I went out for dinner this evening thinking I'd just go to the Pho place at the top of the street and then get back to do some lesson planning. Didn't quite work out that way! I went towards the lake and the market area as I fancied something different for a change. My meal wasn't actually that nice in the end - won't be going back to that random food stall. I had some unidentifiable vegetable that really didn't taste good, dry rice and scrawny chicken. Normally the rice here is pretty edible by itself, and the veg I normally get served is spinach (i think) which I am happy to eat but this meal was grim. Still, it didn't even cost £2 so its not that bad. Once I'd finished I went to a random mini supermarket to try and find some washing powder and stumbled upon mars bars which made up for my crappy dinner! They are the real deal too, imported but not too expensive. It only cost me about 50p which is about the same as they are back home. This improved my dinner vastly!

I then walked around to the lake and came across a stage set up with a massive crowd around it. It was near a major intersection which doesn't seem a particularly intelligent place to put it. There were people standing in front of the stage, and then there were motorbikes lined up behind them blocking nearly the road. Other drivers didn't like this and were going crazy with the horns! I stood by the lake, across the road from the stage to see what was happening. I couldn't understand any of the writing around the stage, and had no idea what anyone was saying on stage so I couldn't tell you what it was all about but it was fun nonetheless. There was a Vietnamese beatboxer which was just bizzare - at times it sounded exactly like being at a Beardyman thing in Brighton in terms of what he was doing, then he'd randomly stop to speak in Vietnamese. After him came the boyband who were just like boybands the world over - tight trousers, sunglasses, gelled hair, standard boyband poses and moves. They did have a much more upbeat backing track than usual boy bands though. They seem to like the pounding house or techno music here as the boyband had a bit of it going on, and so did a solo singer. Between each of the acts there were a groups of people dancing around on stage to thumping music too so its clearly the prefered genre here.

By far the strangest act tonight were 3 guys who came out in suits and proceeded to dance around in a Michael Jackson fashion. At one point there was some MJ music in the background, but they were busting the moves for their whole set. Couldn't tell if they were singing too or just showing off their smooth moves.

When the host was talking between acts and I couldn't understand anything I found myself just watching the crowd and what was passing me on the road. The traffic was really busy and the motorbikes were zipping all over the place cutting people up. Then there were taxi drivers getting impatient, and massive private cars driven by people who hate to wait, and then every so often a tour bus would come along that could barely fit down the road. People would just stop when passing to see what was going on, particularly those on motorbikes which caused people to get even crazier in their driving and even more manic with the horns. I noticed that the driving style here is to use one hand to steer the steering wheel, and keep the other on the horn ready to press down whenever anyone pisses you off (ie ALL the time). There were also a few people driving convertible mercedes who seemed to be just driving round and round the lake to show off their flash cars.

People here seem to be constantly trying to break some sort of record as to how many people can use one form of transport. I saw a family of 5 on one motorbike, and one of the tiny boxy taxis had 9 (!) people crammed into 4 seats! I also witnessed 2 poeple on a motorbike with a fold up camp bed balanced between the two of them. Earlier on today I saw a guy on a motorbike with a pole 3 times the length of him balanced over his shoulder. It seems that no matter what you need to transport here you can find some way to get it onto your motorbike!