For those who’ve had problems with the RSS feed for… erm… about 4 months – my apologies. It was a configuration cockup on my part and has now been rectified. Thanks to John for pointing it out as I don’t use the thing so never noticed. Don’t forget to visit the 1000 Mile European Walk [...]

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I intended to wake at 5am and go to Tai Chi by Hoan Kiem lake with Tara this morning, but I couldn’t drag myself out of bed. Similarly to the Thai who practise in the early hours of the morning (Lumpini Park in Bangkok is popular), Vietnamese people get up with the sunshine and have [...]

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As ever, I was up early to head for football. Today, though, I wasn’t running around quite so much. I refreed a game between the Blue Dragon and a local team which went well, finishing a very fair 1-1. In honesty, BD should have won it – they had the chances – but spurned so [...]

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 I promised I’d post this ages ago. It’s a video of the little teeny crabs on the beach at Hua Hin in Thailand rolling sand into balls. It’s in AVI format and, no, I can’t and won’t convert it to any other format. It’s an 8mb download, or thereabouts. Enjoy! 

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 Another early rise as I had to get to the Blue Dragon to meet Van who was going to show me around Hanoi. One of my two regular motorbikes drove me up for 9:00 and Van arrived shortly after. We decided on a rough route and then set off. Our first stop was to be [...]

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Another English girl, Tara, had arrived the day before and we both wanted to go to the Water Puppets so I headed over early doors and got two tickets for the 4pm performance. We splashed the cash and went for “deluxe” seats at 40,000d as opposed to the cheap ones at 20,000. While I was [...]

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 [Note: video link to the left] Today’s class went as well as the one earlier in the week, though it was a little harder as I had no translator. Given that my Vietnamese is next to non-existant this should have posed a problem, but the kids were really quick on the uptake. One of them [...]

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Last night was a good laugh. I plumped for the usual burger for dinner and as I arrived back at the hostel, the owners offered me a beer. Not one to turn down a freebie, I sat and talked to them and some of the guests for a while as I gulped down my food [...]

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Last night I spent a pleasant hour or so nattering to some people in the Buffalo Bar – basically an open-air top floor of the hostel. What made it particularly good was the mix of nationalities. Two Danes, two Aussies, three Austrians, one Mauritian (living in China), one Chinese-American (living in Texas) and myself lowering [...]

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Well, officially in that I taught some kids today. In that I rattled some stuff off some notes I made. In that someone else translated for me. But pretty close. And the kids managed to pick up everything they were meant to. If anything I underestimated them as I’d planned on an hour and things [...]

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