I forgot to mention something about the bus trip to Vietnam. On the way there a bunch of people on the bus all suddenly tried to look out the right side window. When I asked what happened someone explained in broken English and with sign language that we had just hit or knocked over a motorbike rider. I don’t know which and I don’t know how badly he was injured, if at all, I was on the left hand seating of the bus, so i didn’t see anything. But no one, including the driver, seemed to have any interest in stopping to see what happened to him.

Anyway, back to Vietnam. On Saturday I went to the Cu Chi area outside of Saigon. This used to be a stronghold of sympathisers with North Vietnam during the war. They showed us some of the tunnels the VC used to hide in, and the spear traps they used to snag American or South Vietnamese soldiers. You’d step on a piece of ground, which would turn out to be a trap door or rotating board on a hinge, and as you fell through you be impaled on metal spikes. Bloody nasty stuff, since your screams would then tell everybody where your company/platoon was.

On Sunday 5^th I went to the former South Vietnamese Presidential Palace. Those readers who are old enough will remember the film clip of the North Vietnamese tank crashing through its front gate on the day Saigon fell to the North.

On the bus on the way back on Sunday afternoon, I saw my first actual fatality on the roadside. A motor cycle driver had been hit by something, he had been pulled from the road and his corpse was lying face up, with its feet pointed towards the road. There was some vehicle there with a flashing red light, and a crowd of 40-50 standing around gawping. Our bus just continued on. 

Getting back here, I’ve started my first regular teaching work with a  local uni, only eight hours a week at first, but I expect that will grow.