The Asian Project

Today it is pissing down (and I mean PISSING down) in Hoi An.  The Vietnamese hate it, but I, as a dried-out Australian, am actually quite at home to it.  The streets are actually flooding here as I tap away at the keyboard and I'm waiting a bit before I do a walking tour of the old town this arvo.  I meant to do that yesterday when it wasn't raining, but in classic Phil fashion, forgot my camera.

So I have not much to say for this post as nothing much has really happened in the intervening time.  In fact, the only reason for this post is that I have nothing better to do. 

I could go on about the merits of tonal versus non-tonal languages for a while, but I actually dont understand tonal languages at all, so that would be pointless.  The tailors here are fantastic, as are the fried bush babies.  I really need to have sex pretty soon and wouldn't mind a coffee that doesn't have condensed milk in it.

We have a new mate called Ben, who's from London.  He's been teaching English in China for the last year.  He calls ALL the females here he comes across swee' art, including the older ones.  Gold. 

We were in a bar the other night that has a sort of political activist kind of theme going on.  They were running a docco on the screen there that was about political violence in the 20th century around the world.  When the bit about the Palestinians came on, a bunch of Israelis got ROOL shitty and actually demanded the staff turn it off.  This pissed me off in a mighty fashion.  We are in Vietnam after all and it's not like they don't know about this stuff here.  Remember the Chinese, the Fench, the Americans, etc, etc???  And for fuck's sake, the whole theme of the bar was political, as I said, so why the fuck go in there???  I was ready to cause an international incident and had upgraded to defcon 2, but pulled back from the brink at the last minute.  Ben almost did cause one, but managed to rein himself in at the last minute and went off swearing in Spanish to himself instead.  Aah the multiculturalism.  Awesome!

Then there was the night in Hanoi when Matt, Helen and I were in a bar called Red Mask (great place if you ever go to the Hanoi... you can get special cigarettes over the bar there).  Suddenly the lights and everything went off and silence was called for.  it was because the police were coming on down the street and they would otherwise have kicked us all out and closed it down.  After about three minutes everything came back on again and the night went on.  What a country!!!!

Well it is still raining and I could go on with this bullshit for ever, but I must don my swimmers and get into the old town.  If you don't hear from me for a while, I'm in the South China Sea.