Phan Thiet Jan '11

Friday night again, our last in Phan Thiet before our Tet holiday. I couldn't take it in that I would see Darren the following week, it doesn't seem real. And I have to be honest I am a little sad that I won't be in town for my first Vietnamese New Year, I think it would have been awesome. Anna and I have received so many invitations already and considering how last minute things normally are here,that's amazing. Although the holiday seems last minute after all of the hassle we've gone through to get it booked. The weekend was going to be a busy one and to cap it all off I had a couch surfer texting and calling me with a million requests, I felt really hassled. Anna and I met Vien and Tan on the beach, we brought the beers. We rocked up with twenty bottles of Saigon green on our bicycles, that always gets a laugh from the locals. And when Mr.Lan at Hoang Kim sees us buying beer he knows we will be waking him up to let us in. I was feeling a bit tired and not very social and so was a bit quiet. This was too much for Vien and he kept trying to get me to "cheer up" despite both Anna and me telling him to leave me alone. All I needed was to be quiet for a while, relax and then I would cheer up. He seems to take silence as a personal affront. I also had to fend off Tan and stop him from feeding me, I know when I am hungry and if I want food, I will get it. Luckily neither of them noticed that I wasn't drinking very much. Later we were joined by Jan and Therese, an intern at the hotel. It took the pressure of us as she speaks a little Vietnamese and so could speak to Vien and explain for him. Then we were all going to decamp to Bocano but Vien, Tan and Therese disappeared so Jan, Anna and I ended up going without them. Anna and I normally find any number of people to dance with us and generally never lack for a dancing partner. The club is also filled with staff paid to dance with you. Poor Jan couldn't find even one staff member to dance with him, I don't understand it. On the way home we stopped at a roadside drinking establishment for another beer. Jan had to pretend to be Anna's husband to fend off a guy. It could have gotten ugly.
Saturday morning was an early one as we had to be at school for 07.30 for the end of semester celebration. We cycled to school and got our usual sandwich and coffee. I had to wear my Ao Dai, which is not such a hardship these days but I am not convinced that orange is a good colour for me. The ceremony only took two hours and finished earlier than we had expected. Impressive.It was the usual, speeches, singing,dancing and ended with an award ceremony for the best students. During the ceremony it had started to rain, I haven't seen rain in over a month and so of course didn't have a jacket with me. Anna and I decided not to wait it out and cycled to a coffee house, getting soaked in the process. We had another coffee and ate brunch. Luckily when it came time to leave the rain had stopped. We were booked in for a massage, my first since I got back from Japan. I spent a very relaxing couple of hours although I felt very exposed as I was on the bed nearest the door in the treatment room and as I was having a body scrub as well, the ladies were out for all to see. So much for Vietnamese modesty, well I guess it doesn't matter for me as I am not Vietnamese!! We finished the evening with dinner on Ba Ke with Ms.My, Denise and some other people from the office. When they left Anna and I hung out with Grant, his family and a couple of his friends from Australia. It was the eve of his wedding. I was back in my room for 9pm and ready for the next day, I was so excited you would have thought that it was me getting married instead of some one I only met five months ago.
I don't mention Denise very much here, or I should say Denis, as I refer to her. The Vietnamese staff always drop the last "e" when they say her name and it's stuck with me. I don't socialise with Denis if I can help it. After a couple of months I noticed that she never initiated an invitation and never texted or called me, although I invited her to things. I don't appreciate a one-sided relationship and so I stopped contacting her. So we don't meet outside of school. Then there is something about her that irritates me and makes me want to check everything she says. If she tells me about something and for some reason it didn't work, I will then say "Did you try...?", she always says yes. In one instance she stated this about signing into her work email address, so I sat down at the computer and did what I had just told her to do, what she had said she had already done and lo and behold she can't have done it otherwise I wouldn't have been able to. I think that if she lies about small mundane matters, what else does she lie about? Also she is a different generation than me, as well as technically being my manager. Although she is an awful man manager, I can't and never have commented on her teaching skills as I haven't seen her teach. I try not to dislike her but I do intensely dislike her behaviour generally and as a manager she is just terrible. So I was not happy when Ms.My asked me to invite her to dinner on Friday night but what can you do. And it could have been worse,at least it wasn't just her and me or the three of us.
Anna and I got dressed in our wedding outfits and had coffee on Le Loi, to say we got noticed is an understatement. We arrived at Grant's and of course no one was ready to go so we hung out at the coffee house across the street from his hotel until they were. We were all lined up his room to be given the items we were to carry in the procession and then allowed to go down and get into the taxis to take us near to Mai's house.We walked in procession, carrying our gifts, it was great, everything I thought it would be and more. Outside of Mai's there was a wedding tent of the kind I had seen so often and now I would get to attend a wedding party in one. We presented our gifts and then sat down to the wedding breakfast of chicken rice and beer. Grant was the man I was drinking beer for at 08.30 on a Sunday morning. The wedding breakfast only lasted a couple of hours and Grant's party, including Anna and me of course repaired to another bar for another. Anna and I called time after one and went back to the Hoang Kim. I chilled the rest of the day and pretty much did nothing. Anna was due to get picked up by Taun and I would go to the evening reception with Mrs. and Ms.Lan from the Hoang Kim. As it turned out we arrived at the Binh Minh hotel all together and sat at the same table. Danni and Stephen joined us and later Jan, who was my "date". I felt a little guilty about Mrs.Lan as I hadn't expected it to be a wholly western table and in fact, would probably have preferred it if it hadn't of been.The wedding party was great, followed by karaoke and then a visit to Bocano. We didn't stay long at Bocano, Anna wasn't well and I wasn't feeling it. It wasn't as late a night as I had feared.
The last three days have been quiet, Anna has been ill so I've been keeping my own company. I still can't beleive that I am on holiday and that I will see Darren on Friday. I am so excited.