After finishing work on Friday I got a taxi to the airport and checked in for my flight to Hoi An. Was given this notice when I checked in -

Not what you wanna see before boarding a flight! As I didn't get one on the way back I presume it was because I was sitting in an exit row but at the time I had visions of someone opening the doors mid flight! The said, seconds after landing when the plane was still going at some speed people started standing up to get at their stuff so it's not too hard to imagine that someone was so desperate to get off the plane after lading that they made a dash for the doors before they were opened. It's quite entertaining to watch Vietnamese people being forced to wait to do something - they're not very good at it! They were all desperate to get onto the bus to the plane (maybe they thought it would go without them?!), then they pushed and shoved their way off the bus to try and get up the steps onto the plane as if they were racing against the clock, only to have to sit there waiting for the rest of us to get on. They were also itching to get off in Da Nang and were pushing and shoving to get off. I did notice though that all the exit rows were pretty much filled with foreigners, even those who didn't speak English as a first language and that each one of us read the card about the emrgency door and had a good look at the door itself. The only Vina who was in an exit row just put the card into the seat pocket without even looking at it!

I shared a taxi to Hoi An with a Canadian and checked into my fancy hotel before going down to the river. Last time I was in Hoi An I didn't get to see the place in the evening as I had to get transport back to my beach shack so it was nice to see it this time - it's quite a pretty place! There are lots of lanterns all over the place and everything is lit up. I also went to a tailors and got measured for a dress and a couple of skirts then went back to the hotel to collapse into bed.



On Saturday I briefly contemplated hiring a motorbike and driving out to some Cham ruins but it seemed like too much effort in the end so instead I had a lazy morning ambling around the town and getting measured for a pair of shoe and another skirt. I then hired a bicycle and cycled out of Hoi An. I came across a random Japanese grave

and a river

but it was a bit of a killer in the midday heat so I headed back into Hoi An to get something to eat. I picked up my new sparkly pink skirt (not as lame or childish as it sounds!) and then decied to cycle over to Cam Nam island to see what it's about. There's not a great deal there but it was a nice place to ride around for a bit, plus there is an ace bookshop where I was able to pick up another James Clavelle book. I went back to the hotel after that as I was a bit sunburnt and had a monster headache but after lots of water and a bit of time relaxing I went out to find some nice local food for dinner and caved in and got another dress made.

After breakfast yesterday I hired the bicycle again and cycled out to the beach-


It was pretty! The sand was pretty hot though and trying to walk across the sand burned my feet up, but apart from that it was a really nice place to spend a couple of hours, plus the ride there and back was nice.

I had to head back and check out of my hotel and then I went to collect my silk dress - not very practical for Vietnam but so pretty!

This week is the last week of term and there is a bonus day off on Weds for a public holiday so it's not too bad a week this week, apart from my 8 til 8 shift on Friday.

Rest of the pics here

I'm really looking forward to going away tomorrow after the monster long day I had today! I couldn't sleep last night so I got to work at 7am after about 4 hours sleep and was really looking forward to finishing at 12, spending a bit of time marking assignments and then coming home to get stuff sorted for tomorrow and watch a film or something to relax. Instead I spent nearly three hours marking the damn assignments after lunch as half of them were absolute crap. There were also some issues with students who had copied from past student's papers which meant I had to get the director of studies involved and so I finished marking at 3.30 and headed home for all of an hour before going back to work through the horrible rush hour traffic as I'd somehow let myself get talked into covering an evening class. It was a pretty cruisy class but still it sucked to be working til 8 and then having to get all my stuff sorted for tomorrow when I got home.

Am about to go and pass out in my bed now. I've just gotta make it through my morning class then at 12.45 I'm in a taxi to the airport. Woohoo! Beach!

After several days fighting with the internet company they have reconnected our internet! It died on Tuesday and finally yesterday morning it got fixed. I think they got sick of the sight of me showing up at their offices all the time to pester them so yesterday a guy finally came to sort it. There was a problem with the cable and fixing it required him to balance on the seat of his motorbike and fiddle around with a bunch of wires in the rain. I had visions of him getting electrocuted but thankfully that didn't happen and he was able to get the wires sorted. Somewhere in this jumble of wires is our internet cable:

and the guy had to cut bits off and faff around with live wires. At least he got it sorted!

