robinlawrence’s Space

Lawrence kids may not have had a regular routine to their Christmas Days but they have always had variety.  This year we have travelled to a delightful cove in Southern Vietnam (Bai Xep) and stayed at a tiny place that I discovered with Edwin and Trixie in July, called Life's A Beach.  Bai Xep is a small fishing village that has two small scale resorts, resort is too grand a word for the places really, and one larger one that is practically empty.  Life's A Beach is right on the beach, although due to the tail end of a tropical storm we have had very little beach time.  Instead our time has been packed full of reading books and eating great food.

We arrived on the overnight sleeper from Saigon and were picked up by a cheery taxi driver at Dieu Tri station.  The train had left Saigon exactly on time and then arrived exactly in time.  I know that that should not be considered to be remarkable but given that most of the 1800km of the North-South line is single track everything clearly has to run on time or problems mount up very quickly.  We booked five out of the available six sleeper berths in one compartment and found that we were joined by an elderly Vietnamese guy who had booked one of the top berths.  He showed impressive agility to climb up to the bunk and down again in the morning while the train was in motion.  Also in motion on the train was the breakfast trolley from which a bloke sold us hard-boiled eggs, sweetcorn and a sort of steamed rice and pork mince snack served in a banana leaf.  Hot on this guy's heels was the coffee trolley from which was dispensed a fine Vietnamese hot brew.

Whilst we have, in the recent past, jet-setted off to semi exotic locations we have had to make sure that Santa visits in some form or other.  This year that meant small scale packing for parental cases while cramming in various goodies to be opened on the big day.  For some reason Lexi and I both thought that presents should not be wrapped in case of airport security so we found ourselves thankful for a noisy sea as we set to a small wrapping fest late at night on Christmas Eve away from three sets of attentive ears.  All papery rustlings were masked and no problems ensued.

However a little time after "Santa Visited the children's bunk beds" I heard some concerning rustling.  Worried of a repeat of Christmas 2012 I dashed downstairs, we are staying in a rather lovely two storey bamboo hut.  I couldn't see any evidence of small finger tampering nor could I detect the tell tale signs of children feigning sleep so, cautiously I went back to bed and tried to think nothing more of it.

The children enjoyed opening their gifts the following morning, sitting on the balcony.  All of us raised a quizzical eyebrow when Trixie opened a packet of chocolate gold coins, a traditional gift, and neither of the boys appeared to have opened a similar gift.  Immediate protests of innocence were declared by all three children and it was only when Edwin produced a pillow case with three small

holes in and Rupert produced his Santa hat similarly newly ventilated did the penny, not a chocolate one, drop.  Some bold Vietnamese rodents had clearly invaded and munched through the paper, plastic netting, foil wrappers and chocolate coins, leaving nothing but a few metallic scraps.  Good luck to their insides.

Life's A Beach laid on a fabulous Christmas Dinner of roast chicken, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, pigs in blankets and piles of veg and gravy.  They had also made a really good mango based stuffing too.  And this great feast was enjoyed by the hosts and guests alike, with even the resident cheery taxi driver joining in for a plateful.  Followed by cake and presents of biscuits and wine it was a lovely gathering.  All the staff and guests also played a quick version of the radio-active chocolate game after lunch.  Everyone stood round the pool table staring intently at a tightly and shiny wrapped parcel.  Next to the parcel was a set of oven gloves and a die.  The aim of the game was of course to unwrap the present but in order to do that you had to roll a six, put on the oven gloves and get on with it.  No easy task, but one that was much enjoyed.

And then much later it was time for a film.  The Great Escape is more Boxing Day fare so we persuaded the hosts to find an internet copy of It's A Wonderful Life and Clarence did get his wings.

The Lawrence Clan are back in Vietnam for another experience / holiday and all is well.   Currently we are in Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, depending on who is asking.  When I brought Edwin and Trixie here in June we all felt that our trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels was an all too brief experience and so we were keen to go again, and explore the place more thoroughly.  Instead of joining an organised tour we hired a car and driver to take us to the less visited Ben Douc centre and somehow managed to get on to a tour run by an excellent guide.  (All things considered it certainly worked out better value travelling this way.). As well as being informative about the tunnel network of 250km, day to day life, above ground versus below ground happenings he also managed to infuse his tour with gentle humour, not easy when working in a different language and in a place full of grim history.  

