Urgh

Today I have mostly felt rough. All I can assume is that it’s a combination of a very late night 2 days ago, and running around for an hour playing football the morning afterwards. I’m very dehydrated and my stomach’s just not happy with me to the point where all I’ve eaten today is a slice of bread and half a packet of Oreos.

Bleurgh.

I did, however, pop up to Blue Dragon again and retrieve some software. I promised to get a lesson plan down to them in the next day or so. The aim is to teach the kids how to use Dreamweaver MX to create and edit web pages. All good skills for children these days, and it lets them be creative. I write it up in English and Tho translates the lesson plans into Vietnamese.

Tho, incidentally, was the “referee” who also played centre forward for the opposition on Sunday. Despite this, he’s not that bad!

In good news, our aircon and hot water were sorted this afternoon. I think a fuse had blown and both were on the same circuit. The hot water was no big deal – the third floor showers were fine – but life with no aircon’s awful!

Seth’s passport finally reappeared from the Indian embassy, so I think he’ll be off tomorrow night if he can. Indian visas take around 8 days to come through, and he’s virtually been going stir crazy in Hanoi.

As I mentioned, I had an early start this morning to play football with some of the kids from Blue Dragon. Now, I have an issue with sleeping when I know I have to be up early. So despite setting my alarm for 7:15, I was waking up at all hours and actually got out of bed at 7:00.

The usual breakfast – a loaf of fresh bread – was collected from the kitchen and I wandered round the corner to get a motorcycle taxi. I must be getting blasè, but I was motored up to the football field with one hand on the grip and the other being used to feed myself bread. Either blasè or just too tired to notice.

I got there dot on time as the children were split into two groups. Around 30 smaller kids who played 15-ish-a-side, and around a dozen older lads including one westerner. I was roped into this game to make up the numbers and swapped my Toon top for a pale blue one supplied by those nice people at Real Betis.

Now, I know it was only 8am. However, it was still well over 20 degrees (and rising) with silly humidity. The pitches weren’t small, and there was a lot of running. I am very pleased to say that I didn’t collapse at any point, though the kids ran rings round me after about 15 minutes when such things as breathing became an effort. Some of them were actually pretty good. Annoyingly they were all on the opposing team.

Sweat was literally gathering on my eyebrows and flowing into my eyes in little tsunamis. Every time I ran a step it looked like my forehead was spitting on the ground. I cannot remember ever being so hot, but it was just damn good fun!

OK, so we lost. 5-3, but I think two of their goals were dubious to say the least. One went through the netting and out the back which means it shouldn’t count (don’t believe me? It happened to Boro in a Premiership match a handful of seasons ago), and their third didn’t cross the line entirely.

Sour grapes? Me?

I got to meet the IT chap who works for Blue Dragon as he was captaining the other team. Tomorrow I’ll be collecting a copy of Dreamweaver to put on my laptop so that I can start working on some notes for the staff and children.

The only serious downsides appeared as I hobbled away in the shape of a large blister on each foot. As a result, I didn’t walk back as far as I wanted to stretch my legs, instead getting a bike ride from a man who looked surprised when I said “Yes” to his query of “Motorcycle?”.

I got dropped off at a supermarket near the lake and bought some sweeties. I made some kids’ day as well, as there was only one packet of California Starbursts left. I already had that one in my hand and she was eyeing it up (obviously not a fan of the sour ones), so I just bought them and gave them to her. Heck, I eat enough sweets as it is. Her and her sister both said “thank you very much!” as did their mum. Meh, worth 7000 Dong!

Also, due to lack of sleep, I didn’t have much of an appetite so lunch wasn’t until almost 3:00. I used one of the leaflets I’d had foisted on me to order a chicken burger, chips, fruit, garlic bread (evil!) and drink. Including delivery (which took about ten minutes), this came to 39,000 Dong. Bargain. And it was pretty decent.

Much time was spent burning CDs for people trying to make sure they don’t lose any photos. Always happy to help!

Dinner was also delivered (hamburger) and I relaxed – kind of – to watch us walk all over Chelsea and take 7th position and the Intertoto Cup slot. One quick beer to celebrate and my fatigue overcame me. Bed was inviting me and I didn’t have to RSVP.

 NOTE – partway down, things get a little icky. If you’re weak-stomached or vegetarian you may want to skip the later parts of this posting. The beginning and end will be clearly marked in capitals and photos available on request only.

Today I started off doing precisely naff all. Give or take.

A lie in until 9am *gasp* and then I borrowed Munich from Seth – a guy in my dorm. The back of the sleeve lied. It said that the running length was 112 minutes. Erm. It was over 2 1/2 hours. And very, very dull.

The first “new” thing today was seeing a Vietnamese funeral procession. On Thursday I saw a pedallo driver lugging an adult-sized coffin up a street, but this was a whole different affair. The sound was deafening as the bus/hearse carrying the coffin was preceeded by a traditional band. Horns, flutes, drums (or the eastern equivalent) played loudly while mourners followed behind wearing normal clothes covered with a white cheesecloth shawl. Obviously, I didn’t take pictures.

