Thursday, September 6, 2012

Hoi An and learning French

I'm working on this (never-ending) project and happened across a museum site that is only in French - which is weird because their other languages are Luxembourgish and German, but not the point. So, I needed to work out the address, contacts, opening hours, etc and was able to figure it all out without consulting a translator. I did have to ask what a word that turned out to mean "weekly" was, but in the big picture, my French is really coming along. Now, if only I made more time to study and practice.

In other news, I just returned from a three-day weekend in Hoi An. It is easily the most beautiful beach and town I've been to in Vietnam yet. We stayed in a four-star hotel with olympic-sized outdoor pool, just 20 meters from our room and another 20 meters from the beach, a pool bar on one side and a spa on the other. We rented a motorbike to drive in and out of town for the length of our stay and I got three dresses, 2 shorts, and a skirt made. I also got a bathing suit made, but it got left behind because it wasn't the right size and we ran out of time to wait for it to be fixed. Surely I will return. I've caught the tailor-made bug and the only cure is moving somewhere in which tailor-made clothes are unrealistically too expensive.

I took a few photos, but not many. And in the last three hours of the trip I broke my camera: a plastic bottle of Revive (energy drink) was just below the bank on the sand, moments away from being swept away by the tide. I noticed it while I was taking photos and decided to pick it up; walking over, I fell down the bank, dropping my camera in to the sand, so now the lens cover won't open all the way. Disappointment. I got it fixed once before in Nha Trang, so maybe I can again, but what ever is broken this time is different from what was broken before. Maybe if I bang it against enough things, the sand will fall out and all will be saved - surely I know that will only break something else. The good news: I rescued the plastic bottle.

"That's what you get for trying to save the environment." :P

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