The tunnel designers and diggers were an ingenious lot, creating a three level system, interspersed with meeting rooms, kitchens, operating theatres and ventilation shafts.  The smoke filtration arrangements were cunningly designed to prevent cooking smoke from being detected by aircraft.  The ventilation pipes were disguised as rocky outcrops and littered with cigarette butts belonging American soldiers, who had carelessly discharged them, only for their North Vietnamese enemy to collect them up and use to confuse sniffer dogs.  Pretty ingenious considering the whole area had been blanket bombed with napalm, cleared of foliage and left as a desert for the South Vietnamese and American armies to patrol and defend.

Probably the most chilling act of ingenuity were the defensive booby traps inside the tunnel systems.  Reasoning that the meeting / planning room in the tunnel complex was a major target for attack the tunnel makers put booby traps, filled with sharp bamboo in the four corners of the room so that any offensive invaders entering would immediately back into the nearest corner to take up the most effective shooting position, as per their training.  The attackers would then soon find themselves falling into a deep pit and impaled on bamboo.

The tour today did make me ask myself this entirely reasonable question: if the level of ingenuity that went into the design and building of Cu Chi could have been combined with the same ingenuity that brought napalm into the world and then that collective ingenuity applied to diplomacy could the whole sorry conflict have been prevented?

On a more cheery note Ho Chi Minh City is still bustling with life and energy and we had a splendid dinner this evening.

Step One: decide where to drill the hole.

Step Two: drill the hole.

Step Three: finish.

Simple.  Easy.  Nothing to it.

If only things were that easy in the real life of an anonymous  family living in an un-named location in, well, an Asian country.  This family, whoever they are, have two zircon units in their downstairs living area and both work wonderfully,  except for the unit that doesn’t.  That unit always leaked all over the floor ten minutes after it was switched on.  Consequently the family chose not to use it.

That was until one day when the family decided that the unit really should be made to work properly rather than leak. The family took the sensible decision to contact the housing estate management office for advice and the office sent round the resident technician.  The technician said it was the landlord’s problem and it needed repairing because the unit was leaking.  If only the family had been able to come to that brilliant observation too.  The family considered describing the technician in terms of being a chocolate teapot, but decided against it.

The family asked an aircon expert to come and clean the unit, and others, which the aircon expert did.  This expert also worked out that the poorly unit was leaking, but because it needed a new pipe to flow outside the house it was a problem to be solved by the management office.  

The management office promised to talk to the landlord.  Months went by.  Nothing happened.   The management office clearly did not contact the landlord.  The family did not use the poorly aircon unit.  

Around one month ago the family contacted a proper aircon expert, a bloke who knows how to do things properly (not in the gangster / mafia sense) and he finally worked out the problem.  The proper aircon expert worked out that the genius who designed the house had thought it was very unsightly to have outflow pipes on the outside of houses and so had decided to embed the aircon outflow pipes inside one foot thick concrete walls, this making repair on possible by knocking down large parts of walls.  A design genius, clearly. Running short of piping the installation genius had not connected the aircon unit up properly to the outflow pipe.  The proper expert diagnosed fitting a new outflow pipe, inside the house and then installing (after drilling a hole) a low-level outflow pipe to the outside drain.

All that had to be done was get approval from the management office to drill a hole.  Yes you did read that bit right… get permission from the management office to drill a hole.

The proper aircon expert arrived to undertake the work on Sunday only to be told that the rules, known as Policy (capitalised due to the way in Policy is bestowed on lowly human beings by powers beyond the understanding of mortals) did not allow drilling on a Sunday.   Incredulous the family asked when Policy did allow drilling.  Apparently the good people of Desa Park City could drill to their hearts content between the hours of 9.00am and 3.00pm, six days per week, but never outside these hours.  Policy dictated so.  But the family’s aircon expert could not come to house between those times.  Stalemate.  Drilling could not be done.  Policy.

