Popping the bubbles in bubble wrap is a universal temptation it seems. On the platform, waiting for the train to pull in, the rail staff are tearing strips from the dozens of motorbikes lined up with handlebars taped with bubble wrap and cardboard (not sure whether they're coming or going but they soon won't have much padding left) and sit idly popping away. The sound of the popping is too much for the waiting passengers and they start to join in. We'...

I felt like I'd made it when I was left unsupervised to fry the spring rolls. I was in the farmhouse kitchen at the home of one of the young teachers, helping prepare food with his mother, girlfriend, his friend's wife and a colleague. We'd been invited to visit the house in a rural area about half an hour's drive from the city centre to see the family farm and have a meal together. On the previous occasions we'd visited homes we'd both be...

This week saw National Teachers Day in Vietnam - a foreign concept for us. On the day, and for a few days around the actual day, students visit their teachers past and present and take them flowers and gifts - definitely a foreign concept for us. Stalls selling flowers and paintings were set up on the footpath outside the university gates and I watched as teachers left after classes (on their bikes) laden with flowers and presents given by their classes. Here it ...

Not my bike, someone else's. Lately I've been spending a fair bit of time riding around on the back of a motor bike.After some not too subtle hints ("clothes are very cheap in Quang Ngai", "I will take you to meet my tailor friend, very good", "Mr Owen always dresses very well") I finally took the plunge and agreed to get a top made.These things are not to be rushed though, two friends took me to breakfast at a local noodle shop at 8 o'clock. Then it ...

We can pick 'emWe'd been in Vietnam two and a half months, almost two of them in Quang Ngai, still in our room in the university guesthouse, so we'd been thinking we'd do a weekend getaway to somewhere nice. We decided on Hoi An, the nearest tourist destination and a lovely UNESCO listed world heritage site, about 100 km or two and a half hours drive away. Quang Ngai isn't on the tourist route so it's not that easy to get in and out of. Th...