At the company meeting this week I found out they want me to be one of their 'snow princesses' and tour some of the schools with my santa (Alex). Apparently we will be organising one school's performance on our own!?! God knows how we will do this when we still haven't had any information sent through. Also next week we are expected to teach the remaining parts of the syllabus and a Christmas song AND start Christmas cards AND complete any supplementary documents which one of my schools still doesn't have. All this with Grade 1s and 2s is very unrealistic but they don't seem to understand how long it takes them to do things and something has to give. Teaching Grade 1 a whole new song does not take 10 minutes! Plus they will only pick the best 3 cards from each school (so mainly Grade 4 and 5) what's the point in grade 1 even doing it? We said it would be fairer to pick one from each grade but as always the company are all about the money - and they always tell us to 'consider the children'!

We all received an email about not cooperating with cover - when it only applies to a few - and finding our own cover if sick because other interns will be more likely to agree if we call than if they do as they will be more sympathetic towards us. This completely contradicts the agreement made with TTV, big surprise no response from TTV yet. I have been asked to cover Tuesday afternoon which is fine but I also asked them not to schedule me next Tuesday afternoon and to confirm that I still have the Friday off for Halong - this was passed on to someone else and surprisingly as yet no response. They always want a response from us but when we ask something it gets passed around and normally takes around a week to answer one question. Oh well I will be taking it anyway, I'll be 'sick'.

I managed to walk into the wrong class first thing on Friday and taught for 10 minutes wondering where my TA was before the teacher walked in and reminded me that I shouldn't be in there until 4th period! She laughed about it and I explained I was very tired. No wonder the kids looked confused and there was one kid who was being really naughty. He refused to move to the front so I put his name on the board. When the teacher first came in I still didn't realise, I thought she was helping me because my regular TA was sick and I was trying to explain bout naughty kid - what a prat! I am one step closer to getting a Be Van Dan jacket though. I tried on the biggest kids one and it fit me everywhere apart from the sleeves being too short. They are now contacting the woman who makes them for us (such a souvenir hoarder!).

Our trip to Vinh was a mixed experience …

The 5 and a half hour bus journey turned out to be 7 hours getting us there at 4.30 in the morning. Still at least it was a sleeper bus with soft beds - one of the highlights. I finally felt like I was doing some 'proper travelling' just on a small scale. A free minibus then took us to the hotel which was completely shut and looked like there was nobody there - s***! We were about to phone the number on the hotel sign when the shutters started to come up. The guy looked at my reservation and said we weren't staying there - so we had been dropped in a random back street at a hotel with the same name but it was wrong - double s***!! Luckily he checked it again and decided we were staying there after all (he had been looking at the Agoda logo as the hotel name).

We finally got to our rooms which looked ok but just smelt a little damp. However when we moved the pillows on the bed there were moving black dots (around 4 or 5) that we were pretty sure were bed bugs. That was it I couldn't sleep in the bed, I was paranoid that I would take them home and everything will be going straight in the wash when we are back. Having said that the other room seemed fine and even the girls in my room didn't get bitten. I spent the first night on the cold floor and the second on 2 chairs pushed together. I was so glad that I had slept half the way there. I was close to considering finding somewhere else to stay or catching the night bus home Saturday night but we stuck it out. To be fair to them the hotel itself was great; close to central buses and shops and the staff were very friendly and helpful (with the use of a translation phone app to help!). One of the boys had booked on late and ended up on a different bus which left 2 and a half hours late, stopping for breakfast at 3am along the way - as you do in Nam. He arrived at 7am and apparently had seen some kind of authorities asking to see our passports. The hotel had asked for 1 passport per room but I was the only one who had theirs as the booking was made in my name. They had accepted this but the following day they wanted more details from everyone and questioned why there were 7 people when the room said a maximum of 6. We got away with it saying that Julian didn't arrive until 7am and had just come to meet us. They said he would have to pay 200,000 for a single room. We said that this was too much and they agreed to let him have the room for free as we weren't eating breakfast which was included in our booking. They were really accommodating, especially since they could have been in trouble because they didn't have all of our passports! (No mention we need them on booking site!). It's just a shame that the Bed bugs let them down.

There was an amazing little café at the top of the backstreet we were on - Babylon - that had beautiful gardens and seating area. We were worried it was going to be expensive at first but prices were similar to or cheaper than Hanoi. They even did Bailey's coffees for about 80p! The gardens were so pretty that there were even brides having their photos taken. One of the girls working there spoke good English and helped us to book our bus tickets home and arranged a big taxi to take us to the office to collect them. She was extremely helpful and wouldn't let us do anything ourselves; she was even trying to get someone to take us out to a good place to eat. We eventually persuaded her that we would be fine alone and she was content with ordering the taxi. We wandered around the city found some good food and went to catch the bus to Cua Lo (one every hour).

The beach was overcast and misty when we got there but it was nice just to wander along the shore. The change of scenery was refreshing (if grey) and walking along the sand was relaxing. Then a random guy wanted to take my photo before taking pictures of me and Paula with his kids - we are like a bloody tourist attraction! The group had split in opposite directions when it started to rain. Everything around was shut (and I mean everything even the public loos!), the place was a ghost town with a very eerie feel to it. With nothing to do and feeling wet we went back to the city. Just to rub it in the weather in Hanoi was very sunny and warm - typical!

We bought some drinks for the evening and went in search of food nearby which wasn't an easy task. When we found somewhere the food was good but she tried to charge us 50,000 for a meal that should not have been more than 30,000. We refused to pay that explaining that we lived in Hanoi and knew this was too expensive, so we gave her 40,000 each and left. She started to complain and then just smiled as she knew full well she was trying to overcharge us because we were Western.

We got back to the hotel and they had laid fresh cement all along the road and we had to take a longer route back to the hotel. Most of the evening was spent back in Babylon talking and having a few drinks until we felt like we were being eyed to leave. After asking them it turns out they didn't actually shut until 11 when we thought, they were just staring at us because we were different. We carried on dancing and chatting in the room until around 2. It was a fairly chilled weekend but just getting out of Hanoi with good company made it worthwhile.

Back home my brother has been asking me about what to get people for Christmas not sure how he expects me to coordinate it from here exactly. He assumes that people have given me big lists of what they want - not really high on the list of priorities during half hour weekly Skype chats though! I've decided to extend my trip just by an extra week or so. It means missing orientation training but it's not likely that I will be back this way for a while and really want to make the most of it - not go home having regrets at missing things out.

Now it's just the final countdown before the parents arrive in the madness of Hanoi …