24th December 2010 Yesterday afternoon Aaron and I skipped down the road away from the classrooms, hand-in-hand with some of the children, whooping that class was cancelled for Christmas! Lots of Vietnamese high school and university students were milling around the playground. They were preparing some sort of event, but we had any idea what. Along with us and the kids, two Danish volunteers and a German volunteer where hanging around watching and wondering what was going to happen. I will admit that I started out sceptical, since no-one seemed to know what was going on and the teenagers seemed to be paying more attention to the decorations than the children. However it turned out to be an evening event and I was soon proved that the organisers had some great ideas. After dinner the dancing began. I was shocked to see that they were line dancing! I rushed to join in – what fun! We then broke out into free-style and I had a great time kicking up my heals with the children! (Thoug...

As some of you know I've moved on from Vietnam and am currently in China. Unfortunately, the Chinese internet censors have deemed it necessary to block the blogger and blogspot websites to protect national security. I blame inflammatory, anti-authority, anti-Mao, rabble rousing, bourgeois blog authors from Fort Worth and South Austin for these draconian measures. You know who you are. For shame. Anyway, the block is making blogging a hair difficult. However, I discovered that my old live journal blog is still active and not on the Chinese censor blacklist. I'll be returning to the free world soon but until then I'll post there and put the link up here. http://gipp.livejournal.com/1455.html

Thursday 16th December 2010 In mid-October back in Thailand I started searching online for jobs in Sydney as a statistician. I found about a couple a week that I was really interested in and applied for. So far I've applied for twelve jobs and had ten rejections without even an interview. Of the two outstanding opportunities, one wouldn't be interviewing till January and the other wanted someone with social sciences experience, so I didn't have high expectations for the rest of this month. In Hoi An, Vietnam we didn't have wifi in our hotel so I went for four days without checking my email. Tuesday 11:15 local time, just before catching our overnight train to Hanoi I went to the internet cafe and read an email inviting me to an interview with the University of Sydney at 16:00 Australian Eastern time (i.e. 12:00 in Vietnam)! Thoughts raced through my mind - What do I do?!? Of course I want to take the interview, but we had already booked and paid for our train. We...

17 December 2010 With one overnight train journey, Jean and I found Autumn after over six months of summer. We arrived in Hanoi in the early hours a few days ago to find the weather damp and oddly chilly. Our objective for Hanoi was to acquire Chinese visas so we might visit Jean's wayward sister-in-law in Shanghai before packing it in for sunny Australia. We had a couple of days before we were due at our volunteer assignment at the nearby Friendship Village. The Chinese Embassy was a little less than an a mile from the old quarter of town, where we planned to stay. It sounded easy enough. Wednesday Leaving the train station at just past five and threading our way through taxi drivers we found ourselves very much alone in dark, down-town Hanoi. We soon entered the maze of currently quiet streets that make up the Old Quarter. After some time we found a hotel that was open and could have a room ready for us in half an hour. They'd even serve us breakfast while we waited. ...

13th December 2010 Last Friday we got a bus from Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam, leaving at 8am for Nha Trang. Due to road work delays we only got time for a quick baguette in Nha Trang before catching an overnight bus to Hoi An. We are travelling north quickly so that we can get to the Friendship Village, near Hanoi, by 17th December. Top bunks on the sleeper bus Overnight buses don't seem to agree with me. This time I got a cold from lying under the AC vent. When we arrived in Hoi An at 6am, 22 hrs after our journey began, I was tired and sneezy. I found a veggie noodle stand ran by an incredibly sweet lady and her daughter. I rested on a tiny plastic stall and munched on a steaming bowl full of noodles, veg and tofu for $0.50, while Aaron searched out a hotel. As Aaron commented, Hoi An is a bizarre place. It's a cute, small, historic town by a river. A quiet relief from the traffic in HCMC. Everywhere we strolled I couldn't stop gazing at all the colo...

14 December 2010 Hoi An is interesting place. It borders on fantastical. I went looking for a bakery this morning. During my search I must have passed twenty tailors and and half a dozen beauty salons. It's like a narcissistic paradise. Over the last few days I've heard the phrase, "I have an appointment with my tailor this afternoon" an inordinate number of times. A few days ago, fresh in from Saigon that morning, Jean and I went on a stroll about town. The day was warm but not hot. Great weather for a stroll. This photo is in Cambodia, but I'm sure you recognise the trousers! After a while, we found ourselves at a bookshop, perusing the pirated collection. I was toying with the idea of getting a Chinese guidebook when the very pregnant proprietor came out. She commenced with the usual sales tactic of thrusting various books in front me, telling me this one was good (she didn't read it but a friend told her ...

