Thursday Nov 3rd

I wake a six despite the rooster and unlink the hose for my shower but now the heater is not working unless I hold the heat button. So one hand on the button and one hand with the soap I manage to shower.                   
 

I go to my usual café for breakfast and chat to a guy called Mark who is a teacher in Hanoi, another handy contact. After breakfast I wander to get some prints developed as a surprise for Keota and Sai. I also manage to locate some more essentials for my upcoming tour. I bought “The Alchemist – Paulo Coelo” for Ketoa the other day to add to his book collection so today I bought “The Quiet American – Graeme Green” for Sai, it is a very limited bookstore and I was lucky to find two books of such quality. I did find “The Tempest” and “Great Expectations” but I though Shakespeare and Dickens might be a little over their heads. 

Then I head up to the temple lookout where Keota is waiting for me and I spend some time correcting the English in his text book, even the text books for school here have some bad grammar. Sai turns up at eleven after class has finished and we chat some more. I present him with his book and he is very pleased. Sai is the better reader and apparently he started reading The Alchemist to Keota last night. 

I forgot to mention a few days ago when I was talking with Khoupha he asked me two English questions I though were very funny. What is “raining cats and dogs” and what is “break a leg” I explained break a leg just means good luck but when I explained raining cats and dogs meant heavy rain he still looked at me with total puzzlement, he could not understand how cats and dogs related to the rain so I told him to Google colloquialisms. I’m not even sure how that expression came about.

As usual they head off to their temple to eat before midday and my attention is grabbed walking along the street by a redhead in a restaurant and ask to join her. Her name is Daphne and she is French. We chat over lunch then go our separate ways. Today I definitely need to catch up on some sleep and manage to get at least an hours sleep in the afternoon however there will be no shower when I wake up because they have taken the heating unit from the wall to get it replaced, I don’t have running water at all for now, I hope they repair it quickly.

I head down to my usual sunset bar and am joined by Greg, Peng and Manon. There was a lot of cloud tonight so Manon joked how I let her down from the promise of a great sunset.

The three of us went up to the night market food stalls and ate then wandered through the night markets to where Pengs eldest daughter works for a short while then went down to the river for a night cap. Greg and Peng left and Manon and I stayed and chatted for a while over Vodka and Maitais. I walked her home which was easy because after mentioning how good my new hotel is yesterday she moved and is now two rooms up from me.