Somehow or other, thanks to filling in of various forms, complex logistical arrangements, rictus grins and not telling various characters where Policy should be shoved, the hole, approximately two centimetres in diameter, was drilled and the job was finished.  Not before the management office insisted, once again, that any drilling be completed before the afternoon drilling curfew.

So that family now have two fully functioning aircon units and the correctly drilled hole in the right place.  And what have the family learned?  Well the importance of doing the best job possible in the first place (note to house designers and builder the world over and Desa Park City), the local drilling Policy and that the world inhabited by the management office folk is only a short distance form the world known to many as “real life.”

PS.  One of the members of this anonymous family is very tempted to buy their first ever drill plus a large pile of rocks and spend six hours each Saturday drilling away for the shear hell of it.

I am happy to accept that the pen is mightier than the sword and long may that be so.  But as a Drama teacher and parent I am probably more convinced that the spoken word can often be even more powerful.  Yes, ok, playwrights do have to write and then those words are performed but in Chateau Lawrence words, in their spoken form, often create powerful reactions.

Selective deafness is as well-known a phenomena and often results in an added ailment of instant, short-termed  dumbness.  Phrases such as “Time to go and get showered” appear to be outside of children’s auditory range and induce an almost zen-like concentration on the task being undertaken by the child at the time, be that staring at the television, doing homework or fiddling with some non-descript object.  Other phrases that cause similar reactions are “Who is coming shopping with me?” “That stuff needs taking upstairs” and “Whose pile of rubbish is this?”  

Recently Lexi and I have noticed that several words or phrases seem to have anesthetic qualities to them.  A few days ago I asked one of the Lawrences what homework they had (I have long ago stopped asking “Do you have any homework?” as that question often causes the grunt reflex to manifest).  This homework question almost instantaneously caused the off-spring in question to be struck down with exhaustion meaning that the only thing they were capable of doing with any degree of success was lying on the sofa and yawning.

Probably the most surprising language stimulus-response / phrase-reaction is to the phrase “washing up time.”  This often causes all three Lawrences to break out into a form of frenzied busyness.  Moments after hearing the question, which, curiously, none of them appear deaf to, Edwin has been known to walk from place to place looking for things that have suddenly taken on the greatest of importance.  Rupert on the other hand seems immediately to need to attend to urgent matters in areas of the house other than the kitchen and utters the phrase “I am just  / I just need to….” and before anyone can become wise to what he needs to attend to he has vanished.  Trixie on the other hand has a more biological reaction.  The washing up statement brings about an immediate toilet urge in her, the toilet in question being as far away from the kitchen as possible.  So immediate is this response I would suggest that doctors try using it with severely constipated patients.

It is equally curious how there are very different reactions to questions such as “Who would like to try a piece of Daddy’s birthday toffee?”

Yes that's right Malaysia has been granted an extra day off.  And it is a day for celebrating.  Celebrating the successes of the Malaysian team of competitors and their medal tally at the SEA Games which came to a conclusion on Wednesday evening. Eleven South East Asian nations did sporting battle on the athletics track, rattan ball court, billiards table, swimming pool and many other places too.  And as a result of those encounters gained lots of medals, so many that the dear leader decided we all deserved a day off.  I reckon it was the combined shouts from Edwin, Rupert, Trixie and I of "Come on, Luth!" to the Malaysian runner in the 3000m steeple chase that really tipped Prime Minister Najib over into the "Give 'em a day off camp" and that his decision had nothing to do with the upcoming elections.

