Phan Thiet Catch up

Now that I had my weekends free the division between the three of us teachers became even clearer. Of course some of it was down to the age difference but I don`t think that Denise is a social animal and after all why would she want to hang out with us? Also although Anna and I would text her to suggest having dinner together etc.she would generally accept the invitation and join us but she never once invited me out. I don`t do well with one way friendships so it was just easier to stop inviting her than to keep putting in the effort. Unfortunately Denise hasn`t been very well so she doesn`t cycle to school and so this isolates her even more as we often cycle to places for lunch and she can`t join us.
Anna and I would jump on our bikes and roam around Phan Thiet. We discovered a theme park about 2kms outside of town. I say theme park but this probably gives the wrong idea of what this place is, because despite having been there, I don`t know. Let me just say that it was weird and made me laugh a lot. We also cycled to see the Cham Towers on the road to Mui Ne. It was only after we got back to our hotel that we found out that that whole area is still considered dangerous due to landmines. I was enjoying not having to teach the ESL classes and wasn`t in a hurry to change that situation so I don`t really do anything outside of school. Anna was teaching English two nights week to the Sealinks caddies. I had met the GM of the golf club, Stephen, when he came to look at the school for his daughter. Anna is a golf player, so she offered to run the classes and gets to play golf for free.
In October we had a day at a resort with the students, it was a good day. It was nice just to sit in the sun and relax, even better since it was a "work" day. At the end of the month we had a Halloween party, the other classes went mad decorating their classrooms as there was a prize for the best decorated classroom. I have to say I didn`t put in a huge effort but my kids had fun I think. We were asked to suggest a list of games the students could play, unfortunately they only used a few ideas and then sat the kids down to talk about Halloween. Not my idea of a party.
The following day, 30th of October we went to Vung Tau for the weekend. It`s a town about four hours south of Phan Thiet, we went by bus. One thing I do really love about Vietnam is the endless variety of experiences I am having here. We head out on our bicycles and we are never quite sure where we will end up or what we will see. For example when we went to the Cham Towers we got invited to a birthday party and on the bus ride to Vung Tau Anna got stuck sitting next to a smelly fisherman. I had a window seat and couldn`t stop laughing. That`s another thing, I laugh every day in Phan Thiet, it`s great. I rarely hear Denise laugh.
We arrived in Vung Tau and it was raining, we hadn`t booked a hotel so we jumped into a cab and had him take us to a hotel listed in my guide book. The hotel looked like it had closed down a while ago but there was a hotel right next door so we booked into there and went had a nice lunch. After lunch and a coffee we went to see Jesus, which was an experience. Jesus is actually a huge statue on top of a hill a la the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. We had an early night and then caught the bus back the next morning. Totally worth it. We have taken to not telling Denise about what we are going to do and since she never asks it works out well. I am not sure what she does on her weekends as sometimes we just don`t see her from Friday pm to Monday am. To round off the weekend we went to a Halloween night at a local coffee house, Huba. Drinking coffee is a huge thing here in Vietnam. Phan Thiet must have hundreds of coffee shops, they range from the stall on the street with plastic furniture to full blown gardens complete with waterfalls to Chinese Pagodas to four story art deco buildings. And everything in between, it`s awesome. The evening was amazing, some people had dressed up, there were party games, which I made Anna take part in and even prizes. We cycled home happy bunnies.