Last week was my first Vietnamese rainstorm experience. It's been hot and dry and extremely sunny pretty much every day since I got here so it came as quite a suprise. And I got caught right in the middle of it. Seriously, I have never experienced such heavy rain in my entire life. In a matter of minutes the whole street was flooded. I was totally drenched. The Vietnamese are like ants, they seem to know exactly when it is going to rain and all the bikes suddenly...

Xin chao! Things here are swell, quite swell. I'm falling into a routine now, and maybe working a little too much. I have 3 jobs and work 5 days / 6 nights a week, and I think its starting to catch up with me. Teaching pre-schoolers really takes it out of you... I've discovered that all you really need to teach young learners from scratch is flashcards. I filled in a whole two-hour lesson with my private students using just a set of alphabet flashcards. There ar...

G'day g'day, I'm still alive and well. I've only had one more minor traffic accident since my last entry - this time it wasn't my fault. I've taken on another private tutoring job, teaching a group of six-year-olds. Someone just called me out of the blue, asking if I wanted to teach a group of children. Why the hell not. So I accepted (actually I still don't know exactly how they got my number). I had my first lesson on Saturday night. I had a big one the night ...

I am now the proud owner of a pink motorbike. Yes, pink. And I have a mean-ass skull-cap black bikie helmet to go with it. Its freakin awesome! On my first day riding it (yesterday), I had 3 accidents. I knocked into another motorbike, hit into the side of a bus, and narrowly avoided slamming into an expensive looking car. And all within the space of an hour. Ain't I great... Today was much better though, I've pretty much got the hang of it now. But at first, it...

I got back to Saigon yesterday morning after another uncomfortable twelve-hour train trip from Tuy Hoa. The Xe Om (Vietnamese motorbike taxi) drivers at the train station were trying to make me pay more then double the right amount, but I wasn't buying it. I had to use the 'right, that's it, I'll walk' method to finally get the price I wanted. Works every time. From where I left off, on my first day in Tuy Hoa, quite a lot happened. As I said, I came up on the t...