Eventually the 'music' stopped

THURSDAY 31^st March

The drums, and music began again with gusto at 5:30am!!! Yup, it was very loud, very raucous... and it continued, interspersed with speeches, until the Brass Band arrived after lunch.  They were all decked out in white, and there were at least 20 of them. When they started to play I ducked downstairs and shot a shot video.

The floral tributes have started to overflow up the laneway.

The Procession umbrellas were ready to go

At about 3pm I heard the Brass Band marching off down the street... apparently that’s when the procession with the coffin headed out. The mournful dirge they were playing was quite moving.

On the way to work, I ran into Dave, who was returning from the wedding. He was pretty ambivalent about it... being the only westerner, everyone wanted to have their photo taken with him, dance with him, and drink shots with him. When I got to work, Linh was saying that the bride cried a lot... by custom, she leaves her family and becomes part of the groom’s family – serving and waiting on the in-laws. She comes from a small rural community, so I guess life will be very different for her in the big city.

After work Eathen, Amie, Sarah and I  had dinner at a new restaurant, down a side road on the way home – Trong Thanh. The houses near-by are very up-market, and it is obviously aimed at the wealthier clientele. The food was pricey, and I only had 72,000D left (pay day today...) so I had Russian Salad (a kind of potato salad) and coke. They had a wall of fish tanks with the sea-food from the menu on display – turtles, huge lobsters, fish, eels, prawns and shellfish I didn’t recognise. You can point to your selection for dinner and know it’s fresh!

It was so nice to wake up this morning to birdsong and the odd hawker instead of funeral clamour!  I have 2 classes tonight to prepare for, but it no longer takes me over 2 hours for each class... I’m down to about 60-90 minutes... so I’ll read / watch TV / do my washing / talk to Katie this morning.

I got my pants back from the tailor, and she has done nothing other than add a back pocket to the front of the black pair. I’m really not sure it’s worth the bother of taking them back again... it’s certainly not worth having Sun as my intermediary, she’s not managing to get results!  I wore the grey ones to work last night and they are very uncomfortable. The only good thing is that my tops are loose and long so they cover up the awful mess around the waistband... but the low crutch and the legs too short?... not much I can cover up there!   Ah, Vietnam!