My school, being very law abiding, has sent out emails to all staff and parents sharing the news of the official lie-in on Monday and has said that it will be business as usual on Tuesday, after our extra day off.  Splendid.  While I am disappointed, genuinely, not to be teaching my year twelve class I am over the moon at not having to deliver the Student Well Being lesson, formally known as Positive Education, formally known as Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE).  Such lessons have always been the least anticipated of the teaching calendar for me.  Currently they happen eight times per year (hopefully only seven times this year - Yes!!) which is certainly better than once per week in my first school, donkey's years ago.   In those dark days heads of year and those who were not blessed with a tutor group hid away, prayed they were not put on cover and kept as low a profile as possible, while form tutors and kids battled to be interested in lesson such as "Personal Finance 3" (one I remember vividly as I and my group of PHSE detesting kids had steamed all the meagre resources in the book in the first half of Personal Finance 1.  Goodness knows how we got through the time that day.)

But I digress.  No Student Well Being lesson for me to teach on Monday.  Marvellous.  Thank you to all the Malaysian athletes.

I write these words from the rather nice Flora Bay 1 (nothing like Personal Finance 1, as far as I can remember) on the largest Perhentian Island, off the east coast of Malaysia.  There are a lot worse places to be when you find out that you have just gained an extra day's holiday although there were some thought provoking incidents in getting here.....

We had originally booked to fly from Kuala Lumpur's Subang Airport to Kota Bharu at 1855 on Wednesday, giving us plenty of time to leave our schools and travel, enjoying the Merdeka Day holidays.  The airline decided that it would make things a bit more fun for us by changing the departure time to 1700, which meant a mad dash rather than a leisurely pootle.  We did it.  

Next thought provoking moment was on arrival at the airport in Kota Bharu when we saw a poster exposing the garb that Muslim women should be wearing in the area.  The annotated poster showed a vertically sliced 50/50 arrangement with the left hand side showing the frowned upon garb and the right hand side showing what was encouraged.  Apparently Muslim women in the area should make sure that their head scarf cover not just their head but also their shoulders and should end at around navel level, arms should be fully covered and legs should be fully covered with a floor length full skirt.  Finally feet should be be-socked inside sensible shoes.  I know that I am very much an outsider in terms of all religions but for a religion to specify what its followers should wear and in what style does seem to be a bit daft.  It also seems to be unfair that only one sex should have their clothing styled and enforced for them by higher powers.  If it is so important we that women wear cloth cut in a certain way then surely male followers should cut their cloth in the same way?

I had booked to stay in the glorious sounding Rayan Sofea hotel for one night before our morning ferry to Perhentian and so a very helpful taxi driver dropped us off there and even offered to take us back to the port the following  morning for much less than I had expected to pay.  Rayan Sofea had five floors, but owning to it being pretty much deserted only one was in use.   It was convenient to get to being located, as it was, right next to a very busy main road.  The main road was much favoured by the local hoon population who celebrated the upcoming Merdeka Days by riding their motorbikes as loudly as they could along the road.  Combining that with the fragrant odour of smelly drains, an electronic birdsong noise each time the main door to the reception was opened and then  an over-enthusiastic imaam summoning people to the first prayer of the day art 5.30 am it is safe to say that neither Lexi nor I slept like babes.

We had all had a mighty dinner though.  We found an place advertising seafood and four women weighed down with boots of materials persuaded us that we should sample "Shelled Out" for RM50.  We fully shelled out the cash, not being entirely sure what we had paid for and sat down.  One of women laid at white coloured  dustbin bag on our table and served us all a large portion of rice (on the bin bag) and then moments later another woman arrived with a large saucepan of shell fish in a thick dark brown sauce on the middle of the bin bag.  Dinner was served and off we went, enthusiastically extracting fruits du mere from shells and getting covered in brown sauce in the process.  The begged for spoons did help loads.  At the end of the meal the place did look a bomb had hit it and the kids were duly covered.  It is impressive where brown sauce can end up.  

Final news to report was getting cross this morning before getting on a ferry to Perhentian.  We had to pay an environmental charge to be allowed into the national park area, which I have no problem with.  The thing that made me cross was that Malaysians had to pay RM5 and foreigners RM30.  Dual pricing stinks.  Lawrence's have worked In Malaysia for five years now and have paid loads of tax and continue to pay loads of tax, again which are happy to do.  What annoys me is that it is nonsense.  It is not beyond the wit of any planner with sense to work how much is needed to run the national park area each year, divide it by the annual number of visitors and then work out a cost per visitor from there.  

