10 months away from England!

Sorry for not updating my blog last week. I've been keeping busy and working hard. My e-commerce lecturing is in its 7th week of 12 and its going well and the English is good at ILA.

Blue Gecko - my team!

The past few weeks I've not been doing too well at darts. However saying that I don't think I should be too hard on myself. I think I have been a victim of my own success. In the past two weeks Ive played the best players in the opposition which combined with not training as much lead me to getting beaten pretty bad. I upped my training last week but then disaster struck as our dart board fell off the wall. We put an emergency call into the 'Vietnam darts man' who came the next day to fix it. I took the opportunity to invest in some new flights whilst he fixed the board then he played a few legs of darts with me. It turns out that he is really good at darts. He used to be one of the top players in Division 1 and trained for 2 hours every day. Be was scoring 100 on most throws - it was good to watch. He gave me some good pointers though.

I played last night - at the great Boston sports bar and am happy to say I played really well and beat their team captain as well as winning and checking out both legs of my doubles match. Our team 'Blue Gecko' are moving up the table. I've attached a screen print of the current league table that can be seen at http://www.thesidl.com/ Also I'm 30th out of 100 players in the individual rankings which is like 3rd out of 10 which is not bad.

This weekend is King Hung's birthday. I've no idea who King Hung is but as its his birthday I get the day off so I maybe going to a beach place called Vung Tau for a few days. Will get soem photos and blog them next week!!!

Honey bees!

Honey Bees.

As promised, here are some pictures of the honey bees on our top balcony. As you can see there working away at making some honey. They've been here for a few weeks now. We have been told by the locals that if you have honey bees it means your wealthy, we've also been told that if we get too close they'll start stinging. As I said before we're going to try and live together in harmony but if they start stinging then BOOM - we'll show them the door. We've been told that the way you get rid of them is to smoke them out. We had a bbq last week and when the smoke went near them they did start moving around so a closer fire should work.

Ho Chi Min Honey!

For the time being we will keep them, I want to see if we can to get the honey but not sure if it will be possible. We may have to get in a bee expert to help us or at least one of those bee suits which might cost more than actually just buying some honey from the shops.  I will monitor the situation of the coming weeks and provide updates when I have news. I'm told it will take about 3 months to be ready but if you leave it too long the nest can go dry. Also in the rainy season which comes in July they will fly away anyway.

The Blue Gecko darts team!

Bad news on the darts front. My recent good form lead me to be matched up with the best player from the opposition this week. Although I won and played well in my doubles game I lost my singles game. The guy was good and got some heavy scores. I had my chances though so can't complain. We drew the match 6-6 which was quite exciting as after being 4-3 up we went 4-6 down but won the last two matches. Team spirit was high and it was a fun night.

Getting hotter in Ho Chi Minh

With our friends visiting

Been very busy over the past few weeks in Ho Chi Minh. Our house had some friends, who completed the CELTA course with us, come and visit. They opted not to live in the city but took teaching jobs Vung Tau which is a small beach town two hours away on the south coast of Vietnam. It was really good to see them and we had some good nights out.

I went out for a meal the other day for one of my work colleagues birthdays. We had a good time and tried some interesting food. The 'hot pot' below is bulls penis, I tried some it tasted ok but I won't be buying it instead of a beef steak in future.

Bulls penis

The other dish you can see is Cheesy beef. I know what your thinking... the cheese looks suspiciously like one of those slices you put in a burger at bbqs and you'd be right! This doesn't take the title of least creative dish I've seen. When In Cambodia someone I was with ordered cheesy chips. The dish came out as a bowl of chips with a cheese slice laid on top. It had not been melted or mixed into the dish, just laid on top. It's something that I could easily create at home. Saying that the Khmers are not really know for their cheesy chips and there was far more tasty and interesting local dishes on the menu.

Other news is that we have some honey bees have moved to our upstairs garden. We had a house discussion about what to do with them and unless they start attacking us we will keep them. We had a bbq a few nights ago and the smoke disturbed them and they revealed to us the honey comb! It should be ready for harvest in a few months so we could have our own 'Ho Chi Minh Honey'. Getting the honey down might be a problem so we will play furthest from the bull on the darts board to see who goes to get it. I will be practising. I'll see if I can get a photo for next week.

Finally the weather is starting to heat up. The temperature in the day must be late 30s but its not too humid at the moment. It should peek in May time which will tie in with my 1 year away from England.

The Saigon 5-a-side Cup.

Stella bar on Bui Vien

This week has been a fun sporty week. It started off with Tuesday night darts. This week we were against No Star Where at Stella bar in district 1. As I had to work I turned up late and the team was already 4-0 down. I then played doubles against their two best players which I'm happy to say we won 2-1! I checked out once in the win. I then had my singles match against a chap who was pretty good. I played some good darts, scoring pretty high but sadly I couldn't seem to check out and he caught me up and beat me 2-0. My second defeat of the season! I'm now 2-2 for the season.

Darts at Stella with WAGs sat at the bar

Our team lost the match 8-4. It was pretty disappointing but they weren't a bad team. Losings not very nice and it inspires me to try harder so me and my flatmates have up our training at home.

This week was also the 5-a-side competition called the Saigon cup arranged by my school ILA. 11 teams entered the tournament. I'd got into a team with some of my mates from ILA and we were confident in doing well.

We were put in a group with two other teams the first game we drew 2-2 and going into the second game we only needed a draw to get through. We were 1-0 up at half time but some how managed to mess up and loose 3-1. It was very disappointing as I thought we were better than both the teams in our group. If that wasn't bad enough both the teams got through to the semi finals and one even got to the final. Saying that I didn't play very well. I'm sure I've cracked a bone in my foot from a few weeks ago and although Ive rested it for two weeks it still wasn't right.

As they were short on referees I volunteered to help and made the final - that's the only way I was going to make it there... as referee. Out of the 11 teams that entered two were Vietnamese and both made it to the final. I don't know what that says about the state of British football. Perhaps it was the 35 degree heat, perhaps it was the cr@pness, I'm guessing the latter. So it was a sporty week that came with the familiar crushing feeling of disappointment but with an undercurrent of fun. Apart from that I've been sleeping, working and eating.