I only went and made it!

I got all the way to Tra Vinh y'all. It's crazy. Everything is very very yellow. Everyone stares at me because I am white, and I do not have appropriate clothing so am very naked by Tra Vinh standards. I have been wearing my jens and a sweater. I am writing this on my favourite giant purple dell. Although it has a new battery so it's a little less exciting than during finals last semester.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

So before I came I decided I should ventue out into Saigon, in order to play it safe I decided to go to the Fine Art Museum. This turned out to be a Good Move. It's in a a really beautiful old 20th Century colonial style building, and it has some really interesting communist type arts in.

On my way back to my Guest House, I decided I would require a phrase book if I was going to make it in the bus.

Then I decided I should buy some gifts, since I have been well brought up like that. This proved difficult. What does one bring to a friend who is living in the middle of nowhere when one goes to stay with them for a week? I found a mini-mart style shop and tried to find some suitible gifts. I started with coffee, and added a filter just in case. I figured I might wat to cook dinner sometime, so I added two pot noodles to the pile. I thought wine, but it was kinda expensive, then I thought rice wine, but I remember last time I drank rice wine much too well, finally I settled on rice vodka. Also a tin of Spam.

I got the taped together Xe Om to the station, this wasn't really the plan, but he was lurking outsie the door, so I didn't have much choice. We made it to to the station fairly safely, from where I was hustled into a minivan which was to be my bus to Tra Vinh. I had to sit in the front because I didn't fit in the back. My neighbour chainsmoked all the way to Tra Vinh. He also had a little plastic bag so he could continue to spit despite the fact he was in the bus. He was very nice though, and kept trying to offer me his dog meat sandwich. I declined.

I used my new phrasebook to look up "is this the bus to Tra Vinh" which I used regularly, and also "I do not speak Vietnamese". This just prompted my companions in the bus to just yell at me louder.

Soon enough I made it to Tra Vinh, from he bus station I got another Xe Om to Violet's eye-ache inducingly yellow university. Since I have been here I have been taken to eat all kinds of exciting foods while seated on teeny tiny plastic chairs. Also, we have been on an adventure around the rice fields, and crossed the least stable bridge I have seen since Nepal. I have also met some of Violet's lovely Tra Vinh friends, and also sat in on an English class on Danger and Daring, or something along these lines, in any case we played Truth or Dare, and I got to learn dancing.

Other than watching Mr Bean, Eat, Pray, Love, Game of Thrones and way too much MTVAsia, screaming in Violet's face in the night, and zooming around Tra Vinh on the back of a scooter, this is all I have done since I last blogged. So I'm going to have a nap, and wait for Violet to get off work.