Phan Thiet Nov'11

My first day back in town was pretty typical, I slept late, had coffee and ran a few errands. It's amazing how quickly you can feel as if you've never been away. I had dinner with Anna and Jan on Bo Ke, it was good to catch up with them, it felt like I hadn't seen them in ages. And considering what each of us had done in a short time, it could have been a far longer than a week. Anna had had to make a visa run to Bangkok to get a new visa and after having been paid by APC, had quit her job there. I can understand this. If nothing else the situation we are in as regards our work permits is horrendous and totally unprofessional. I genuinely do not understand why "Dr. Jason" continues to think that it is OK for the international staff to work illegally. I will never understand this. Maybe it isn't such as issue in Saigon, I don't know. May be because I live in a small town and there are so few foreigners working here that the Labour Dept. has more time to chase us up on our paperwork. Whatever the reason, it's not a situation that I'm happy with. Hopefully now the Labour Dept is involved things will get moving. I had work the next day, which went OK and then I had to rush home as my first couch surfer's had arrived. When I arrived home they were sat in my neighbour's house, next door and seemed to be just fine. I settled them into the house, chatted for a bit and went out to meet Nhi, a Vietnamese friend. I was glad to see Friday, even though it had been an extremely short work week for me. I had forgotten about Teacher's day being on Sunday 20th November, but luckily some of my students parents hadn't and I was able to go home with some really nice flowers. They made a welcome addition to the house, as well as smelling nice. Anna and I had dinner with the couch surfer's but we both continued drinking when we got home, so I wasn't feeling too great when I got up the next day. I wasn't unduly worried about this as I was expecting a reasonably quiet weekend. Little did I know. Saturday day was quiet enough for sure except that I'd had an unexpected visitor. I was getting my things together to go out and get coffee when I walked downstairs into the living room and there's this Vietnamese woman standing there. She apparently works at a restaurant in the area, that I'd eaten at once. Her father is a security guard at the local police station and he had asked them for my address and they had given it to him. Of course!He in turn had given it to his daughter and she was now stood in my house looking to practice her English. Normally I always lock the front gate so that this kind of thing can't happen, but this particular morning Mr. Sang, the father of our landlady, was busy turning our front yard into a construction zone and had left the gate wide open. Phuong, my unexpected visitor, told me that I was the first foreigner she had met. With that comment ringing in my ears I dragged her into the kitchen and introduced her to the CS'ers. I left her my business card and headed out, leaving her to practise on the couch surfer's. In the evening I caught the bus to Mui Ne with the CS'ers, they were surfing with someone else there and I went to have dinner at Jibes. The parents of one of my students own Jibes, a beach bar and kite surfing school. Pascal and Phuong had invited Anna and I out for a Teacher's day dinner the year before, but we hadn't gone so I was determined to go this year. I didn't know what to expect so I took a book with me as I thought I'd be eating alone. Anna had gotten a new job at a resort in Mui Ne and for some reason they wanted her to work until 10pm. She was not happy. I get into Jibes and Pascal is at the bar, so I join him for a drink and then Phuong joins us. We are chatting when three of Pascal's friends join us and it becomes clear that we are going to have dinner together. They don't speak English so the group divided itself along language lines and I chatted with Phuong while the guys chatted together. The food was awesome, the wine free flowing. By the time Anna arrived there was dancing on the tables, thank God Phuong and Pascal own the joint otherwise we would have been thrown out. When Anna left I was still hale and hearty, if very drunk. It was a super late night and when I woke the next morning I realised that I had cut my foot. I have no idea how. At this point I didn't realise how badly I'd cut it. Besides I didn't really have time to do a whole lot about it, I had another wedding to go to. Anna very kindly patched me up on the Sunday morning and off we went to Mr. Thanh's wedding. Mr. Thanh is a friend of Vien's, Anna had met Vien when she had had coffee at the motorcycle cafe on Le Loi one time, they had got chatting and became friends. For months we had heard that Thanh had a girlfriend and that he would get married, so we were super excited to actually go to the wedding and besides I love Vietnamese weddings, they're almost as good as Japanese ones! I was sat at the table when I realised that my foot was bleeding, I "bandaged" it up with a wet wipe and carried on partying. Unfortunately I wasn't very mobile so I left the photographer duties to Anna. It was a good wedding. We went to karaoke afterwards with Vien and some of his friends and then went home, this was about 5pm. Not bad considering that the wedding had started at 11am. When we got back to the house there was some sort of "do" going on in the ward office across the alley from our house. Phan Thiet, like western cities is divided into wards and each ward has any number of ward offices. This office serves as a base for a local police officer and he will have information on all of the residents within his area. Anna and I had had drinks with the local police officer before. That time when I'd had sat down he had whipped out a copy of my passport and laughed at us when we tried to lie about our age! On the same occasion one of my neighbours had rocked up to me and said "Hello, Judy Ann". I was a little unsettled by this, I never tell people my middle name, but he had obviously gotten this personal information from somewhere. Anyway the guys invited us to join them for a few more beers, so we did. I thought that my day was done after this, I was home and in my nightshirt when Anna suggested we go to MTV, our local nightclub. I have no will power, so said "Hell Yeah" and off we went. In fairness we didn't stay long, but an interesting end to an unexpected and interesting weekend. Thank heavens I had the next day off. I went to the hospital the next morning with Ms. My, I'd had realised that I had more than a simple cut on my foot. They took a look, told me that I should have come in sooner and should have had stitches but now they would have to leave it open. I had bashed up and cut two of my toes, had a cut under my little toe and taken out a chunk of flesh from the ball of my foot. Again, I have no idea of how I did this, which is very scary. I've had many drink related injuries before, but this is by far the worse. The hospital sent me on my way after stocking me up on bandages and drugs. I had lunch with Daniel and the rest of the day was spent on the couch. Luckily I had the day off from school for Teacher's day, I needed the rest after the weekend I'd had! I managed to get through the next day at work, but it was a struggle. Until that point I hadn't realised how much I am on my feet in class, how rarely I sit down, but there was no way I could stand for an extended period of time, so sit I had to. Instead of resting that evening, I went to Mui Ne with Anna and Daniel. None of us had to get up the following morning so Anna and I decided that we would take Daniel out in Mui Ne for some Western food, he had been craving it. We caught the bus and had dinner at Sinbad's, the kebab house, Daniel decided he was in heaven. Mission accomplished. If only the evening had finished there.... We then went onto Funkey, but the bar was empty so we went to Pogo and played some pool, then back to Funkey, which was still empty. I finished the night about 3am at DJ Station where I left Anna and Daniel still partying it up. I got a xe om home and went straight to bed, I hadn't been expecting another late night and a limp is not a good look. My bed was very welcome.