Breakfast consisted of a small loaf of French bread. As did lunch. Finally, Barry (one of the staff) drove me to a place round the corner which does a noodle dish he rather likes. 16,000D and it was rather filling. A small amount of water/soup at the bottom, thin noodles, some veg, fresh herbs and crushed nuts on the top. It was a little dry, but tasty. I managed about 3/4 of it and I was stuffed. I’m also getting strangely good with chopsticks – something I never thought I’d be able to do.

 A local Irish bar (they’re everywhere) was celebrating its second birthday with free beer from 6-8pm so, obviously, we ran over there later in the evening. It would have been rude not to.

5 drinks later, we congregated at the hostel for a trip to the Snake Village. Laura had found out about it and tried to get a big group together. We managed seven, and filled a large cab (legally, strangely enough).

THIS IS WHERE IT STARTS TO GET YUCKY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Look for the next load of capitals if you want to skip this bit.

 At the snake village you don’t get to see little snakes gambolling in fields, playing with their brothersw (or whatever snakes do when they’re not gulping down impressively sized meals). Nope. At the Snake Village, you pick your meal and eat it. It’s like seafood with venom and a slightly harsher outlook on life.

We arrived and stared at the jars stacked on shelves. All contained some kind of pickled snake, or snake spinal column, or gecko or somesuch. We haggled over a price, ending on 50,000 Dong for three cobras. Of the seven of us, three wanted to eat the heart of the snake. I wasn’t one! Apparently it contiues to beat shortly after death, and gives some kind of power to the devourer.

The first cobra was retrieved from a cage and toyed with by a rather insane man while two 3-year-old children watched, pretty bored by the whole thing. The children did come in handy when Seth screamed like a girl and used them to hide behind at one point. I think the snake had moved about 2 feet in his direction. Admittedly, it had done this in a tiny fraction of a second, but hiding behind children… shame on you, Seth!

After getting the cobra to open its hood, the handler struck. Squeezing its head, he milked the venom onto the floor (which I thought was a bit of a waste) and carried it over to a table. There lay three glasses and a small, but very sharp, knife.

With one cut, the cobra’s neck was slit and a glass put beneath it to catch the blood (apparently good for virility). As soon as the blood was drained, the knife was used to slit down the animal and its heart found and pulled out with the aid of another slice or two. This was put into a shot glass, covered with rice wine (or vodka, or something) and handed to the first nutjob. Down in one. Urk.

 The rest of the snake was taken away to be prepared for the meal.

Another two snakes were brought out and we noticed that they weren’t cobras. They were “house snake – cheaper”. But we didn’t want house snake, we wanted cobra. The staff took some convincing (during which time, one snake was twirled like a baton – I don’t know whether it was shouting “weeeeee!” in Parcelmouth), but the above ritual was repeated for Laura and for Seth (who held the heart in his teeth for one of the grimmest photographs I’ve ever taken).

We were directed to the restaurant area upstairs, past a scary amount of Catholic imagery, and sat down to await dinner.

YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO START READING NOW IF YOU SKIPPED ANYTHING. ONLY A LITTLE BIT YUCKY FROM NOW ON.

Gradually, the food appeared. We had snake soup (delicious – and, yes, chickeny. It’s pictured at the top and was very gloopy), deep fried snake, snake spring rolls, sauteèd snake, snake spare rib, sticky rice with snake… There was also a chance at cognac or rice wine with snake penis in. The price was a little steep, though. I was hoping for snake ice-cream, but no joy.

The one remaining yucky bit I did not partake in. Each of us was given two shotglasses. One with snake blood, one bright green with bile. Bile’s supposedly good for the health. Not the snake’s obviously. Everyone else downed theirs, I confess I just wasn’t trusting something that had not been cooked.

DEFINITELY NO YUCKINESS NOW.

The entire meal, including a couple of beers, came to around a million Dong. This is only about £33. Not bad for 7 people, and we still had food left we just couldn’t finish.

Two taxis eventually found their way back to the hostel and unloaded us for a short break before a reduced party of four headed for Bia Hoi.

Shame upon shame – we’d just missed closing time. There was a bar just around the corner which we settled in, partly as the beer was 20,000 Dong and cocktails half price. The music was also good and it was heaving with foreigners.

Twice the shutters were closed and padlocked while the staff hushed all the patrons. The police were looking for out-of-hours drinking establishments! We got away with it once, but the second time I guess they heard us and we had to leave. The staff asked the crowd to disperse and come back in ten minutes as the police wouldn’t leave until everyone “went home”.

I actually headed back to the hostel myself at that point. The other three did as they were instructed and kept drinking. I believe they got to bed around 4 or 5am. I’m glad I hadn’t stayed as I needed to be up at 7! 

