Phan Thiet May'12

Well my birthday month is here but I am so tired at the moment that I don't have an awful lot of energy left over to think about anything else other than completing the school year in one piece. School is totally draining all of my energy and it's only now that I am acknowledging what a tough six months I've had. Luckily full time school is almost at an end and a holiday is on my horizon. Tina stayed exactly three days in Phan Thiet before telling Ms. My that the city and the school weren't for her. I think there were a variety of reasons, two of them were seeing me running round like a headless chicken and struggling to get things like board markers. She's going to take a trip to Mui Ne, do an extension to her TESOL in HCMC and then decide what she wants to do. I took the Wednesday off after the already long weekend. I thought about it and thought 90 minutes teaching kindergarten or an extra day off. It was a no brainer really and I am so glad I did. Huong (Jenny) in Mui Ne arranged a couple of jeeps to take her and some friends, including Sasha, to see her family in Phan Ri and she asked if I wanted to go along too.We met in Mui Ne and then took the back road out through Hom Rom, before starting I'd told Hieu that I'd never seen the white sand dunes so we drove past them and took the back,dirt road to Phan Ri instead of Highway 1. I brushed my hair at one point and my brush came out brown there was so much dust in it! We dropped in at Houng's house where her mother had made us an awesome lunch. Just across the road I spotted Mr Huan's car, I guess he was in town to visit his wife's mother. He waved hello after the APC bus driver pointed me out. I guess I wasn't the only one who had tacked on an extra day to the weekend. After lunch we went swimming, I had to swim in my clothes has I hadn't brought a swimsuit and was only wearing horrible underwear! Then we had more beers at the beach. It was an awesome afternoon, I got to meet some more of Sasha's friends and some of the kite surfers who work at Wax. When we got back to Mui Ne they invited me to join them for dinner but I wanted to get back to town. It's so easy for a simple dinner there to turn into a big night out and I was very aware that I had work the next morning. That said I ended up having dinner on Bo Ke with Doan, he is currently working just outside at Phan Thiet at the moment. That was followed by coffee and I left him to go and find a hotel for the night. I finished the evening with a few beers with Dan Q and Tan. It had been an awesome weekend, all five days of it. Despite my first May work week only consisting of two days, work still proved to be a struggle for me. I have the worst of two schedules at the moment, Ms. My has me split between grades,teaching less kindergarten classes but more high school ones so I don't get the Wednesday day off like Kate did. On a Thursday afternoon I have a high school class, followed by kindy then another high school class to finish off. Plus the fact that the afternoon high school classes start at 13.15 so I don't have time to go home for an afternoon nap any more. Thankfully it's only until exam week then I'm done with full time school. My original plan was to stay until the end of July and teach the summer program but Ms. My doesn't yet know if there will be a summer program. I would really like to work as more cash for my next trip is welcome but if not, being here is still way cheaper than being in the U.K. and my rent is paid until July 12th anyway so I may as well stay. On the Thursday night Daniel made his second trip to Novotel, they had the seafood buffet on. Boy can that guy eat, he put away a lot of food, he definitely got hi money's worth. Plus the fact he slipped some food from the buffet to Anh didn't hurt. Friday evening started with a beer on Bo Ke with Sasha. Some Vietnamese ladies she is good friends with had a sandwich stall in Mui Ne but have now moved to Phan Thiet and she was there to help them move in. When I left her I had dinner with Tina, she was leaving the next day. I think she would have worked well with Ms.My but it wasn't meant to be. I caught up with Sasha again after dinner at the duck restaurant and then because I wasn't smart enough to stay home I went out again after having a shower and went to MTV. There I enjoyed vodka shots and beer with Madam MTV. Ah well, not a bad start to the weekend. My Saturday started with coffee as usual, I went to Nhat Vien cafe on Tuyen Quang St., it has the slowest dripping coffee in Phan Thiet, but also some of the best. I like to sit in one of the comfortable chairs near the front and just watch the world go by, I'm never in a hurry or on a schedule when I go there, I love it. It's definitely on my list of places I'll miss when I leave. After coffee I spent some time at Win cafe, it was so frustrating. The WiFi cut out and when I tried to order food they seemed to be out of everything. I left without having lunch and spent the afternoon at home in a huff. I had dinner with Binh and some of his friends before going to the new nightclub, Galaxy. There I bumped into some people who had been in MTV the night before, they invited me to join them, so I did. Then I got a call from Huong, she wanted to know where I was as a few of them were out in Mui Ne saying goodbye to Sasha. I got a cab and went to DJ Station, they had a band playing who were from Saigon and seriously good. When they finished we all went down to Pogo, who had Justin's band playing. I think I said hello to him but I wasn't bothered to find out how he is, this is mean but I am just not interested. Despite my busy night I was home and in bed by 3am, although these late nights might also help explain why I am so tired right now! Sunday day was quiet but the evening wasn't the early night I had been hoping for. Daniel invited me out and I was only going to have a couple of beers. Famous last words, I ended being out until midnight and the others were still drinking when I left. However I think that only Anh and I have to get up at a decent time in the morning, her for school and me for work. It had been another great weekend but I know that I can't keep this up.