G'day g'day, I'm still alive and well. Wet season has officially begun here, and its now pouring down in rain practically every day. I went out and bought one the of the massive motorbike raincoats. Mine has 2 hoods, and a little window in the front, so I can see the dash and the headlight can shine through. Its huge, it covers 2 adults and the motorbike. I look like complete nonce wearing it, but all the Vietnamese wear them too. It also makes me blend in a lot more with the locals, so the cops are much less likely to see me. Along with the other 99% of foreigners living here, I drive with no license. Oh, and I swapped by pink bike for a red one.

I'm sorry to say that my sexy black military-style helmet was stolen last week. It was kinda funny actually, when I got back to my bike and realised it had been stolen, I tried to ask one of the parking guys if he knew what had happened. He just grabbed a helmet off the bike next to mine and guestered that I take it and take off. The Vietnamese way, I guess. Unfortunately it turned out to be a girl's helmet with flower stickers on it...

I think the last few weeks here have been a big lesson in racism. There are quite a few Nigerians in Saigon, most of whom run drugs, prostitution and conterfeiting stuff. A lot of the bars have 2 menus - one for the Westerners, and then another (more expensive one) for the Nigerians. Most of the locals hate them, and last month the government did a big crackdown and deported more then 150 from the country.

Especially around the backpacker area, which can be quite sleazy at night, there are quite a lot of Nigerians and Somalians. I never thought much of them until the other week, when I was witness to a rather nasty bottling attack at Tam Tam, my local bar (I'm there pretty much every day, its like my home away from home...away from home). One of my mates was waiting for his turn in a game of pool, and the Nigerians who were playing wouldn't let him have a go and kept pushing in. So they started arguing, and one thing led to another, and the next thing I know I'm in the middle of this big bar fight. The bar owner grabbed a cricket bat, and shooed them outside. One of the Nigerians pushed the bar owner's wife onto my bike, which toppled over and gave her a nasty bruise. Then another grabbed my mate and held him down, while the other grabbed a big bottle of beer and smashed over his head. They punched his girlfriend a few times, who was screaming at them and trying to break it up. Then they split up and scattered off down the street (well, alleyway), being chased by the raging Vietnamese bartender weilding the cricket bat, who is quite an intimidating guy anyway.

By this time pretty much everyone in the alleyway had crowded around to see what the hell was going on. My mate had blood gushing from his head - the bottle had practically exploded, the pieces remaining were tiny. So we had to bundle him into a taxi and off to hospital he went.

What I found interesting was that at no point did any police show up to try and break up the fight, or indeed do anything. Not even afterwards. There are always cops prowling around that alleyway. It was like they didn't care at all.

It was quite ironic actually, because I had been having a conversation with one of the girls there, who thought that all Nigerians living in Saigon were inheritly bad, and caused nothing but trouble. I was saying, 'no no, I'm sure they're not all like that'. And then the Nigerians in the bar had to go and start a fight like that...

Anyway, on more of a lighthearted note, my kids started randomly singing the wedding song today, so I stopped the lesson to have a mock wedding. It was hilarious. I got a towel and made one of the fat ones, Bill (who is my favourite) into the bride. The towel was the wedding dress, and I made one of the little ones as the groom. Then we all held hands to make a tunnel for the newlyweds to walk through. Teaching here requires a lot of on-the-spot creative thinking!