Today after breakfast with Nick and Hai I went to My Le shop and sat with Gunther for a while. Have I mentioned it's hot here? 34 feels like 48 and thats no joke. Le showed me where the key was so I went inside and grabbed a bottle from the fridge, yellowish water, so I thought. It said mineral water on the bottle so I thought it was some spring water with a very different taste. I must be a very literal or is that linear person as I swigged away at it wondering where the hell they got this strange tasting mineral water from. The funny thing was I knew I had tasted it before but I couldn't put my finger on the taste. I drank the whole bottle before Le got back from her family breakfast and when she saw what I was drinking she cracked up laughing. Her mother had sent down their very special sticky rice wine from Pleiku. Then Hai and the girls arrived and heard the story from Le and had a good laugh. My head was spinning, as my friend Lydia says "for a smart man you can be very stupid". 

Caught up with Kiwi Keith at Banana Split and of course Nick had to tell him my embarassing wine story. The wine is basically not a wine it's more of a distilled spirit and it packs a punch. 

Much talk with Keith about the number of hotels and resorts being built and according to his evidence the locals seem to think the boom is never going to end. The price of land has skyrocketed and is being bought up mainly by people from Hanoi and Da Nang. I failed economics at school but I think I can say that every boom is followed by a bust. "After the rise the fall, after the boom the slump, after the fizz and the fat cigar, the cigarette and the hump". That says it all.

OK lets get down to the nitti gritti of the sexual mores of the Vietnamese, the more entrenched conservative traditional ones anyway. And what could be more fascinating. When a Vietnamese woman becomes pregnant, no sex from then on. After the baby is born the woman spends three months in bed, no showers, no sex, no nothing. So the husband has to go without for maybe 9, 10 months. Is it any wonder marriages break up early? This info comes from the resident Sexologist Keith. I will ask My Le if this is true and report back.