On the 15th day of the fourth lunar month, Quang Ngai celebrates the Buddha's birthday with ceremonies and a parade of floats through the town. For the second year in a row we went with Hai - last year one of Owen's students, this year a graduate, now teaching in a primary school. She took us to enjoy a vegetarian meal then watch the parade from the main square.Floats are contributed by communities all over the Province whose members come into the city fo...

I'm Back!Well, the blog fell into a hole there for a while. No particular reason, I ended up with a few draft entries and just never seemed to get round to finishing them somehow. I almost let it drop but decided in the absence of paper diaries these days, I should carry on just so I had a complete record of our time here. (Perhaps the librarian syndrome again). Beats me how some people manage a blog with daily entries.Vexed Visits.We've been fortunate to...

The storm mentioned last post made a direct hit on Danang. There they suffered many uprooted trees, light structures demolished and roofs damaged. While we were seeing crops and trees damaged from the train heading north, our friends from home were coming south on another train from Hanoi and due to check in to the hotel an hour before us. Unfortunately the major damage was north of Danang, and while we arrived on time we were surprised to arrive at our hotel in ...

By the time we'd been living in the guesthouse on campus for three months, we were (somewhat in desperation) trying to decide between "hemmed in by hotel, restaurants and coffee shops" and "right on the Main Street" when a colleague said, with a certain trepidation, "I know a house for rent, but it's down a lane ...". Down a lane! Sounded great! We took it. However any illusions of a quiet, peaceful existence soon evaporated. An empty block converted to a...

Arrived at our Hanoi hotel about midnight and crashed to get as much sleep as possible knowing the family had arrived ahead of us. Fortunately we'd managed to get some shut-eye on the plane, so were able to be up in reasonable shape to join them for breakfast.Enjoyable couple of days in Hanoi visiting peaceful Hoan Kiem Lake, tourist ride in an electric cart, doing a bit of shopping. A visit to the Temple of Literature - Vietnam's first university establ...