Just got back from church. We were invited to mass by a lady that runs a school that we will hopefully be teaching English at. It is actually just one room in her house but she has 400 students on her books. We were introduced to her by an existing teacher who invited us to join his class so we could introduce ourselves to the students and try to solicit some private lessons or maybe an invitation for English people for lunch/dinner or a coffee. The iced coffee (Ka Fe Da) is immense. During the lesson, while the students were pre-reading Hansel and Gretle (it was halloween) , the owner Ling invited us for dinner. She said that she'd been thinking about teaching opportunities for us over the next two weeks and thought it would be great if we came to church and met the bishop!

People like to start early over here, we were up at 7…we're meeting another possible source of work for breakfast tomorrow at 7.30, yikes- hopefully she'll have some hours for us at her school/house - she also wants us to try a traditional Vietnamese breakfast probably revolving around some kind of noodle soup, and very tasty.During the service, which was conducted in English, we were each given a passage to read and we ate the communion which might have been a little over the top. After the service a group of boys took us for a coffee (it's traditional to drink it with condensed milk) to practice their English. We managed to learn a few words of Vietnamese into the bargain so it was well worth it. They naturally paid for the coffee as it's the strict custom here that whoever makes the invitation also pays the bill.

After this we thought about heading to the water park as it was scorching hot but decided to head back to the hotel as I needed to write up this blog and plan my lessons. We bought a badminton set which we are going to take out to the park later - it's very popular here for people of all ages to play sports in the park and we could do with the exercise - all part of our cultural immersion.

I took my first lesson yesterday at the language school. It went pretty well. The school is very well equipped with air con class rooms and interactive plasma screens. We're getting paid 10 dollars an hour and we've got about 15 hours so far. Hopefully some more will be coming our way soon - it will be nice to have spare cash for Christmas as the plan is to hire a car in Thailand with Beej and drive from Bangkok to Ko Chang.

It's not just about the money here. It's really nice to spend a few weeks in the same place and really get the feel for the place, the people and the way of life. We're staying in a nice room in a guest house with a balcony so it's not exactly real life but it's more than we were doing up to this point. Also, it's a very ordinary town, with few westerners, so we feel we are getting deep down into the culture. It's also nice to have a mobile phone that people call you on (no one from home, please) and a routine.

We've been here, in Can Tho for a week now, we came down from Saigon with Ben. We spent the day and night in Saigon buying some cheap clothes and went for a few drinks and tried to go to a club. It was quite nice, good weather, we went for an extended coffee and cake session overlooking one of the busy junctions. For dinner we had some delicious crab, one of which was soft shell crab, cooked till the shell was so soft you could eat the whole thing head, legs, claws, brain…cooked in tamarind sauce, it was good. Needless to say em wasn't really feeling it but she had a go. I wish I'd got a photo of the legs sticking out of her mouth.

Apocalypse Now was the club we decided to go to. It's a very old club with lots of history and used to entertain american soldiers. Lacking a local tour guide, it was pretty much our only reliable clubbing choice - it's free for foreigners, only the locals have to pay and it's not cheap either - they must have been more annoyed than us when the place was shut down at 12.30. All very odd. We couldn't work out why it closed, maybe the police were cracking down - it normally stays open till 2 or 3. Police presence in clubs is the norm here, the club we went to in Nha Trang had two policemen watching over us while we danced away to britney spears and others even worse - the shame of it - there really is not much choice over here.

On the way from Dalat, Em sprained her ankle so we were pretty limited on what we could do for a couple of days. As she was temporarily disabled she got to work updating the photos on the blog while I went down the road for a quick bia hoi. I was expecting the usual glass of beer for around 4000 dong but the waitress put a litre jug in front of me - a bit excessive I thought but never mind. But a litre of beer for 30p could be trouble. I got talking to an Australian who had been in South East Asia for 16 years. The best story was of him haggling down a police fine for driving on the wrong side of the road (an absolute necessity here if you want to make a left turn as no one is going to let you go - you just have to take over the road and hope everyone dodges you - which of course they do - the system works perfectly - I haven't had one crash yet!) Anyway, he got pulled over for something everyone does because he was a foreigner and haggled his fine from 5 dollars to 2. Genius. Covering two issues, corruption and having to haggle for everything - it's good we're spending some time here and getting to understand this way of life. I almost, almost, miss England!

Back in Dalat - we finally buckled to the incessant pressure and took an "easy rider" motor bike tour. We were shown round a coffee and a tea plantation, a silk and a noodle factory and a mushroom farm.All very educational, we learnt some more about the history of the country and found out that the communists have three different colours of music. Red is very up beat patriotic marching music which makes the heart strong and ready for battle,blue mainly consists of stirring songs of the country side and snow peak mountains, rivers and waterfalls etc also good for fighting and yellow music.."this is bad as it makes you think of your girlfriend back home while you should be preparing for battle and you get all soft and sentimental and your mind's not on the job and you get killed" - yellow music was banned during the wars but it's "ok now".

We also saw a pretty impressive waterfall and a giant buddah which we tried to have our photo taken in front of but the Vietnamese girl we asked to do this was more interested in getting us in the photo - on the second attempt we nearly managed it but the buddah's head is still missing. The other day we briefly met a girl who later said to Ben that we looked like two angels! And the old lady who took us to church asked Em if she was as beautiful back in England!

There is lots of farming and agriculture going on in Dalat so there was some good stuff at the market.Highlights were caramelised pressed ginger and extract of banana in black cubes which looked like liquorice, also freshly sugared strawberries and mulberries…and red wine! Mmm..Having not cut my hair in three months it was starting to get a bit out of control (it's way past that point now - I think the experiment is conclusive and a hair cut beckons). Being quite chilly up in the mountains I decided to buy a wooly hat…which was fine for one night but on the hot bus the next morning it got dubbed the stupid hat - that's petty much it for dalat.

So - yes - we've been in Can Tho for a week now. It's a sleepy town of about a million people in the Mekong delta. It has one of the biggest universities in the country which is where Ben is doing his research. There is a lot of demand for English lessons from native English speakers. We can only spend a few weeks here as that will leave us with a month to travel across Cambodia, Laos and Thailand - hopefully that will be long enough. It's been a good week we've enjoyed finding a place to live, looking at houses…looking for work, meeting people for interviews, going into class rooms and writing our mobile number on the board to drum up business - no calls as yet. Spending time in Ben's living room. Eating some fine seafood, drinking iced coffee, fresh coconut juice and snake wine. Finishing my online grammar course, riding our moto through the windy back streets and going to the cash and carry to buy some butter and jam!