Its raining, its pouring...(its flooding)

We have had a few days of heavy rain and thunder storms over the last few weeks. One night it rained so hard we woke up to a flood the next day. It pays to be on the first floor!

Lunch with Greg's english class

Greg's english class at the TB hospital invited us to lunch - bun cha (which is vermicilli noodles, meat, herbs and fish sauce - quite nice!) Posing for the formal photo is a common occurrence here in Vietnam and reminds me of school photos - although this time we were in the front row rather than back middle!

cafe five

My new favourite cafe in the old quarter
with a view of life on the streets - can you spot the things that make this a typical street?
(cyclo driver, motorbikes, tourist souvenir shop, pedestrians walking in every direction - without looking - that one you had to be there for...)

Vietnamese banquet

We were kindly invited to dinner at one of Greg's friends houses - a real Vietnamese feast with the extended family. The spring rolls were fantastic, and we also ate a huge variety of other dishes including the Vietnamese speciality of snails! I did try them but much preferred the tofu and other vegie dishes.
Hoi and his wife were our hosts.
We drank rice wine with the meal - a spirit-like drink that taste somewhere between port and vodka - potent stuff! There is a women's versiontoo (which stef had) that tastes more like apricot or peach schnapps, but still pretty strong - thankfully the glasses were small.
And it turns out that his father-in-law is a famous Vietnamese authot. He was extremely generous to us and gave us a signed copy of one of his books that had one an award!. NOw we just have to practise our Vietnamese in order to read it!

tennis with VIPs

As you may know, our village has a tennis court that we enjoy. Some of the senior government VIPs also enjoying playing here and were a couple short for their game last week - so Greg and another guy from our village got to play a very prestigious match!

building, building, building...

Its amazing how quickly things get built (and torn down) here. Considering most of the work is done by hand!No evidence of a global slowdown in contruction in the streets of Hanoi.

The grounds of the Museum of Ethnology

The grounds of the museum have an extensive collection of ethnic minority houses. It was lovely to walk around the green space and enjoy the sculptures and dwellings.

Settlers

This has almost become an addiction in our village, with a game on almost every weekend. We have also upgraded to Cities and Knights - a more complex and interesting game (which can take 4 hours though so some late night finishes...) Plans for a village trophy are underway!

Fish food

I went out for dinner with some of my colleagues to a fancy fish restaurant. Just like back home, you can choose your own fish - however here they bring it to you wiggling to be weighed before you eat it. This one was a slippery little sucker and ended up leaping on the floor in an escape attempt before getting to the kitchen! We did have an excellent 5 courses of fish in different styles afterwards though.