Wednesday, 6th July 2016 An early, early, early start which would have been bad enough if I'd had a reasonable enough sleep. I failed to snatch much time unawake during the night due to the heat as I itched and scratched potential bites underneath the mosquito net that flopped over our bed. Alyson was away with the Vietnamese fairies and was unaware that I was beginning to feel unwell. It felt at threeish in the morning as though I was picking up a stomach bug and that I wouldn't want to go further than an unavailable air-conditioned room until this sickness had left me. However, after having my outdoor shower at a time well before the local cockerels had really started their rallying cries to the fields and beyond, I was in a different mood and I was game for the first activity. We clambered carefully over the rope bridge in the lifting light in time to gather in the greeting cum restaurant area for a quick coffee before we were loaded into the small boat with our new friends, a family from Dublin. It was half an hour or so watching dawn quickly break before we arrived amongst the market on the river. Mainly locals here as it seems this is the low season as regards tourism. It's the rainy season, you see, which means that generally it rains like crazy for a while.....and then it clears up. The while can last a few days, a few hours or a few minutes. The Irish dad bought a spicey noodle broth in a posh bowl from an elderly Vietnamese woman who had her kitchen and shop well stocked in her little boat. It sounded delicious but as pseudo-vegetarians we didn't try it. We did buy and try the cold coffee though from another boat and that was unpalatable to our inflexible tastebuds. We mingled in between the many fruit, vegetable and fish bearing boats. This floating still seems quite authentic but I imagine that in years gone by it would have been more extensive and that the land markets would have been smaller. More locals now seem to use motorbikes to travel around than the waterways. But many of the traditional ways are still well set here. It is still very common to see traditional dress, and in particular the conical headwear, being worn by the women away from where tourists commonly stray. The clouds were suddenly getting dark and threatening and those who frequently spend their hours on the river were aware that the rains were about to descend in torrents upon their heads. We sheltered quickly under a large bridge over the river. The downpour was not going to be a short one so our walk around the land market was going to be a wet one. No problem for my body as I had a treasured coat in a bag which waterproofed me for the walk through the lanes and alleys. Everyone else had to buy unbecoming ponchos from a stall. They looked particularly unbecoming for certain members of the Irish family! We followed Lily and Hwng (spelling unsure, approximate pronunciation!) past the hundreds of sellers in the street and stopped to look at the most unusual and unfamiliar sights. Particularly eye-catching was the stuff for sale of one of the sellers who layed out bowls of live fish such as the catfish....and tied up live frogs.....and next to them skinned and beheaded frogs who continued to writhe and attempt to leap minus their upper parts! As the weather continued in a manner that would have persuaded Noah to start practising his carpentry skills, the decision was taken by our guides from the homestay to abandon the boat trip back and to load the ponchoed crew into a small convoy of taxis which aqua-planed us back to the Nguyen Shack in no time. After our breakfast, scrambled eggs on toast an toast and jams in my case, the plan was to take a guided bike tour around the local villages at nine. However, a large quantity of the oceans were still falling out of the heavens and Hwng was putting a damper on the idea of a bike ride due to weather conditions. Effective, collective pressure was put on him by us and our Celtic cousins and Hwng agreed that if the weather had improved by 10.30 he would run the guided cycle wander. Back we, that is Caitlin and I, bagged and nestled into the two available hammocks on the veranda which fortunately were afforded sufficient shelter from the rain. Soon I was counting sheep....or perhaps headless frogs...until a message came that the bike ride was on even though there was more than a mere vertical descending trickle. Down the lanes Hwng led the Celts and stopped off at several different buildings along the way. The local school was closed for the holidays so we missed out on interrupting the young students' education. But we did visit the local traditional pharmacy which was the main health mainstay for the villagers. People can scarcely afford the most basic health provision here so this doctor treats the locals with a free service. The compartments beneath the ubiquitous framed photo of Ho Chi Minh were well stocked with herbs for all types of ailments. I could have done with help for the swelling bites that are mounting up on my body. We also visited the local pagoda where a handful of happy looking orphans skipped around us. Their unwed mothers had