Tonight I caught up with Ba for the first time on several weeks. He brought his guitar over for me to borrow for a while... so generous and thoughtful. I haven't played much for years, so I will be grateful to be able to search the net for lyrics and chords for songs I know!
He has been studying flat out and I was very impressed by how much his English is improving. He took me to a really nice Coffee Lounge on Quán Nam Street near Mai's school. We sat outside and a few of his friends dropped by and joined us for a while.
Doesn't this look inviting? It has been raining heavily here in the mornings, so the evening was cooler than usual. It was very pleasant again to sit in the cool of the evening and talk.
We talked about many things, including the fact that in Vietnam if you want to get a job you have to pay many millions of dong to the managers/owner. This money is usually borrowed from family and then has to be repaid over the following year(s). What a blight on a culture where this is considered normal and everyone I talk to feels powerless to change it.
I won't even mention the fiasco over renewing my visa...
Cultural differences aside, we had a lovely evening and a couple of hours just flew by...
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