The update

Hmmm, so where did I leave off? I guess I never finished up telling about Hoi An, did I? I was hoping to post pictures of all of my beautiful new custom-made clothes, but it looks like that's not gonna work because of the flash drive issues that I'm still having. I ended up getting a brown, shimmery silk dress with a Chinese style collar and a row of dragonflies embroidered under the bust (embroidery not shown in pic); a cotton summer dress; a dray gray silk kimono with tiny flower embroidery; and a corduroy coat with green silk trim. I love all of it! I'll be shipping the silk dress and coat home, but the other items will stay with me and have already gotten some use. :-)

I also did a cooking class on my last night in Hoi An. It was only so-so, unfortunately. The food was good - fish in banana leaves, shrimp spring rolls, beef salad, wontons, and white rose (a Hoi An specialty that's pretty much a dumpling) - but it wasn't nearly as hands on as I'd have liked. We basically just chopped and mixed and didn't do any actual cooking. The course in Chiang Mai was much better.

Quy Nhon was very quiet. I'm pretty sure that I was the only foreigner there right up until my last night. I'd found a guesthouse called Barbara's Kiwi Connection that had a dorm with a bathroom en suite for 50,000 dong (about $2.50). It was already a great price. What made it the deal of the century was that I was the only person in the room for 2 out of 3 nights; I had a huge room with a hot water shower all to myself. I spent two days doing exactly what I said I was going to do. Nothing but lying around on the beach or beachside with a book. I did manage to upload all those pictures that had been hanging out in my camera, but that's the only productive thing I did. I ended up having dinner with my new roommies on my last night. A Swedish girl named Madeleine, a New Orleaner named Ryan, and I went to a seafood restaurant that we'd heard raves about. It was truly a place for locals. No one there really spoke English and although there was a menu, it had the most basic of English words on it and no prices. The three of us just pointed at a few different things and hoped for the best. We had two beers each, salad, grilled shrimp, steamed crab, and a tuna steamboat (hot soup is brought to the table along with a plate of fish and vegetables and you cook it yourself). It was very tasty. And cost less than $6 per person!

The day I came to Nha Trang, I was to meet up with Rhian and Marina who arrived from Hoi An the same day, just a few hours earlier. I stepped out of the cab in the center of town wanting to find an internet cafe so I could find out where they were staying. Purely by coincidence, they were standing right there and we'd met up before my bag was even out of the cab. Today was spent at the beach, tomorrow will be more of the same. On Tuesday we plan to catch an overnight bus to Ho Chi Minh where we will celebrate Rhian's birthday and where I will (hopefully) get a Chinese visa lickety split.