Despite a long day yesterday, and a late bedtime, I was up and about shortly after 7am. Simply, once the light starts to pour into the rooms I find it hard to get back to sleep, so I got up and tinkered about on the interwebnet while the PCs were both free.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that Andy got his passport back. It had fallen down the back of one of the beds and into someone else’s locker. They’d handed it in, and it had been taken to the British embassy by the staff here. Both were happily united and relief abounded.

Andy set off this evening for a beach resort down the coast, but will be back in a week to fly off to Thailand. It’s cheaper to work his way back up here and fly from Hanoi than from Ho Chi Minh City.

Obviously, we had to have lunch one more time at the City View. Burgers as usual! The staff are getting to know us. I managed to drag two girls from the hostel up there later in the evening as well. I had a hamburger, just for a change. It was rather delicious.

I also bought about 12 DVDs and 2 CDs. Which cost me less than 7 quid. OK, they’re all hokey, but they’ll give me something to do in the evenings as I count my way down to the NZ flight. Pretty much all I did was loaf – we watched 40 Year Old Virgin in the Buffalo Bar into the late evening while trying to ignore around 10 french brats running up and down the stairs, screaming. Thankfully I think they’re only here for a rugby tournament and will be gone in 2 days.

And that’s really it for the day. I have a feeling there’ll be a few of these “not much happened” posts this week, unless I opt for the Mai Chau biking trip. I’ll be struggling to pay for it, though, until some money transfers between two accounts.

Regarding the title of today’s post, the humdity was a stunning 80%. Just a short stroll outside was enough to coat you in sticky sweat. Thankfully, the dorms are air conditioned!

The train pulled in at around 7:00am – I don’t know when it was meant to arrive, but this was when it turned up. Loi was there waiting for us, and we split into two groups. Kate and Dale were straight off to the bus station for the next stage of their trip. The rest of us were dropped off at our respective hotels, email addresses exchanged.

While I checked my email and so forth, Andy crashed out for a few hours. After some thought, planning and price checking I booked a return flight to New Zealand on the day my visa expires – March 13th. It makes sense to get to NZ while Lou isn’t working (she was supposed to be starting now, but it looks like it’ll be a 2-month gap) as we can travel together and share costs. The plan’s to return the Sunday after all the World Cup group stage games. Not that I’m basing all my travel round football *cough*

Lunch was had at the City View Café (beef noodle soup) and we parted ways. I jumped on a motorcycle taxi bound for the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. Sadly, I got a driver who probably knew hte layout of Hanoi about as well as he knew Manhattan. After more than half an hour, I just got him to drop me somewhere random and walked off.

Two and a half hours later, I found where I was looking for without asking for directions once. I can be stubborn when I want to be.

Skye was there to meet me, along with 3 other members of staff and more children than I could count (mainly as they kept moving about). We planned some work for me over the next week or so, and watched a video about the Foundation. The kids joined in, pointing and yelling at themselves on the TV.

I’ll be honest, I felt a little out of my depth mainly as virtually none of the children speak English. However, the power of paper and pencil took hold when Skye did a portrait of one of the boys. When she was done, he indicated he wanted me to do one as well. Let’s just say he kept mine and left Skye’s on the table when he went home! A little girl also wanted a picture done, and one of the other boys drew one of me (which is how I realised how desparately I needed a shave) which he pinned on the noticeboard. The first boy’s younger brother presented me witha crayon drawing which would probably have a psychologist spinning in circles, but they read too much into everything. The picture is still in my pocket.

The heavens opened about an hour before I left but fortunately stopped before the end of their working day. One of the staff, Van (I’m guessing at the spelling), offered me a lift back to the hostel which I gratefully accepted. Until I remembered this would mean being on the back of a moped through Hanoi at rush hour.

“Are you scared?” he asked at one point.

“No – I trust you!” I lied back. I think my nose grew two inches.

At one point another bike pulled up level to us at about 20mph and the passenger on that one yelled to me “Hello? Want to buy some marijuana?”

Good grief.

I think someone must have made a big dope and heroin delivery to Hanoi that evening. Andy and I were offered either or both for sale by countless people that evening on the way to dinner (no surprises where we ate). While we were eating on the balcony, we could see one guy in the middle of a busy intersection handing out leaflets for a restaurant (we’d declined one ourselves on the way in). The thing is, some of the people who pulled up handed him something, he looked over his shoulder, reached into his back pocket and handed them something else with the leaflet. Possibly the most blatant drugs sales ever. Astounding.

After dinner, we wandered to Bia Hoi territory (the cheapest I’ve seen is 1500D, but it’s well out in the boondocks) where we necked a few drinkies at a bargain 2000D a glass. Back to the hostel after that for a handful of Halidas while watching the end of a film and some episodes of Family Guy before the Buffalo Bar closed at midnight.

I really should have gone to bed then, but there was a spare computer downstairs. I couldn’t resist. 2 hours of internet later, I finally snatched some Z’s.