Well, here I am in Tuy Hoa, a small city on the central coast of Vietnam. I'm in the 'house' (its like a workshop with an apartment above it) of some random old people that I just met, stealing their internet. Actually its the house of the parents of the husband of one of the ladies that brought me here. My boss/tour guide, I guess. I came with her and her assistant, who think its great fun to hang out with a foreigner, and keep trying to give me food and drink! Vietnamese are too kind!

The train ride, which was supposed to be 10 hours, turned out to be 12 hours. Vietnam has only one train line, most of which is a single track, running north-south, so we had to stop a dozen times for trains to pass the other way. I was stuck in a very cramped cabin with a bunch of Vietnamese, trying to teach them how to play I spy, and trying to explain what a prawn was. And there was some little kid that I kept scaring, by trying to ask him his age in Vietnamese. We left Saigon at 3pm, and got to Tuy Hoa at 3am.

Anyway, Tuy Hoa is quite a pleasant town. A welcome respite from the relentless heat and noise of Saigon. I can see the ocean just across from my hotel room (which is the nicest place I have stayed at since I left Oz). But I seriously think I am in the only foreigner in this town. Its like being in northern China all over again - people staring at me like I am some kind of exotic zoo animal. Which is something that I find very amusing, haha.

Tomorrow I have to do what I came here for - to choose 10 students from a group of about 40, to recieve a scholarship to study in America for a year. I'm not really looking forward to it, to be honest. I am about to make 10 people very, very happy, and 30 people very, very disappointed! I hope I can make the right choice, this is something that will impact their lives in a pretty big way...

Wish me luck!

Taynos out.