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Hi, hope everyone is well and has been enjoying their summer…more meaningless drivel from Saigon….

At the beginning of July I headed off to Borneo for a holiday. I went with Nick, and then met my mate Jon out there. Borneo is amazing and I definitely plan on going again as I barely saw any of it. We went to Kuching, in Malaysian Borneo. It made a nice change being out of Vietnam. Kuching is a great place to relax, quiet streets, interesting things to see, and a nice selection of restaurants and nightspots. My favourite was this Lebanese place, which was under this strange archway. It even had a cinema so I was able to catch up on the latest edition of the Predator franchise: imaginatively titled ‘Predators’…hmm…

We stayed in a sweet hotel that had only just opened so Hanson, the guy who ran it was eager to please and arranged visits out to see the Orangutans, and then also a few days out in the nearby national park. Whilst I’m quite capable of sorting all this stuff out myself, it did make for an effortless holiday…Seeing the wildlife was one great, the Orangutans are really interesting to watch and at the national park we saw all kinds of monkeys (macaques and probiscus monkeys mostly). The dining area the park comes with the added joy of having to watch everything, food, drinks, bags, cameras very closely. The macaques just hover around waiting to come in and thieve all your stuff. Whilst most people affect some kind of anger at having their dinner nabbed from underneath their nose, I personally enjoyed having a cake nabbed by a monkey, then watch the cheeky bugger stuff his face with it. There was a Korean family sharing our apartment and they left rice out of the verandah. The next morning our place was covered with macaques. On the roof, the lawn, the path…it was like something out of ‘The Birds’. Only with monkeys.

One of the main reasons for choosing Borneo was that they host a three day world music festival. Its billed as being in a rainforest, and in a way it is, but really it’s the Sarawak cultural village, which is usually, well, a cultural village, showcasing Borneo arts, design, architecture etc…so the place is beautifully laid out, has both indoor and outdoor auditoriums and traditional Borneo longhouses etc. Whilst I had dreamed of some kind of feral rave in the middle of a jungle, the festival turned out to be easily one of the best music festivals I’ve ever been to…and I don’t say that lightly as I’ve been to some corkers over the years…

Basically, it had two main stages, within spitting distance of each other. During the day there all sorts of ‘workshops’ you can go to…where the billed musicians basically showcase, where they are from, what they play, how they make weird sounds with a kettle and a half empty box of frosties, that kind of thing. They were really interesting and you were pretty much guaranteed that everyone would be up and grooving by the end of them…

Then in the evening about a dozen or so bands play. As one performance closes you just swivel your neck to the other stage. It was good in that you got to see everything and didn’t waste time Glastonbury style hunting down some tiny little tent to watch Rolf Harris take a dump in a paper bag or suchlike…The downside was that you literally had no time to rest before switching groove gears and enjoying the next thing. Going from getting down to some Indian drum mania to the being assaulted by the open throated antics of the Bulgarian Bisserov sisters was a jolt to the system I tellst thee.

We had managed to rope together a festy gang consisting of me, nick, jon, Alan and Rebecca, a couple of teachers from Saigon who we met by chance, some Malaysian girl that Alan pulled and a an Australian guy called Adrian who was an Indian/Australian version of Brian Blessed. He was funny as fuck. Anyway, my favourites of the weekend were the Portuguese folk band, the Musharaff Gypsies of Rajahstan, The Iranian guy with the massive drum, and some Chinese band. But, the lovely Bisserov ladies apart, I would happily watch any of the line up again. If you can make it to Borneo next July, do it…I plan on going again next year….

I’ve been seeing a lot of Thuan recently so had a trip out to Vung Tau to stay in her mate’s beautiful hillside house. It was pretty opulent, and had the most enormous TV, so coupled with a healthy spirit bar and a showing of 'Stone Cold' ( a mullet strewn early 90's biker action movie starring an ex-american footballer) on cinemax whilst Thuan and her mate chatted in VN, i had the best sunday afternoon in ages...only a pub sunday roast beforehand could have improved the situation...Last weekend we went to Dalat to get out of the heat of Saigon for a few days. In a few weeks I finish my contract and am taking a month off as I show mom and dad round a bit of SE Asia…Travelling up through Vietnam to Hanoi, then flying down to Bangkok. Should be a good trip…then back to work in October. Hope to catch up with Dawn whilst I’m in Bangkok, and then I AM going to pull my finger out and head to Taiwan to catch up with Alan and maybe scope out the job market a little. I love Vietnam, but I’m starting to itch for somewhere else now as well…man, it’s a hard life….

In the meantime, all the best everyone, not sure when I’ll be back home for a visit so if anyone fancies a trip to Vietnam or is passing through SE Asia sometime let me know…

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