Such a task will become easier soon when the Government brings in a tourist bed tax.  Foreign tourists will have to pay up to RM10 per room per night in tax (in addition to GST).  Malaysian tourists will be exempt from the charge.  Get ready for another rant.  Or maybe their could be PSHE lesson in there somewhere?  Move over Personal Finance 3.  Hello Fair Finance 1.

.A while ago Lawrences bought a car.  It died.  Apparently it overheated massively and died.  The warning lights did not work, the water levels were fine, but it still died.  We had bought it for RM12000 and the repair bill was RM15000.  We accepted RM1800 scrap value and learned that, just like in the terrible "Cars 3," cars can die.

The opportunity then came up to buy a replacement car and so we took it.  The car was duly inspected by our trusted mechanic, given the ok, a price agreed, and that was the easy part done.

Nearly two weeks on we have not taken delivery of the car yet, thanks largely to all sorts of well-intentioned, but hassling protocol.   This is what has happened so far:

I asked at "The World's Local Bank," where Lexi and I have a joint account, for a car loan.   It turns out that this fine institution don't have a Government licence to offer car loans.  Car loan loan licence?  Bizarre.  So Lexi went to the nearby branch of the bank that her salary goes into and asked for a car loan.  Yes they do car loans, but not at that branch.  She was invited to travel over to the other side of the city, Ampang for those with The Knowledge, to meet the bloke who does car loans.  Lexi made arrangements to go to meet the great man, only to discover that he had decided to take the day off.

The next day Lexi, with Rupert in tow, managed to meet Mr Car-Loans and who gave her all the necessary information.  Thanks to Lexi's exhaustive research she made sure that when she met Mr C-L she had a copy of her contract from school, her passport, a photo of the car reg document, her last three payslips and print outs of her bank statements.  Mr C-L agreed to consider Lexi's request and promised to send her a whatsapp message when he had finished his deliberations.  

Several days went by.  No news from Mr C-L.  Was he taking another few days off?  Were there top level board meetings taking place to examine the evidence?  Were character witnesses being sought?  Lexi had also been asked to provide details of a referee who could vouch for her good character.

Eventually Mr C-L sent Lexi a message to announce that 70% of the car loan had been approved as policy dictated that the buyer had to provide 30% of the purchase price themselves.  "Policy."  That great gift from the gods that is blessed upon humans from on high.  Only the mightiest can make policy and mere humans are not enlightened enough to even be allowed to question it.  We could manage to get the 30% together.

Fine let's get on with it, we agreed. 

But if only things were that simple.  Car loan agreed the next stage of bureaucracy kicked in.  Transfer of ownership.  This first requires the buyer to get the car inspected by the authorities.  It is a little unclear exactly what the inspection entails.  It might be to do with road-worthiness, but then a colleague of mine managed to get her aged  charabanc passed with flying colours so it may only be a cursory process.  There is of course a sticking point: window tinting.  Malaysia is a hot tropical country where cars, people and life gets hot and bothered easily.  A sensible level of car window tinting can help reduce the passenger sections of cars overheating.  However some delightful motorists have taken this to an extreme and have installed presidential-approved tinting that would meet the approval of the top level of mafia bosses and drug dealers.  Consequently a rule forbidding tinting on cars that are undergoing a change of ownership has been brought in.   Most rules are ignored in some way or other in Malaysia and often the ignoring process can be, er, speeded up, er, with the application of money.  Consequently when the agreed car went for its required inspection the subtle window tinting, professionally applied, duly failed, and a price of RM800 was asked for in order for the inspector to turn a heavily tinted eye away from the car and notice nothing.

Readers, I have my morals.  I have negotiated a traffic fine with a policeman who pulled me over for marginally breaking the carefully unsigned speed limit.  His answer of "up to you" when I asked him what the fine was if I paid it on the spot made me chuckle.  He seemed happy to accept my statement "I only have RM50 on me" as fact and only got flustered when I waved the RM50 note in the air.  Apparently the way to pass a negotiated fine is to allow the officer to lean on the driver's door and reach in with a well practised casualness to deftly remove the note with remaining unseen by all the other police officers who are busily leaning against other stopped cars.

