Glory Hoi An

... fruits, vegetables and fish. It was very busy, smelly and we got stared at a lot but very interesting!
Then we took a boat down the Perfume River to the cooking school. For the first demonstration Chris was made to get up in front of the group and perform! We made mango salad, Rice paper (from scratch!! oh yes), Vietnamese pancakes.. which I'm sure many of you will have forced upon you when we return, they we soo nice ...

... of hooting my horn I eventually got back to the hotel before Nathan. I also witnessed an almost horrendous crash which somehow narrowly avoided any real damage with two bikes in front of me. But being white and being the only one around and without the language I reckoned it would be all to easy to get mixed up when all I was doing was driving behind so seeing no one was hurt I just overtook and skedaddled out of there. Didn’t really fancy getting mixed up in all that.
The ...

... see if it had dried out any more. After a couple of days of this pathetic behavior, Mary noted that it was a spiral bound book and that perhaps it would be worth removing each page and drying them separately. Mark duly spent the next couple of hours carefully separating and removing the pages and laying them out on the tiled lounge-room floor to dry. Sometimes, there were 3-4 pages unable to be separated, so these were removed as a bundle and left separately. Once the single ...

... paying she figured out that they had undercharged us and actually insisted on going back to the desk and demand to pay more the the bemused looking desk clerk! No I've joked before that Tanya is so bad at negotiation that she would get something for even more than the asking price, but I never thought that would turn out to be true!!
She is officially banned from all negotiations in the future...

Anyway, 16 hour sleeper bus to Ninh Binh in a few hours!

... provided because of some very generous donors. They are worth about $US2,500 each. Anyway, the Vice-Consul rang before Mark sent the application because they were concerned about our proposal. Basically, they want something that is clearly visible and discrete with one financial year, and upon which they can put their stamp of acknowledgment, so we have targeted the application towards some more three-wheeled motorbikes for our disabled people.

Lifestart ...

... situations. She now hopes that some of her final-year OT students might like to come and do a placement with Lifestart.

Mark is starting to get some promising responses from at least a small number of Viet Nam-based Australian businesses that he has been contacting by letter. These are some early signs that this work might be starting to pay off, but it can and must only happen slowly as relationships hopefully develop.

An Aussie Viet Nam veteran named Phil ...

... partly the reason why I have so much respect for food. It has the ability to sustain us. It should not be wasted.

On my way out of the market after lunch I passed by a stall with two old ladies extracting jackfruit from the spiky skin. As soon as I said ok for half a kilo, one of the old ladies spat a stream of tobacco coloured saliva at my feet. Ewwwwwwwwww! (Some old women like to chew that tobacco plant here. It stains their teeth and ...

... in very skimpy, short, tight-fitting bright red dresses. We were immediately suspicious. The guys from the front desk came and took our money and the massage began. It was quite nice, but the girls were rather suggestive and we were quite happy when they were finished. Then the girls wanted their money, claiming that they will get none of the money we had already paid the guys. In the end, it was easier to pay them something and the total cost was still only about $A6 each. Next ...

... there was no one on the tour that took the offensive information to heart. At some points he was giving incorrect information; for example saying cows were sacrificed by Hindu people in one of the ruins. I waited to see what the Indians on the trip would say to such blatant misinformation. They politely corrected him and it turned out the cows weren't sacrified it was the cow's milk. Opps, big difference in the meaning though! Hehe
We zipped through ...

... in London!

I think we paid $2.50, which is GBP 1.25. Cuh-raaaaaaaaazy...

There's nothing interesting to report about the bus ride, so by 12pm noon we were being dropped off at the usual dodgy hotel, into the manic gesticulating arms and pulsating vocal chords of the usual 'hotel pimps'.

We walked to the hotel which we fancied from the Lonely Planet description, which was again not cheap but it was clean ...