Vietnamese for beginners

We staid in a little local hotel in Phan Thiet. Nobody spoke English so we had to learn our first Vietnamese words. Vietnam, I guess they hadn't seen many tourists. Most children and dogs (funny enough) were absolutely terriefied of me. They looked at me, the children started crying and the dogs ran off. I think it must have been the colour of my hair, surely I couldn't have turned into a scary beast within 4 months? Of course the others thought it was incredibly funny but I tried to smile at them and behave nicely - no success.

We went our for dinner and although during the afternoon the streets had been empty, at about 5pm there were bikes everywhere. I am not exaggerating, it was nearly impossible to move amongst all these cycles. There were crowds of lovely Vietnamese girls in white robes on bikes. Later we found out that this is the student uniform for Vietnamese girls. Very impressive sight.

Our hotel was obviously a great choice. Only Uli and Matthias had found out during the night that they had booked a night in a Squash court. The poor guys shared a wall with a Squash court and people were hitting the wall all night. Good job Mui Ne, just out of Phan Thiet, had a lovely beach and they could catch up on some sleep and sun there.

We rented some mopeds and raced off to the little fishing village. People gathered around us and inspected us thoroughly. They specifically liked Matthias' hairy legs for some reason.

Then we went to the beach to chill out. One thing to mention is the fact that although Matthias had lost quite a bit of weight during our trip so far, he still broke through the beach chair and it took us a while to convince the owner that Matthias wasn't too heavy but that his chair was too old.

In the evening we went to a little restaurant where we had fantastic food and cheap beer. We tried to order a desert after the meal but suddenly the young waiter ran off and we were worried we had insulted him with our poor Vietnamese (not so unlikely given Matthias' record of upsetting waiters, see report on Bangkok). After a while he came back, to our delight, with 4 Cornetto ice creams. That definitely earned him a tip. Of course the next evening we went there again and the same thing happened. The only disaster was Neil's dish. He had ordered a crab. Of course in the UK you get only served the good bits. Now, in Vietnam things are a bit different, possibly due to shortness of food, poverty and the closeness to the Chinese.... Anyway, what I am trying to say is that these guys eat the whole animal. They crack it open and eat everything including lungs, eggs etc. I had never seen a crab from inside and it was more of a biology lesson than a dinner. The waiter and waitress didn't understand why Neil wouldn't just eat the whole thing. They tried to explain, brought him extra fish(!) sauce and took it apart for him. No chance! He had half of my dinner and smiled at the waiters.

We spent most of our time at the beach and were cruising around on the little mopeds. We wanted to see the big sand dunes in Mui Ne and headed there with our mopeds - Neil driving.

When we reached the dunes, we had a group of children running towards us which caused Neil to swerve and slide on the sand. We ended up on the floor with some minor scratches and bruises. And guess what... while Neil was still lying on the ground, the kids came running towards me, pulling me up, hugging me, being really worried. For once they weren't scared of me. How cool was that. After all, I hadn't turned into a monster!