu My hung and it’s fancy shops, restaurants and luxury housing.  After 4 hours of cycling I was exhausted.  I need to spend more time on my bike getting fit.

Bills

I paid my bill the other day for water and for the maintenance of the block, it was about £12 for the month.  They put a bill in your post box next to the entrance to the underground car park.  Mine is labelled F16-7 and I have a key for it.   You pick up the bill and take it to the site office under 2E.  The counter staff there happily take your money and stamp your bill for you.  You have to go to a special bank for the electricity bill and to a special building on the edge of Phu My Hung for the phone and internet.  It's a one story building set in the middle a small green and looks like a motorway service station.  No automation or online payment available here, just me walking around the local area with a clutch of bills in one hand and a wad of cash in the other.

The service charge is worth the money.  They take away the rubbish, keep the lifts going, do the gardens and run the security.  Security in the car park can be annoying as I’m only allowed to enter and leave on my bike by one of the entrances as I don’t have an electronic ticket.  They give me slips of paper, one half for me to keep in my pocket and one half for them to staple to my bike.  When I leave they just collect the two halves but never check them.  Maybe I should hot wire one of the fancy 4X4’s that live in the car park and try and get out with that.

Every morning the small army of workers who run the place squat outside the site office chattering and eating their breakfast.  They wake me up and I know by their sounds that it’s time for me to go to work too.  They work long hours and are constantly collecting rubbish, weeding the gardens and the other day, there was one cleaning the grout between the tiles by the lift.  That seemed a chore too far to me and I’m sure the worker would much rather be sitting in the shade beside the site office eating another breakfast.

On my bike

It's slightly ironic that only a few months ago I was getting rid of a bike and now I'm buying one. I had this cheap, heavy, clunking thing that I'd bought a few years ago when I didn't live in London. It was fine at the time and all I could afford. Once back home the idea of peddling uphill on the Archway Road with buses and cars grinding past me and then lugging the thing up four flights of stairs finally convinced me that cycling was not for me.

I sold it in the end, with an ad in Gumtree that got a massive response. A young guy came round and for £45 he got the bike, a lock and a bag of tools. What he didn't know was that I was ready to dump the thing outside Sainsbury's and let it get stolen. I hope he's getting his money's worth and doesn't read this and find out that he could have had it for free.

But times have changed, I live in a very flat part of the world and my block has an enormous car park where my new bike now lives. Well, not new but new to me as I bought it from an Australian who lives nearby. And I've upgraded from heavy and clunking to light and swishing, I have bought a Trek mountain bike. What's prompted me? One of the teachers is planning a cycling weekend into the countryside and I really wanted to go so I got onto craigslist and found myself a bike. The gears click professionally, the saddle fits comfortably and the breaks stop me dead, even if they squeak when they do it.

Tonight I bought a lock and a leg for it to stand on when it's not going along.  Now it's in the car park at the bottom of 1F, my building. Tomorrow it'll take me to the university and back. The traffic is mad around here on the main roads and I hope I survive the experience. The motorbikes are shoals of fish, dodging out of the way of the bike in front that suddenly changes course. Every day I see another student in plaster or with cuts and bruises on their faces, arms and legs. Perhaps one day I'll be brave enough to get a motorbike and risk my life on the crazy roads but for now I'm happy to be on my new bike.

The first of the first two thousand and eleven

I'm sitting on a beach, it's 8:40 pm and the waves are slapping at the sand in the dark. I've eaten fish in a restaurant across from the slightly run down resort I'm staying in for the weekend. I have Monday off because of the New Year holiday so I've got out of HCMC and am in Mui Ne, a fancy beach resort 5 or so hours out of the city.

I was up at 6am and into a taxi from Phu My Hung to catch my 8am bus to the beach. It's a refreshing break from normal life even just for a day or two. The bus turned out to be a sleeper bus and anyone who read my previous blog will know how I feel about them. The passengers were a mix of backpackers and Vietnamese people and it crawled it's way for hours through the northern suburban sprawl of the city eventually finding the countryside and then the coast.

Mui Ne is classic seaside resort territory with a long long strip of hotels, restaurants, shops and holiday bungalows catering for all pockets. As I'm habitually mean, and not yet used to my current high salary, I'm not in the 4 star resort complexes surrounded by gifts shops and bars but my place is fine, it has a pool shaped like a teardrop and its own private beach. Across the road there's a great restaurant where two ladies squat by the roadside and barbecue fish for you. There's windsurfing, jet skiing and jeep safaris to be had just like back in Europe. Sadly no hammocks in the grounds of the resort, which are otherwise lovely and tropical. There are coconuts floating in the water and little crabs scurrying up the beach and popping into their tiny holes in the sand.

Tomorrow I plan to rent a bike and explore, or maybe not, just doze by the pool.