We had a few social events in the last week. First, we met a new friend that I made during my visit to Kuala Lumpur. She's an English teacher in Thailand. She and her colleagues came to Saigon last week for a recruitment fair (Many Vietnamese students find Thai universities a good compromise between price and quality.), and Ilene and I got together with them for dinner to talk education. Next trip to northeast Thailand we should have a personal guide to help us connect.Next, we had a little New Haven reunion. Our friend Aly and her colleague Ryan, who work for the Hole In the Wall Gang organization, were here for a few days to plan a summer camp that is nearby. (She has a job that is the envy of all of Westville, traveling to several countries around the world to help organize camps.) We took them to our favorite place at the night market and decimated a couple of grilled red snapper. It was nice to catch up on New Haven gossip and to spend a couple hours speaking straight-up American English at our natural speed.
Last Friday, we went with a friend to see a band that I have loved for a couple years called Dengue Fever. Highly recommended. They ultimately put on a great show, but unfortunately, it was one of those Vietnam things with sketchy details and a lot of discomfort along the way. We had to wait through hours of some kind of battle of the death-metal band impersonators. Ilene eventually gave up and went home without me, and I put my ear plugs in and watched Saigon's body-piercing set party. It cracked me up when one of the bands paused to play an actual melody, the same-old song that we heard every night out on our last trip, "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi. As you can see in the video, it's no less a crowd favorite than it was two years ago.
-Robert