9 December 2010 When traveling, there is no substitute for good research. I'm not speaking of the kind of information gleaned from a guide book per se. That kind of research certainly has its place helping one get from point A to B, handling accommodations, learning some of the local lingo and planning budgets and itineraries. I'm addressing a more ambiguous form of knowledge acquisition that allows one to put together an impression of a place without ever actually having been there. I also use the term "research" in a very loose sense of the word encompassing information or feelings gathered, not from dry history books, but a multitude of sources including (but of course not limited to): films, documentaries, fiction, life experiences. Much of sightseeing involves visiting sites with some historical significance. Without proper preparation and context, much of that significance is lost. For example, there's an old Spanish ...

8th December 2010 Zoom! Another flurry of motorbikes whizzed past Aaron and I. Buzzing down the busy streets of Ho Chi Minh City (Siagon), Vietnam. Yesterday we got a bus here from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Thankfully on this border crossing we didn't have any problems with mysterious fees. On our bus there was only one other person not from south-east Asia, so the crossing was a lot faster than our last experience. Aaron and I only have four weeks in Vietnam and we want to spend two weeks volunteering at a Friendship Village near Hanoi. This means we only have a couple of days in here before we head North. Ho Chi Minh City has a population of about 5.38 million people and 4 million motorbikes! The traffic is insane! Waiting at crossroads with lights we saw people weaving in and out, darting through narrow gaps and going the wrong way down roads. At crossroads which didn't have lights people charged across in a crazy, ruthless, criss-cross. There's no way I'm renting ...

December 6, 2010 Jean and I arrived in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, a few days ago. For the most part, the tourist sites of the city focus on two eras of Khmer history - the prosperity of the the Angkor kingdom from the 8th - 12th century and murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 – 79. In the spring of 1975, after expelling the denizens of Phnom Penh, Pol Pot and the leaders of the Khmer Rouge moved into the capital to set up the new government. In late 1975 they converted a former school, Tuol Sleng, in the south section of Phnom Penh into Security Office 21 (S-21). Under the command of a former mathematics teacher, Kaing Kek Ieu (Duch), S-21 would become an infamous detention, torture and execution center. This morning, Jean and I made the 15 minute walk from our hotel to the site of the prison. On August 19, 1979, soon after Vietnamese troops liberated Phnom Penh, S-21 was opened to the public as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Thus the site remains very much ...

In the early morning of April 17, 1975, heavily armed Khmer Rouge forces appeared on the streets of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. The ragged, black clad soldiers were met with cheers from much of the populace. The civil war that had dragged on for five years was finally over. With the city suffering from food shortages and swelling refugee population there was great hope that some form of normality could now be restored. For the newly established Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot, April 17, 1975 became the beginning of “Year Zero.” Radical action was taking to effectively wipe the slate clean. All property was seized by the state, currency was eliminated, and the cities were evacuated. Within 72 hours Phnom Penh was completely emptied. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were herded out onto the roads by armed guards. They were driven on foot to villages all over Cambodia. Democratic Kampuchea was to be a classless, agrarian utopia. During the weeks immediately ...

3rd December 2010 Today, my birthday, Aaron and I are in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on our last stop before crossing into Vietnam. I thought it would be entertaining to celebrate in a Royal Palace, so this morning we headed across town. On the way we strolled along the river where the prom was lined with many countries flags. After stopping for a breakfast of Khmer food (tofu and chestnuts with rice for me), I went into the palace and silver pagoda. The palace was constructed (a second time, due to the royal family moving temporarily to Oudong) in 1866-70 during the reign of king Norodom. Aaron had a change of heart and decided to wait outside. Although I was disappointed he didn't join me I don't think he missed too much of the palace, since most of it was closed to the public due to an ambassador visiting. However the silver pagoda adjoining the palace was beautiful. Building in Royal Palace Around the edge of the sliver pagoda grounds was a colourful, i...

26th November - 2nd December One of our fellow volunteers from the Katelious Group , Ueli, is now working on a project, diving and cleaning the corral reef, on the coast of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Seeing as we were in the country we wanted to stop by and catch-up. Unfortunately we missed each other, since Ueli is on an island without internet access, so he didn't get our email in time and we didn't know which island he was on. However Aaron and I enjoyed some beach time anyway. Later we were pleased to get an inspiring email from Ueli in which we learnt that he's found a new passion. Through his hard work he's been promoted from a volunteer to staff, in charge of reef surveys, some of the volunteer training and writing a list of Cambodian species for the government!   In Siem Reap when we purchased our bus tickets to Sihnaoukville we were told we would get a minibus to the main bus station, where the bus would leave at 7am. From there it should take about ten hour...