Our fully furnished and equipped apartment has some strange Vietnamese interpretations of these words.    We have 10 sets of chopsticks, two spoons and two forks.   No knives.   When I mentioned this to the landlord, he promptly produced a chopping board and a cleaver!

Similarly, we have 10 rice bowls, two plates and two mugs, plus teapot, but enough glassware, in every size, to stock a respectable bar.   Obviously, Westerners only drink!

And when you try to remedy deficiencies, you find how provincial Hoi An is.   No respectable sized towels, except one we were offered printed with Teddy Bears, which is obviously a baby blanket made of towelling.  And we have this wonderful extra-length kingsize bed, and are unable to buy sheets that will go anywhere near it.

Obviously. a trip to Da Nang is called for, and the list is growing by the day.

One of the furnishings of our apartment, is a gigantic TV with 125 channels.  That may sound impressive but at least 100 of them are Viet, Korean or Chinese and the 8 sports channels are also not in English.  That leaves Nat Geo Wild, Discovery. Animal Planet and 4 film channels which show exclusively violent action stuff.

However....attached to this monster, is a small box, would you believe, of streamed movies in an external hard drive.  So there are some 2000 of these to choose from.   OK, there are still, Viet, Korean and Chinese (but some of the latter, at least, I know) plus Japanese classics, but for the rest there is everything from The Gold Rush to Paddington and 50 shades of Grey,plus series from TV like CSI and Sherlock and The Game of Thrones.

Among the offerings, we found The Salvation, the Danish western filmed near Joburg, in which Calvin took part.   So we watched it, and he is clearly visible at least twice.   The film, itself, is very grim and unrelentingly miserable, and everyone is very wooden and unemotional.  Not recommended, but of course we had to see it, and Calvin says one of the lead roles has been entirely eliminated and much of the rest truncated, and its still too long an ponderous.

Because this is a tourist town, the Vietnamese tend not to advertise their more weird culinary tastes, but we found one last night which, in addition to "normal" fare, offered pig's brains, pig's ears. jellyfish stew (which, even if I were not allergic, would not be on my list) and silkworm salad.  I could see Calvin's eyes light up but we settled for roast suckling pig and duck curry.   But I have a feeling, he will want to return to sample some of their more esoteric delights.

And here is Calvin engaged in a favorite occupation, drinking Bia Hoi.  This is a freshly brewed beer which sells for ridiculously low prices compared with the imports.  R3.50 is standard but if the outlet is a bit desperate, it can be got for R2.50.  The prices of food on the back wall, can be divided in two to arrive at the Rand price, and then divided by 10 to arrive at the US$ price.

Here I am in our apartment, writing up this blog.   As you can see, I sit at the marble counter which divides the living area from the kitchen, trusty pot of tea at hand.\

Vietnamese coffee has long been a mystery.   It is inky black, but strangely mild.  Now the puzzle is solved.

Apparently the Vietnamese use a fairly low grade of Robusta (they export the best) and dip it in burnt caramel before roasting and grinding.  Hence the midnight look and the faintly chocolate aroma of the finished brew

Moving to a new country, where you do not have the language is always a bureaucratic nightmare and achievements have to be measured in tiny victories each day.   I think  I have had my passport photocopied at least 8 times already.   First there was the guesthouse, then the estate agent, then the landlord for the lease, then the police to register our presence in town, then the notary ( 3 copies -God knows what he does with them all).  Then after we moved in, the landlord borrowed the passports again, for some unspecified reason.

I can understand in a Communist country that the government wants to keep track of the strangers, but, that said, we have no address!   We live down an alley, off another alley (both unnamed), off a boulevard which does have a name.  And our building has no number or other indication of its nature or occupants.  The best one can do if you want to direct a visitor, or taxi driver is to say that we live down the alley between The Little Hoi An Hotel and the Nova Villa Hotel.  Go to the end, turn right and we are the 2nd building on the right.