Waterpark- big success!! Loved it. Other than the staring it wasn't nearly as bad as the reviews made out. Last week I continued to work at home, though midweek came down with the flu so ended up not working for a day and half and sleeping instead. On thursday and friday, a load of us went away to Cao Bang, which is far north of here, close to the Chinese border. We had been invited to a conference on international NGO support in that area, so the trip was actu...

This week I have gone away with work to the project site that I have been to a few previous times. It has been about as interesting as each other time, with highlights including pig heart and noodle soup for breakfast and getting stuck in the mud on bicycles yesterday (there was the biggest storm and we were stuck out for a few hours in it. needless to say some of my clothes are stained with mud and still wet now). It's actually not been what I would term a week ...

Today I have at last been able to upload videos onto my blog without the whole thing crashing out. Unfortunately I have no video editing software on this computer, so everything is completely unedited and in parts. Apologies for all the bad filming! Roads here are super bumpy, and at times I did actually have to concentrate on the road. Most of the clips show parts of my journey to work, which I have commented over to show the things I see every day here. I'm a...

This weekend I took an extra two days off, in return for working extra last week. This was actually excellent timing as tuesday was a national holiday so i got five days off!! So, I went away to Sapa, north west vietnam, near the Laos border, with Emily. We took the sleeper train on Thursday night, getting into Lao Cai early Friday morning. We took a tour for the whole time, so as not to waste any of time there, so we were put straight onto a but to take us to o...

Very little big news to report from the last few weeks. I'm now getting really into my cycling each day and am feeling much more energetic and healthy these days (though given that iv done exercise over the previous 8 months that's not really saying much). Weather wise, things are starting to look up a little. Last week I went away again with work and it was incredibly nice. It pretty much marked the first day of summer for me. Saw the sky, the sun was out, I ...