to choose to leave them here as traditional values in the countryside still holds sway. An unwed woman with child would bring huge dishonour on a local family, according to our guide and would be faced with little choice but to abandon her newborn. Attitudes sound like those back in Wales a century or a little less ago. We also spent time in a small factory where rice of several types were processed and sealed in huge packs that were stacked in every corner of the building. In the back gardens and on corners of paddy field, we also saw the graves of family members who according to Buddism here still live through death as part of the living relatives. Finally, Alyson got to get close to some real pigs at the rice wine making place. Apparently, some of the rice wine which is 80% proof in parts of its process is given to the pigs. A surprise that only one of them was flat out when we walked past. We all tried a quick mouthful of the drinkable wine and, fair to say, it made its mark on some of my internal organs. Hopefully, no long term damage was caused. After one more stop, if I remember correctly, at a pottery place we cycled the last five minutes through land that was drying up quickly. We had a small snack....fried spring rolls and chips... and then rolled our way across the bridge and back to our bungalow. We slept soundly in our chosen locations through the afternoon until the external winds rose. I rescued Caitlin from her hammock and we listened to the returning rain until we fell asleep again. The Nguyen Shack do simple but tasty meals and provide for meat eaters and vegetarians alike. Dinner for us, as for the previous night, was a mixture of tofu, ginger, lemongrass and rice. Caitlin had more than her share of fruit shakes too. The staff at the Shack are lovely, every single one is a delight. Their names? Eleanor, Lily, Hwng and Cei were the ones who spent most time with us. They gave us these names when they tell us about themselves but following a little probing we learn a little more. These are not their real names, but their nicknames. Their real Vietnamese names are difficult for us to say. There are nuances with regards to tone and accent which I can't get a hold on. We know only one words after five or six days here and we're struggling withat, or I am according to Caitlin. "Gum-ung" or something like that is "thank you". I use it regularly but only a few Vietnamese seem to acknowledge it as "thank you". My intention was to try to get up at 1.30 a.m. in the morning to catch the Wales versus Portugal Euros semi-final game. We're six hours ahead of back home here! Anyway, the plan was to cross over the bridge with my ipad and sit in the restaurant area viewing the game on ITV. There's no wifi reception in our rooms! I had checked that I can pick up ITV using an app I downloaded a few years ago. Hearing my plans, the staff arranged for me to use another room where there would be wifi. This would mean I could lie on a bed beneath a mosquito net rather than be in the open air restaurant. Brilliant! Earlyish to bed at about a little past nine, I slept well until I woke just after 1 a.m. and unbuckled the door as quietly as I could. With headtorch firmly attached, I arrived at the room and settled down beneath the mosquito cover. Disaster number one! The coverage of the game was being blocked. You could watch Eastenders live or anything else on British TV but not this historic football game with Wales, my country, in the semi-final. What could I do? The same type of blocking was happening with any radio broadcasts of the game! I was cursing quite loudly but mildly, as is my custom. This was the beginning of disaster number two. I came up with the idea of face-timing my eighty five year old mother in Wales to get her to place her ipad in front of her large screen TV. Good idea! But because my mother is not the finest manipulator of camera angles the view I had of the first half was slightly better than nothing. Her ipad was rested on her knee and went up and down more than the ball in the game. Initially, I was telling her in a stern but pleasantish manner to try to keep still. My voice got minimally louder at times, I admit, which I suppose caused disaster number two. I was in one of the cheaper rooms to watch the game and too late I realised that there was no sealed roof which meant that every comment I made was apparent to the new neighbours inches behind my head on the other side of the uncompleted dividing wall. Oh dear! They weren't happy at all! Clearly not Welsh supporters. The only course of action was to escape without potential wounding across the rickety rope bridge to the restaurant. There I watched the rest of the game where I was able to talk my mother into mounting her ipad onto a small table so that at least I could avoid a sea-sickness type of affect as I watched Ronaldo and his team torture us in the final minutes of the game. Nibbled at by the many mosquitoes, I made my way through another nightly downpour over the swaying slippery bridge and arrived drenched at our bungalow. Never mind! A good story to tell people in the future. Nos da Vietnam.