How come these South East Asian types are totally insulted if you stick your foot up in the air, or completely offended if you conduct a bit of a snog in public, but yet it's perfectly OK to grog up thee biggest lumps of phlegm as noisily as possible, wait for a group of passers by, then launch it out of their mouths across the road, missing you by an inch… I really don’t get it, and frankly, I’m getting a little bit upset by this horrid act of masculinity, and I feel the need for a rant.
I mean I was managing to get through each day without opening my mouth and showing a very public, very vocal show of disgust at those that participate in such activities… well, until Saturday afternoon that was.
So readers, not too much to report this week, mainly because we have been browning our bodies around a particularly impressive pool. This wasn’t the plan, but we had no way of getting to the places we has originally planned to visit because it seems that the Vietnamese come to a complete standstill for well over a week after celebrating Chinese New Year! Luckily one little Vietnamese bloke caught on to the dozens of travelers desperately needing clean underwear and decided to stick a washer dryer in his shop so I at least have clean knickers.
Our time in Ho Chi Minh City was spent exploring the tunnels of Chu Chi. Well Mr T explored them, I watched, which is a good job because my claustrophobia would of almost certainly have landed me in A&E if I’d have participated because a rather large lady in front of Iain got stuck in one of them, resulting in everyone having to hang fire whilst they eased the poor bird out. Talking of hanging fire, we also had the opportunity to fire several rounds on several rather large weapons such as the M16 and an AK47. It really is amazing what activities you can pursue in some places… “There you go Miss Sugden, I’m not familiar with the fact that you have severe psychological issues, been a suspect in a murder case and have been diagnosed a schizophrenic but here’s a loaded AK47, and we are surrounded by dozens of Western tourists, so…fire away!”
Now the plan from there was to board a bus to a little island called Pho Quoc, just off the coast of west Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand. It’s meant to be a little piece of paradise and what with not being able to get a flight to where we wanted to go due to the New Year we decided to sit the celebration out on a beach. We bus it to Cantho, a little fishing village on the Mekong river, where we decide to visit more floating markets and attempt to book a ferry ticket across to the island. The ferry is booked up for 4 days solid because of CHINESE NEW YEAR! ARGHHHHHHHHH. We have no option but to bus it all the way back to Ho Chi Minh and try and get to another beach location from there. We managed after 14 solid hours on another bus from hell to get to a little beachy place called Mui Ne.
We arrive at 11pm and everything in our budget is booked up. Quite frankly, at this point, we’ve had it. The Vietnamese are not rating very highly in our books. Not just because they have taken other every hotel in the country for New Year which seems to last the best part of 11 months, but because they spit a lot, have thee most annoying high pitch voices and are quite honestly damn right rude! OK so we can’t blame them for hating the Agent Orange dropping American’s, but what did the Brits ever do? Anyway, we agree to up the budget and book ourselves into the Palmeria Resort, and very nice it was indeed. The next 4 days were spent lazing on the very posh sun beds with mattresses (and you know it’s posh when your sun bed has a mattress!) and every so often rolling into the wonderful pool to cool down. And because we’d totally blown the budget on the hotel, we decided what the hell, lets burn some more bucks, and so the evenings were spent sampling some super cuisine in some of the resorts fabulous and rather pricey restaurants washed down with bottles and bottles of fine plonk. Well you can’t take it with you can you.
Now the best thing about being on a beach jolly in Vietnam over New Year is that even though all the hotels are overrun by Vietnamese folk, the pool side is empty for most of the day. Unlike Mr T and I who revel in burning our bodies to the max, the Asian world keeps right out of it. So for the majority of the day we really did have the pool to ourselves. Then around 4pm when the sun cools down, out they come in their hoards and into the pool they dive, usually fully clothed, whilst letting out thee most ear piecing screams. Saturday afternoon was no exception; it was also the day I lost my rag with one of the older members of the crew, who participated in that horrid act of masculinity I mentioned earlier, in the pool… not once, but several times! The rest of them quite happily swimming in it! Enough was enough, I jumped from my sun bed and made it quite clear how appalled I was by this seemingly accepted act. Obviously he didn’t have a clue what I was saying, but he knew I was mad and looked a little embarrassed in front of his family. I tried to avoid letting any of them found out what room we were in that night, just incase they wanted to chop me into little bits. I convinced myself that they might go to great lengths with their machetes after being publicly humiliated by a brassy blond Brit. Luckily that was our last day, needless to say I didn’t venture into the pool again.
So after that it was back to Ho Chi Ming where we geared ourselves up for the Carling Cup final last night. We found another gritty Brit Bar showing not one but three games of football simultaneously – Mr T was happy, that was until the Arsenal lost 2-1 to the Chelsea Scum. My plan was to leave him there and do a bit of shopping but I got so into the game that I ended up glued to the screen for the whole duration! What a match, it was like the Sunday Omnibus of Eastenders – near on manslaughter and a massive fight, with Jose ‘Moan’iniho playing a great Pauline Fowler, and Mr Wenger doing a top notch Dot Cotton impression on the sidelines.
That’s about it for this week folks. The time has nearly come for us to return to Blighty, but not just yet. In the meantime, keep smiling and we’ll see you all very soon.
Love
Lyndz & Mr T
|  | 
|