But RM800 to not see some tinting?  Come on.  Refusing to oil those wheels of industry meant a further delay in taking full ownership of said vehicle.  Our trusted mechanic had to take the car back to the garage remove the tinting (RM100) and then return later for the car to be inspected and passed, sans tinting.  Naturally the first job we will need to do on the car will be retinting the windows, at a much lower cost than the requested bung.  Oh what fun there is to be had at the interface between policy and corruption.

With loan approved,  car de-tinted and deposit ready all appears good.  The only snag is we have now hit a four day holiday, appropriately Malaysia Day.  The car will eventually become ours and the sellers will eventually get their well-deserved cash but this is not a process to be rushed and should only be taken on by the stoic or idiots who manage to buy cars that die.

It is a very nice place to be.  Currently kids and I are in Bai Xep, near to the city of Quy Nhon, which you could loosely say is in the South seeing as it is only 11 hours by train from Ho Chi Minh City.  The last three days here have been thoroughly lovely given that the bay is beautiful, the sea warm and the place that we are staying in is a two storey bamboo place where we can be lulled to sleep and woken up by the sounds of the sea.  Children have both enjoyed their extended time on the beach and Trixie particularly enjoyed her sunset balcony view with accompanying mango smoothie a couple of nights ago.  

One very nice feature of the place that we are staying in are the 6.30 dinners.  It might immediately give the impression of boarding houses of the 1950s and that Michael Palin film set in Southwold but our experiences here in Bai Xep have been very different.  Sitting around a length of trestle tables eating self-assembly dinners (fish steamboat / clay pot barbecue / posh springs rolls) watching the sunset and chatting to others has been very pleasant indeed.

Drinks with views have been a bit of theme of the trip so far.  Trixie and I enjoyed a morning coffee (mango smoothie for herself) while staring at Hanoi Cathedral and discussing Roman numerals and Edwin experienced his first iced coffee thanks to a stop at Danang station.  He had said the previous day that he had really enjoyed his sip of mine and wanted one of his own.  Fortunately for me this coffee in question wasn't completely to his liking so he attempted to improve it with the addition of a sachet of milo powder.   Coffee and milo purest would both be annoyed by this but Edwin said it was ok.

We also had some rather special at seat catering on our train from Hue to here. I was woken up from a doze by some clattering and bashing and saw a heavy laden trolley of food being enthusiastically  dragged along the carriage.  Seeing as it was midday at the time I agreed to plates for all us and so within seconds the attendants had dished up three plates (fortunately American high school style dinner plates) of soup, rice, chicken, tofu, vegetables, a fried egg and soy sauce.  Seated with this array on my knee I then had to dig out the incredibly cheap 40,000 dong per portion while trying not to wear anymore of the dripping, but tasty soup.  Other passengers looked on with amusement.

We had a break from the sea yesterday afternoon and caught a local bus into Quy Nhon to go to the cinema.  The cinema was showing all the latest big budget releases and having seen Despicable Me 3 (terrible) in KL we opted for Transformers instead.  The Kermode and Mayo film podcast has become a bit of compulsory listening in Chateau Lawrence this year and so we had listened attentively to Mark's rant about the film.  Like my fellow train passengers I had hoped to look on with amusement when watching the film but instead have to report that the film was really bad.  There is, sometimes, some sort of perverse pleasure to gained from watching something terrible, with that pleasure being increased when it is clear that the performers are doing their best.  This, however, was total nonsense from start to finish.  

Later today it is on to Ho Chi Minh City by sleeper train.

It has been another good and busy day in Hanoi for all three of us on our Vietnamese adventure.  Edwin and Trixie are snoozing as I write this and so I have gone out and sat on our big enough, just, balcony to ponder, plan for tomorrow and listen to the sounds of Hanoi as it winds down for the day.  The street we are staying on is very close to the cathedral but is blessedly not one street further back, which is much fuller of backpacker-esque lodgings.  Our street has plenty of small hotels and food shops and is large enough to sustain trade beyond just the tourist needs.  

