One Week In...

It's been a whole entire week (and a day) since I arrived, and I'm still no closer to having my stuff. This is beginning to grate.

That said, I might almost be getting a hang f the city. I'm now entirely capable of ordering food (and not just menu pointing. I also mime a mean chicken.) and getting my taxi to take me home. OK, that last part is a half-truth. I got on the back of the bike, and told the bucktoothed driver the street name. He asked me something in Vietnamese, I repeated the street name and name of my guest house and he scooted off. In what was clearly the wrong direction. Rush hour traffic and terrible driving combined to glue my hands to my seat, and my English moans were dismissed as we scooted over a river of some kind into a decidedly seedy part of Saigon. Decidedly Seedy. So I managed to stop him (after we were well over the river since the riverbanks are crime-tastic) and then managed to spend a whole ten minutes looking for another cab to get home in. You know you've left the civilized part of this place when you can't find a barefooted old man to ferry you about. Those bastards are everywhere...

Right, so that little adventure aside I've managed to get my feet well and truly under the table. I even know which of my 100 channels are in English (I found Cartoon Network in the late 50s, just after ESPN). I learned that my toilet paper will destroy the very fabric of the universe or something, and so it should be put in the bin rather than down the toilet. This means that toilet cubicles smell worse than you'd want them to. In this heat a poop session of five or more minutes is presumably deadly. Good job I'm getting pretty blocked up! Yeah, who'd have guessed that left to my own devices all the balance would leave my diet and be replaced by noodles and cookies. Wow. This was a matuuuure paragraph.

Oh, I totally started at school this week, and it makes me feel even more hoboish than usual. Quite the challenge. I get to wear a tie and nice shoes and do up my top button. I hate these things. I don't think I've had my top button buttoned since I was 10. Yikes. Oh, and you should see my two new shirts for work. I have a lovely blue one and a snappy pink number. Oh yeah, Liam's wearing a pink shirt. Fashionable trends of 2002 here I am. Once I get some money I'll be taking advantage of the fashion pirates and getting some knock off trainers. I reckon that getting a pair of sweatshop shoes for two dollars is more moral than paying around eighty, right? Right? Oh well I don't care. Also on the list are a watch that'll look like it cost less than a quid and actually cost even less and a pair of sunglasses. I'll have to take off my beloved communist\emo looking cap, but apparently I should do that anyway.

Ooh, and my neighbours have a pet chicken!