Last weekend involved a weekend trip, south to Hà Tĩnh Province, home to many historical and cultural sites, all of which i may have missed, but it is also the home province of my Vietnamese tutor, who invited us down. On the 6 hour journey south we did stop at Vinh in Nghệ An Province for a 4 hour nap before breakfast, which was eel soup and bread of course! This was fittingly followed by a half day tour of Uncle Ho’s place, which involved a lot of pomello eating surprisingly. And the point of this blog entry, well eel soup i guess. It was a lot wormier looking than expected given their short thin flopsy nature. The soupy environment only added to the sense that they were wriggling, but once you get over that fact, they tasted decent, very flavoursome really, perfect for soaking bread in and the eel was less what i would imagine worm to be and more fishy. A good alternative to Sultana Bran, with the same yet amplified health effects.

I am the proud owner of a wave alpha! The pretty lady may be a little jealous, but i still take her shopping, nothing could replace her basket.

So I have done a bit of work whilst over here too. Last week involved several trips to Dong Anh district, it’s a bit over an hour to get there. It’s a rural area quickly urbanising, and is where our microcredit operations take place. Work involved following a credit officer around as she visited various communes to collect and distribute money. Top left is a collection meeting held in a borrower’s house, and top right is one of our branch offices. Right is the general landscape around the district, rice paddies littered with communes. Most of the borrowers are women who sell produce in the market, the one male borrower we met is a street barber.

The credit officer has to lug around a backpack with 5 thick books for a good part of the day, through all kinds of weather, often resulting in bruised shoulders! I guess my task is to rid the burden of heavy books, so I think a giant bonfire may be in order. Here are some pics of where I had my bowl of pho for lunch on one of the days. It just wouldn’t be a post if my stomach wasn’t involved.

This fine establishment has to legally close around 11 or 12 i think, so to visit afterwards requires a covert operation, a few nods, a couple of winks, and the old lady out front will raise the security door and rush us into the building. The motorbikes get wheeled around the corner, down an alley, a secret knock on the door will wake up the old man who clears space for the bikes in his front room. And so once again we have thwarted the cops, no-one would ever suspect that illegal singing would be taking place. Criminal activity is such a rush. The police will have to go back to fighting the heroin trade and chasing young hoons racing around the lake.

Is there something unwholesome about three guys in a dingy karaoke room? The fake plastic vines above at least add some credibility, surely.

A few weeks ago I took some days off from my stressful life to expel any patriotism I had. This resulted in a trip to Bangkok to watch some average socceroo action in the Asian cup. Thankfully the Aussies threw the game against Iraq, in what could only be described as an act of support for a country in need of a morale boost, very gracious indeed.
And then in an attempt to appease the small band of traveling Hanoians they decided to beat Thailand in a rather tense game to set up a quarter final in Hanoi.


And then to thank us for the support they decided to hang around the baggage area in Hanoi airport for ages, happily (well, as happy as you can be waiting for baggage) posing for snaps, whilst we attempted to remain cool and un-fan-like, which our big grins may have given away. But they grunted when we congratulated them, Viduka managed to string a few sentences together, we talked about the weather, it was riveting, a few minutes more and we would have been best friends. Unfortunately he had plans that weekend (some game against Japan, which has been erased from memory), so he couldn’t come around for a few drinks.