A few weeks ago I took a trip with Matt and Alex (two other teachers) to Ba Vii national park, about 40km out of Hanoi. I hadn’t really been out of the city since I went away at the beginning of September so it was nice to get out on the open roads and see some of the Vietnamese countryside madness…psychotic truck drivers, entire families piled onto tiny motorbikes, cows being transported by bicycles…that kind of thing. Ba Vii itself is lovely, pretty hilly so it’s a steep climb on my bike, to the extent that on more than one [View Full Entry]

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Today I saw three bikes do a 360 turn at 60 kmh in the street..one was a guy avoiding the cops, the other was two cops chasing said perp…I just tried not to hit their bikes or the large black truncheons being bandied about by the rather paramilitary looking police that seem to rove the streets of Hanoi by night…The good news is our hero escaped with his lady up a side street (that’s not me, I was alone except for a bag of knocked off dvds and some oranges)… A couple of days later I went to Karaoke, my [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday as i was 'heading down the highway, looking for adventure and whatever comes my way', i pulled up in traffic next to a couple of soldiers on the back of a motorbike...nothing unusual there, except that it was raining quite heavily and whilst they fidgeted, texted and revved whilst waiting for the lights to change i noticed that sticking out from under the passengers poncho was a the barrel of his AK-47...whilst the AK is a familiar sight in Vietnam, none more so than in Hanoi where you see soldiers (usually not that vigilant looking) outside a lot of places, [View Full Entry]

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Hi, it’s been a while since I updated this blog so you may want to grab a beer, strap in and prepare…perhaps open up another web browser to flick to during the boring bits…it’s going to be a long one…and because the internet connection where I am is shit there aren’t even any photos to look at…No fucking photos? why do you waste your time with this shit you ask yourself? End of June: June 28th was my last teaching day in Saigon…it was a typical Sunday, hot as hell and the building was full of screaming Vietnamese kids…(that&rs [View Full Entry]

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Hi. As a western adult male I don’t match the physique of the local man and so I have struggled to buy a pair of jeans recently that were not designed for someone with the body of a ten-year-old girl. On the odd occasion that I found a pair in the style I like, when I enquire about some in my my size I have usually been presented with a pair of sand blasted crotch ridden monstrosities that even Devvo wouldn’t wear and told ‘same same’….As a result my current look on an evening out is ‘festival nasty’…I look like I’ve [View Full Entry]

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Hi, hope all is well with everyone, more junk from Vietnam. At the start of the month I went off to Mark’s wedding at some fancy wedding venue in district 3. I didn’t get round to having a suit made (well, to be honest I didn’t even make the effort at all) so I gave my trainers a polish, put on my best jeans and a nice shirt and was still a lot smarter than others who attended…it was a nice evening, Mark sang Lionel Richie songs at his bride and I gorged on desserts which resulting in me having [View Full Entry]

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Howdy, hello from Saigon, well, hello from me in Saigon, but im sure the rest of Saigon would bid you greetings too if they were writing, and then probably try to entice you into a tailors, flog you fake dvds(that recently don't seem to work mostly) or tempt you with delicious savoury snacks at the same time...hope everybody is well Life here is all good. A couple of fridays ago i went to Saigon ink to start a new load of tattooing off on my left arm. As a result a load of people at work have been asking what they [View Full Entry]

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So, last week, I’m sitting round the corner in the little café with the deckchairs out front when Paddy bimbles past and decides to plonk himself down for a beer. I sit and chat to Paddy for an hour and he tells me all about the wonderful world of boats, explaining that the RNLI build the BEST boats in the world and how one should never trust a lighthouse keeper who hasn’t got a beard yadda yadda yadda..when he turns to me and says ‘you’re Jon aren’t you?’. I have been living in the same house as this buffoon for the [View Full Entry]

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Hi I read the paper on line a lot and wanted to call this blog 'fuck you Fred Goodwin', but i refrained. The other week I went for sunset cocktails at the Sheraton. The drinks were overpriced and nothing to write home about (so I’ll write home about them anyway), but the view from the 23rd floor bar was amazing. Earlier that day I had gone for a bit of afternoon karaoke ( I seem to be doing this a lot recently) and after scoring 100% crooning ‘under the boardwalk’ I felt like a treat was in order. After the cocktails [View Full Entry]

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Howdy. Not a great deal to report here in Saigon at the moment. The weather is getting warmer and warmer and it seems like a long time since we had any decent rain. At home i tend to keep to my air conditioned room especiallysince the DVD player in the lounge mysteriously broke soon into the new year..which perhaps make the heat seem even worse because when i leave the room i feel like im walking into an inferno... We have only another eight weeks or so in the house and then we have to move out..not sure where to as [View Full Entry]

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