nicfishe

Turkish people say if you make it to the Grand Bazaar, you’ve made it. Money flows like water, along with the tourists, and competition is fierce - largely because the hundreds of shops sell exactly the same things, a lot of which I imagine is made in China. The antique rabbit hole shopping centre looks nice enough though and sparkles with thousands of coloured lanterns, patterned scarfs, intricately decorated plates and various other exotic nick-nacks you can take home for your Aunty. The Turkish men here are sharks and I, once again, got lured into a shop, only this time the salesman wouldn’t let me leave and actively blocked the entrance. I escaped with my purse, and self, intact and I later met other tourists who had had a similar bad experience with overzealous salesmen. The ... read more

7 August This is the second entry but due to searching the internet and faffing with google cache for lost entries it’s considerably shorter than I anticipated. It’s stopped raining. It started raining on Friday night and continued pretty much until this morning. The rain over Friday, Saturday and Sunday was like the heaviest British rain you can imagine doubled. We (of course) went out in it and at one point found ourselves knee deep in water in a few of the streets. It wasn’t that the streets were flooded per se, it was just that there was so much water it couldn’t drain quick enough! People were pushing their motorbikes though the water with the exhaust and engine submerged. There was even one guy whose motorbike still worked and was tackling his way through the ... read more

18th July I have no idea what day it is anymore. I know it’s Thursday and that’s it, actual dates no longer exist. Actually it might not be Thursday. At the weekend we were feeling lazy and not much like spending a fortune, so we headed over to China Beach north of Da Nang for some sun and marble mountains. I’m not much of a lie on the beach all weekend kind of person but thought what the hell. The beach had white sand, much whiter I think than down the coast at Hoi An and I think that in part how I managed to get so sunburnt (first real time since coming here). We stayed somewhere called Hoas Place which was pretty much the only place to stay along this stretch of beach. The ... read more

2nd July First morning in Hue consisted of a blitzing visit to the orphanages. The youngest child we saw was a two month old baby at An Hoa. I have been placed mainly with young children ages 7-14 which suits me fine but there’s one placement where I look after and play with 2 toddlers. I’m not sure I’d be terribly keen on being toileted on by the youngest babies! There’s a fair bit of teaching in Hue, though obviously not with the youngest children. In Vietnam education is not free but in the orphanages the education is provided for by the government, with charity assistance, or solely funded by charities. In many of the orphanages there are several children who do in fact have parents but they are simply too poor to offer to ... read more