Now I've got the internet back I've been able to book some plane tickets for December. They day after the parents fly home from Singapore I'm flying to Macau to spend a couple of days there, them I'm gonna get a ferry across to Hong Kong. After that I'm flying to Malaysia - Air Asia only fly to Malaysia or Thailand from Hong Kong so those were my two options for budget flights. I'm flying into Penang so I'll spend some time in Georgetown then I'll go explore the island and go to the beach. Then I intend to go to the Cameroon Highlands to see what that's all about. It's up in the hills and there are tea plantations and stuff and a bunch of hikes so I think it'll be a nice place to spend a couple of days. Then I'll head down to Kuala Lumpur. I think that's my favourite city in Asia so I'll prolly spend a bit of time there. I want to go out to the forestry research centre place for a day as they have a canopy walkway there which sounds cool, and I'm sure there are still a bunch of sights in the city that I've not seen. There's also a lot of shopping to be done there and lots of good food to be had so it'll be a nice way to finish of my time off before I return to Hanoi and go back to work.

I also found a hotel yesterday for my weekend in Hoi An. I got some cheap flights to Da Nang so on Friday I'm heading down to Hoi An for a couple of days. Last time I went there I stayed in a cheap shack by the beach in the middle of nowhere for $5 a night but this time I've found a decent hotel in Hoi An with a swimming pool which will be nice. I don't intend to do too much whilst I'm there - go to the beach or lie by the pool mainly. I'm gonna prolly get some clothes made and get a couple of my skirts copied, and I might hire a motorbike to head out to some Cham ruins out in the country but thats about all I've planned. I'm looking forward to getting away from Hanoi and getting a bit of peace and quiet for a couple of days!

The beast now has a basket on the front:

so yesterday I kitted myself up in my riding gear:

and went up to Tay Ho to get some goodies from the shops there. It was quite a nice ride over - the sun was out and the sky was bright blue. I realised it's been a while since I've seen a blue sky here and the city just looks so much better in the sun. Even the polluted lakes don't look too bad! I did witness an accident as I was leaving the supermarket - it wasn't major but a couple of bikes crashed into each other and the riders ended up on the floor. What really bugged me was that whilst these people were getting up and picking up their bikes other people were beeping their horns as they had to wait for a minute or two whilst these people got out of the way. The beeping of the horns here is really starting to annoy me. People beep for no reason and hold down their horns for an unnecessary amount of time. When I was sitting in the internet cafe by my house on Saturday I was there at peak time in the lanes and pretty much everyone that rode past felt the need to beep their horns. It drove me insane! There is also far to much beeping on the roads too and I think I'm starting to go deaf from all the horns! I want to get at the electrics on all the motorbikes in Hanoi and rig them so that if people hold down the horns for too long or too many times in a period of time they get an electric shock!

I've joined a gym at a swanky hotel and I went there this morning. There is also a swimming pool, jacuzzi and sauna so I made use of all of them today to get my moneys worth! The swimming pool is open air and it was nice to swim under a blue sky for a change. I've spent the rest of the day doing nothing much to make up for my hectic day yesterday running backwards and forwards to the internet company trying to get reconnected.

Yesterday after work I went to West Lake for a fix from the chocolate cafe. It perked me right up after my early start and 4 hours with my lameo class! I sampled a caramel coffee and a selection of their cookies. They were soooooo good! I then went to a few of the import shops to get things that are a hard to find in bog standard Vietnamese places, and I went back to the deli for more lovely French ham and bread. I finally managed to round up all the ingredients for Mexican food and discovered a stash of bounty bars in one of the shops so I returned home happy. The good thing about working mornings and finishing at midday is that I have the whole afternoon to do stuff. Just about makes up for dragging myself out of bed at 6am!

The parents have just booked some flights to come out and visit at the end of the year so I'm getting excited about planning trips again. Once they've gone I'll have nearly 3 weeks left of my holiday so I'm thinking about going somewhere lik Hong Kong. I was origianlly thinking about going to Taiwan too but flights seem pretty expensive so I might ahve to give that a miss. There are no budget flights between HK and Hanoi so I think I'll prolly end up flying from HK to Kuala Lumpur and then back up to Hanoi a few days later. That's no real hardship I guesse! I might even have some time to go to other parts of Malaysia as the only place I've been on peninsular Malaysia is KL. Yay holidays!

I played some Crowded House to my students yesterday!!! As we lost a day due to floods last week yesterday was a full lesson rather than the usual movie and so I had to entertain my students for 4 hours with no books to teach from. Ended up playing games most of the time and using songs as fillers. Jim had a few Crowded House songs so I used one to numb the pain of the Savage Garden song I used earlier in the lesson. It was actually quite a fun lesson in the end. Lots of phots were taken at the end though - this class seemed to love me so I had to pose for numerous photos with them all at the end of the lesson.