nam

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hello people. we're in hanoi at the moment. arrived by train early yesterday morning. spent most of yesterday sleeping as we didn't get much sleep on the train.

we've just changed our travelling plans. instead of travelling through china to get our flight from hong kong to singapore we booked a cheap flight from hanoi to malaysia. we did this for several reasons. the journey from vietnam to hong kong would be a long and painful one involving several buses, the cost of living is far cheaper in malaysia than hong kong or singapore and also we'd much prefer to see malaysia. so now we have 2 and a half weeks to make it through malaysia to singapore to catch our flight to perth.

now back to vietnam. after hoi an we made our way to hue for 3 nights. went on a boat trip on the river perfume and visited pagodas and various tombs belonging to emperors. one of the pagodas visited was where the monk thich quang duc was from. he's the guy in that famous photo of the monk setting himself on fire in protest over treatment of buddhists by the south vietnamese government.
we got to give a very surreal english lesson one night on our way to the pub. a vietnamese guy with his girlfriend on the back of his moped stopped beside us and asked us if we speak english. after convincing him that irish people actually do speak english all the time he took out a copy book and asked us to read a page and correct any incorrect grammar. very strange experience.

on a recent trip to the toilet i discovered that nam means men in vietnamese. we'll tell you what viet means in our next blog.

don't forget to check out catriona in the new rte drama 'the whistleblower' on sunday and monday. could someone tape it for us please

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Photos

china beach
bus from hoi an to hue

Comments

[Erika]

toilets
Ooh interesting piece of information. It's always good to know the difference between men and women, even if in the end all you get in either case is a hole in the ground. Yay squat toilets! The Chinese characters for man and woman are 7 s respectively, by the way. That one took me a while to figure out ...

[Scooter]

English language?
Um, not sure what you guys are thinking - must be the heat! But Irish folk giving English lessons - no, no, no. You might think you speak English, but you're wrong!

[David Lynch]

Was just watching the box......
Just saw u on TV Triona :) excellent (if very very bloody:() drama. Liveline was talking all about it today......he still walks the streets of Louth apparently...that is so mind blowing to think that! :( anyway glad yous are still enjoying your travels....will send yous a longer email later- Dave.

[Shane]

twistedblower
Hi. Saw Triona yesterday, she was in the telly.Her name was 2nd in the credits. I missed sunday as went to electric picnic for a few hours. I had a black wristband with Crew 07 on it but it worked. I was told that 8 people had bands made of Tayto packs and that worked too. The big news that might interest you is that there is a creme egg bar called twisted on the market a few months. Sickly sweet fondant is no longer just for easter ( or cheaper after easter)