Our holidays are over and we’ve been back in Soc Trang and back at work for the past two weeks. Here’s a run-down of what we’ve been up to during this time...
Working: We had a 6-day work week last week, now we are back to our regular 5-day work week. Dan and I are busy editing reports on co-management to be published as part of the workshop proceedings. Lucky we both no English real good hey? (That was a joke! This explanation is especially directed at my parents who probably suffered simultaneous fits when they read that sentence.) We also went down to Au Tho B Village, the site of the co-management pilot project, for a meeting with the sub-group leaders. We took a tub of Vegemite, some margarine and 2 baguettes with us to share with the leaders (who are all fairly poor farmers). They seemed to like it, one said it tasted like shrimp paste, but didn’t small so bad, and another said that, if they had found the jar of Vegemite they would never have thought it was food, they would have thought it was some kind of fertiliser or poison!
Speaking English: Last weekend we were special guests at the bi-annual English Speaking Club at the Soc Trang Teachers Training College. The teachers-in-training gave a variety of performances, including speeches, presentations, songs, dances, games and fashion shows – all in English. I had to get up and talk about Australia then ask the students questions about Australia, the student who answered correctly got a small prize. One student even knew who the prime minister of Australia is! Dan had to play a game where 3 students had to guess personal information about him (age, job, marital status etc.) Then the floor was open for all the students to ask him questions. He got asked if he would sing a song about New Zealand (he wouldn’t!), if he has a girlfriend (he got a cheer when he said yes and pointed at me), what he likes about me (he said he likes me because I’m kind – ha!), if he could talk about the people and traditions in New Zealand and if he will get married in Vietnam. When the questions were over he had to choose the most interesting questions and whoever asked that question would get a prize, he chose the question about me, aw!
Eating: We continue to explore the variety of food and restaurants in Soc Trang. Since we returned from holidays we have tried 3 new dishes, the first is a type of prawn cake that you wrap up in lettuce with herbs to eat. It was pretty good. The second was minced pork and mushrooms wrapped in rice paper, served with fish sauce and some salad. This is a breakfast dish, we tried it at 2 different places, the 2nd was nicer than the 1st but we have since found out that they are both owned by the same person! The third dish was a rice porridge served with a salty duck egg and/or dried prawns. It was ok, not as nice as the other 2 dishes, but that may have been because we both added a tiny bit of chilli sauce which made it way too spicy!
We also tried a new restaurant, the food was really good. We had noodles with beef and veggies, deep-fried pumpkin flowers stuffed with “meat” (I’m pretty sure it was fish.) and chilli and salt squid. Yum! The best thing about the restaurant was that 3 of the male waiters were zooming around on roller-skates! How awesome is that!
Drinking: We bought duty-free vodka and Kahlua on our way back from Malaysia, we cracked these open last week. We also bought some semillion-sauv from Chile in HCMC which we opened last weekend. It was awful! Dan has reunited with his drinking buddies and went out to Bung Huu last night, I think he has gotten back into the swing of drinking warm beer in a glass full of ice.
House-hunting: We found a house we liked before we went away, this week we inspected it again and have started negotiating with the owner. So far it seems to be going well but experience has taught us not to be certain of anything until we have the keys and have moved in, even then things might not work out! The new house is in town (the place we are in now is about 2km out of town) and only 2 blocks away from work. It needs some improvements, which Dan and I are happy to do, such as installing a kitchen sink, covering up the windows which don’t have glass in them (they have metal bars instead which is good for security, but not so good for keeping out insects) and maybe giving some of the rooms a paint. If you think that sounds like a lot of effort, it is, but we are in Soc Trang – there’s not much else to do! Hopefully we will be able to move in next week, as long as everything works out with the negotiating.
That pretty much sums up the last two weeks for us. I’m not sure what we’ll be up to this weekend, we’re considering going to Can Tho but there isn’t anything in particular we want to do there. Keep posted and I’ll let you know....
This is the main shopping street of Soc Trang. It also leads to one of the 2 bridges over the river (both bridges are one-way) so it is always very busy. The pavements are used for motorbike parking so it isn't a street that you can walk down and go window-shopping!
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