Phan Thiet Mar'12

I can't believe that it's March already. The beginning of the month is looking busy for me as regards couchsurfing and I already have a trip planned to Saigon for the weekend. I had a call at the end of February from the Canon repair centre to say that my camera has been fixed and I can come and pick it up. I am so happy, I was making plans to borrow a camera from Darren to take to the U.S. with me because I didn't want to use the Fuji camera I have, I don't like using it. The first weekend was pretty much as usual, dinner, beer, coffee and some time beside the pool at Novotel. Fairly low key. Although I got a little freaked when I made my usual nightclub visit to TP club. I was settling in for a drink when I saw two of my students, teenage students, but students none the less. I walked over to their table to say hello and they gave me a vodka shot. I have asked several people and apparently there isn't a drinking age in Vietnam but I still don't know what I think about drinking with my teenage students. I don't have a problem with them being in a nightclub, I can't have a problem with it. I was doing the exact same thing at their age but as to drinking with them....that can't happen again. I don't know if this applies to nightclubs in other parts of Vietnam but they're really interesting here and all of the ones in Phan Thiet are the same. So you have a kind of reception at the front but there is no entrance fee and no line of bouncers to get past. In fact I've never had to wait to get into a club here, regardless of what day it is, I've always just walked straight in. Then when you get inside there isn't really a dance floor, just a load of tables and people tend to stay with their friends and dance around the table. It's all waiter/waitress service so you don't have to go to the bar and you automatically start a tab. Unfortunately just like British nightclubs the drink prices are vastly inflated. There are security staff dotted around the club, they are usually young, slim men here and they smoke while they are working. Just as well most Vietnamese people are slight of stature, if people become bigger clubs will have to employ real security. I don't know what they would do if there was a fight in the club. At TP club most of the clientele are in their late teens or early twenties, there is no dress code and people are allowed to wear baseball caps. The clientele at Studio 68 is older and Bocano club is closed for refurbishment at the moment. MTV, the other club I go to, is very quiet and tends to get groups of male office workers as their main customers, but the music is great. I get on really well with the staff there and drink with the owner. My trip to Saigon went smoothly. I took the Friday afternoon off and was in the city and at my hotel around 4pm. I went and picked my camera up straight away, I am so happy. I had an early night as I was super tired, I had woken up at 05.30 and decided to go to work. I also had to say goodbye to Henrik,a couchsurfer who had stayed a couple of nights with me. He had bought a no-gear bike in Cambodia and was cycling through Vietnam on it. He had had a tough time getting to Phan Thiet as he was cycling on Highway 1 and the wind was against him. I told him to take a train to Nha Trang as he's short of time, I don't know if he will. I had coffee with Doan on the Saturday morning and the conversation took a turn for the worse. He owns a construction company and they have a works contract that may bring him to Phan Thiet. He knows that Anna has moved out and that now I live alone, he asked if he could stay with me. I said yes and that he could stay in Anna's old room. He then asked if he could stay in mine, I said no. He then proceeded to talk about sex and how men need it, he said he didn't know if women needed it but men definitely do. I was mortified. I'm not sure if Vietnamese people are this frank when speaking to their friends but I wish they wouldn't be so frank with me! It makes me uncomfortable to talk about money or sex. The conversation went downhill from there. He explained that it is difficult for people to meet each other after a certain age as people usually meet while they are at university or at their work place. Well he works in an all male office, so that rules that out. So he's looking for someone, he'd better stop looking at me. I need to be blunter with people and just say "hell no". Actually what I need to do is find a middle ground between being so nice that people don't get the message and being rude. It's something I still haven't managed to do yet. The rest of my Saturday was much more pleasant and way less fraught. It started with lunch with Andy, continued with coffee by the river and me making my first attempt at the Times crossword. I managed to complete two thirds of it, which I thought wasn't bad. Andy and I had dinner with Jan at an all you can meat restaurant. The food was great, the location lovely and the company even better. It was great to see Jan again, I even got a couple of man hugs from him. I miss his hugs, I think most of it is his height, in that regard he's so similar to Darren. He passed on a message from Anna, things are going as well as can be expected at home and she should be back at the end of the month. I probably won't see her until the end of April, that's when I plan to make my next trip to Saigon. Sunday was mostly taken up with the bus trip back to Phan Thiet, it's such a pain. What makes it worse is that it's only 200kms but it usually takes around five hours to do by bus or train, although the train is safer. I had dinner with Anh Chien at another new place. When we were done I went to MTV as the restaurant was just behind there and I thought "Why not?". Well the answer to that is obvious, "because it's a school night.". I didn't have a late night but I didn't sleep too well. When I was younger and I would have a few beers I would usually pass out for the night, not any more. Now I sleep really lightly, get up to go to the bathroom multiple times and wake early. The following morning I left the house around 6am and started to walk towards school, I had left my bike there on Friday. I could have taken Anna's bike but I would have had to arrange to get my bike back to the house at some point, better now than later. Of course there wasn't a taxi or a xe om in sight. I'd walked for about 15 mins when a xe om, a motorbike taxi, stopped. I didn't realise it at the time but it was a guy I wave at on my way to school every morning, he took me to school for nothing. I have to stop and have coffee with him and his friends some time this week, I'll buy the coffees to say thank you. It was a lovely start to the week. I hope I've said this before but people here are generally so kind and willing to share what they have, however little that may be. I took Anna's bike to have some air put in the tyres and the guy totally serviced it for me, fixing a load of small problems. He wouldn't accept any payment from me, he is so lovely. I am so lucky to have been born in England, it has given me such a huge advantage and allows me to pretty much live in the country of my choice and work there. I am not sure that I am as happy as I could be, that like many people, I want something more. Sometimes it seems as if people here have less material things but they are just as happy, if not happier than people in the U.K..From what I've seen, they're certainly more willing to share what they do have. At work I'm in the middle of exam week right now. We still don't have another teacher in place at the moment, luckily Dan Q and Daniel have agreed to continue to cover Kate's classes until the end of March. I don't know what's going to happen after that. I did speak to a potential new recruit last week but he had heard that the job was 24 teaching hours and Monday to Thursday. I wish. Plus the fact that he has just rented a house in Nha Trang with his girlfriend so he would want to commute. I said no, but I think we both realised it wasn't a viable proposition.