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Published: June 13th 2006
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Sunday 11th June Paul - A late night once again with Argentina Vs Ivory Coast getting a watch. Reasonable game, much better than England Vs Paraguay. Even the Vietnamese were not impressed with the English, one guy describing them as "fucking horrible, I betted 20,000 dong on them to win by more than two!". Pretty much spot on for someone who's first language definately isn't English. Peter Crouch should not be in the team for the next game, he just cannot play at International Level. And Lampard and Gerrard as a centre midfield partnership just does not work but I think Sven is oblivious to this. Anyway...
Seems like Vietnam is completely football crazy! Big screens on the beach and everyone seems to be playing football at every opportunity.Which makes for a cracking atmosphere for the World Cup. When I walked across the beach to get to the sea a load of kids shouted "Hey Mr Westener get off our pitch we are playing and you ruin the pitch!". For a moment I thought I was back on the legion again with Paddy telling Michael and I to get off the pitch because the FA Cup final
had a chance of making it to Healing...
We spent the day relaxing on the beach with Anna and Andy before they caught the bus to Ho Chi Minh City. Finished my book and spent a lot of time swimming in the sea.
Laura - The beach here is lovely, if not a bit touristy. The sea is lovely and warm (apart from at one point today I stood on something squidgy and wriggly - I screamed and swam to shore). Apparently there are sea snakes here and I don't really fancy an encounter with them!
So it was basically a lazy day, and I can see a few of them coming. We are hoping to hire a boat with Lauren and Pete, which costs like 20 pounds, so we can go snorkelling for the day. That should be fun. Then in a couple of days we'll head to a place called 'Mu Nei' (or something like that) to spend some more time on gorgeous beaches!
We're really loving it in Vietnam so far. Everyone is so friendly and it's so cheap, we are living like kings! Today we had this huge seafood BBQ basket for
dinner and it cost 5 pound between us. It was brilliant.
So we both finished our books today on the beach and need something else to read. The copyright laws here are pretty lax so we can get cheap photo-copied books. Any recommendations?! We've got through so many books already! Any SE Asia based novels would be particularly good.
Monday 12th June Paul - OK so I'll only mention the interesting bits about today. Very briefly, we basically lazed about on the beach all day as seen in the photos and then went back to the hotel and got showers. Arranged to go out for dinner with Lauren and Pete AND Caitriona and Brian so headed off to a restaurant with them. Had a really nice meal (Fried Beef with garlic and some noodle dish) and settled into a bar to watch the Oz game against Japan.
The Ozzies really didn't care whether their team won or lost so I basically supported Japan throughtout... well... nevermind. Some girls who we had half met on the beach came into the bar completely stoned on marijuana and we were VERY glad we didn't arrange to go
on a boat trip with them. We were wary of them on the beach but we were desperate for more people to go on a boat trip with us otherwise we wouldn't be able to afford it. After watching them for 5 minutes we didn't regret our decision... Put it this way, they were dancing around the bar to "Wannabe" by the "Spice Girls" and when the Red Hot Chili Peppers came on they were dancing and singing along as if the RHCP were still good (or even WERE good). Oh dear God, I wish I was THAT cool!
After a few drunken games of pool we decided to call it a night, just as the Czech Republic hit their second against the USA. Always good to rub it in to the Americans that they aren't THE BEST at something.
On the way home I stopped to buy a bottle of water and when I turned around I saw that beautiful photo of Laura on that cyclo! Apparently the guy wanted to bike us home but Laura said we only lived down the road...
"But we only live down the road...seriously about 100 metres that way"
"Ok...ok..."
"But I'll bike you if you like, you look like you need a rest? I'll take you to our hotel and you stop biking around and go to bed?"
So Laura biked the guy down street, much to a lot of people's amusement. A couple of Americans wanted to know if they could get on, "Only for 5000 dong a metre!"
Tuesday 13th June
Laura - Another lazy day on the beach. This seems to be a bit of a theme here! We were going to go snorkelling today but couldn't get enough people together for the boat. "Oh well", we thought, "I guess we can just lie on the beach all day instead". It was such a tragedy!
The peak excitement in this action packed day was buying some postcards from a local girl that has been pestering Paul every day. She keeps giving him sob stories on how her mum will kill her if she doesn't sell a certain amount. We weren't convinced because she couldn't keep a straight face as she said it, but we bought some anyway. She was a bit of a character. She looked 10 but insisted she was 15 and that she was only so small because she was so poor. She was trying to charge rediculous prices and refused to budge when we haggled. After we'd bought them she told Paul that she lives in a village a few miles from here but she stays here during the week to make some money from the tourists. She goes to school every morning to learn English, and they teach her phrases to help her sell things (and no doubt selling techniques like the sob story). She was quite sweet, bless her. Paul tried to give her a few tips and told her to charge American tourists rediculous prices because they'd probably pay it!
Tonight we're going for food with Caitriona and Brian, and Lauren and Pete. We'll no doubt watch the football aswell, whoever it is that's playing today. Then more drinks in our favorite bar that we keep going to. Paul's hoping it will be Men's night tonight because it was Lady's night yesterday and I got free "pink champagne"! We shall see...
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Marr
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I think you're wrong about Crouch, he did alright until Eriksson made the bizarre decision to take Owen off and stick Crouch up front. He may look like a target man, but he's not - what we ended up with is two players (Crouch and Cole) playing just off the front man, when the only available front man was sitting on the bench no doubt wondering why he was in the squad at all if Eriksson wasn't going to play him. Obvious result, the ball gets played into a gaping hole whenever Crouch or Cole tried to create something. The defenders have been complaining about not having enough protection. There's a clear answer to that - leave Lampard on the bench, play Carrick or (grit your teeth) Hargreaves (who apparently marked Zidane out of the game when Munich played Real) FROM THE START (has Hargreaves ever been given the chance to play more than about half an hour of a competitive England game?) and that'll let Gerrard get forward while keeping the defence covered. Keep Crouch where he's happy, holding the ball up and linking with Gerrard, and let Owen run around a bit more till he's match fit. End rant