All You Can Eat, Bad Days & The Glamourous World of Vincom

After noms at the Metropole. I feel cheesy putting this photo up but this is for you Christa!

This is the weekly party with good music out what the front of what I think is someones house. And yes, they're ANZ umbrellas.

Random bread thing a woman gave me instead of change

We went to go see the ballet at the Opera House. This is what happens when you come in late and have no idea where to go.

MSG. Asia isn't doing much to shrug the cliche.

Bui Gallery. I woke this guy from his nap.

They were just posing to the camera. Oh the glamour of being a model.

Most salads are covered in ....you can make your own mind up.

Childrens Day. There was a Hello Kitty character later. Imagine my dismay on missing out on a photo with it. *sigh*

Childrens Day downstairs from our apartment. This is probably a third of the crowd...

....cause the rest had moved to the supermarket.

Home delivered ribs. So wrong. So right.

Strike

A storms a comin'

News so far:

:: A few weeks ago we finally went to the Sofitel Metropole famous Sunday brunch. They have whole crabs! They aren't really worth the effort though. Proudly, I ate for pretty much the entire three hours. That should be good training because every second restaurant seems to be an all you can eat.

:: Last last weekend was CAMA Festival- the biggest music festival in Hanoi. When I say 'biggest' think of it as about 1/6 of Newtown Festival. Nonetheless, it was good. No shirts off, no tits out, and good music. What happens? I get overexcited, eat some bad cake cause I saw a kid with it, have one drink and have to be taken home drunk. ONE DRINK. Maybe one and a half. All this before 9:30pm.

:: We had our first really bad day the day after. What's a bad day? One where everything goes wrong, i.e. things that would never happen at home, and it's all beyond your control. Imagine something like this: 1) Really really awful oily breakfast where they also give you the wrong order, 2) A creepy awkward massage. So awkward I can't talk about it. 3) Cab driver takes you the looooog way to get to where you are 4) The restaurant tries to blatantly rip you off. It might not seem much but stack them all on top of each other and you start to wonder why you're here.

:: To everyone I told that Vietnam had nothing to buy I take that back. There are so many clothes stores with things I want to buy I have to purposely avoid them. The no shopping banned works better when it's a barren wasteland of fashion. Send money.

:: The glamourous world of Vincom: more and more I think there should be a reality tv show about everything that happens in and around our building. There's models, a billion fat kids, lots of women who dress up seemingly to just go shopping (that's what I imagine), people moving around random things like giant pieces of glass. A while ago I saw a guy hanging off a rope ladder down the side of the building washing windows. At night. Last week they set up a stage for "Childrens Day". It was carnage. Sugar high children running wild everywhere. At Johnnys work, mothers with kids even got a 'bonus' to spoil their already spoilt kids.

:: The good thing about being deprived is that when you finally find something it's so much more exciting. Like mi goreng! curry paste! cake tins! instant spagetti bolognese!

That's it from us. This week we get our first visitors coming through town, and the week after we're going on a work sponsored trip to Hoi An. Neither of us has been before so I get to feel like a tourist again.

We've been following the weather back home and feel lucky everytime we see how freezing it is. Suckers!

P.s. Sydney Film Festival starts today and has some great stuff showing. I'm dying to see Norwegian Wood. I've said it a thousand times already but if you can you must get a season pass- you won't regret it!