Coming from Malaysia it is most noticeable that the side streets, like the one we are staying on and alleys off it, are clean.  Ok they are not pristine in the Singapore sense but it was as I sat here and saw a pair of street sweepers walking along, one on each side, pushing their rubbish trolleys and sweeping up as they went that I noticed it.  From people collecting plastic bottles and drinks

 cans out of the bins to tonight's sweepers, separating the rubbish as they went there is a sense that people here are all working hard.  And those freshly swept streets and clean alleys of Hanoi made me think about the side streets of KL.  Like Hanoi the cheap-restaurant food and street-food is great, but it takes a strong constitution to walk behind a food place in Kuala Lumpur and look around the back doors.

Earlier today I got an email from the place that the kids and I will be staying in in Hue.  The email assured me that a room had been reserved for us, always a good sign seeing as we had paid in advance, but I also quite liked their entrepreneurial style too in seeking to offer us various tours and the like.  Again, everyone needs a living.

As a big contrast to this this afternoon the children and I had a walking tour round the old part of Hanoi thanks to an organisation called www.hanoikids.org.  The child protection part of my brain was initially a little concerned by this name but I had found out on Tuesday, from one of its members who we met while eating an excellent street food sandwich, that it is a well-established group that offers city tours for tourists, in English, that allow Hanoi students opportunities to develop their knowledge of English and their home city.  The guides are also volunteers.  So it was that at 2.00pm this afternoon we met a first year international communications student and his partner, a first year finance student, and they took us on a four hour explore of the city.  Thanks to them we discovered The White Horse Temple, a historic Vietnamese house and a bridge that had been bombed and rebuilt 24 times in its lifetime.  We also sampled egg coffee (delicious) and various hot snack foods, all which went down well with kids (and gave Trixie the chance to further enhance her chopstick technique).   Both students were interesting to talk with and knew their stuff.  Both also wanted to learn more about our collected views on the world.  All in all it was a good afternoon, Vietnam (sorry).

The whole concept of volunteering also interests me, especially the idea that the volunteer is the one who gains the most out of the experience.  Their website states that one of the reasons for starting the organisation was to encourage the volunteers to make links with the wider world around them as well as learn about their city.  It also made me think about how much Lexi and I had gained out of our two years of volunteering in Lao.  

Sadly one detail that Vietnam hasn't got spot on just yet is the BBC.  It would appear that the BBC in its various forms is not permitted and so I have not been able to have my daily fix from Ambridge.  

We did it everyone.  We did it.  Yes, we got to the end of another teaching year and managed to survive the hectic last week of term, a week packed deadlines caused by the end of the school year meaning that there can be no more deadlines after the end of the year.

Among all the normal stuff that takes place in a normal school week I also managed to include a leaving dinner with a colleague (I was reminded at 7.00am on Monday of a dinner engagement at 7.00pm in the evening), many hours of rehearsals for the end of years arts Eisteddfod, a staff end of year do, hosting the Eisteddfod and then the fun and games of the last day of term itself.  But we made it.  And it really does feel like a team effort.

It was certainly very nice to have a few days off before our next adventure: a trip to Hanoi, from where I currently write.  So far Trixie, Edwin and I have explored the back streets and lake of the old city as well as watching a water puppet show.  We were though presented with a Lawrence Family dilemma earlier in the day.  Read on.

When she was in year two Trixie had a visit from older students into her one of her lessons.  All perfectly normal and fine.  I remember asking her about it and she seemed to recall that girls from year five came to visit.  I was intrigued by how a year two defined big girls so I made the necessary enquiries.  Following further questioning I managed to establish that small girls, according the Trixie, should be reclassified as big girls at the end of year five.  Simple.

Fast forward to Friday 23rd June, the end of year five, and Trixie is now a big girl, but this presented us with a problem at the airport this morning.   At the departure gate the option for passengers who were business class (not us), disabled (not us), requiring special assistance (I am quite particular about my coffee, but I don't think that was what they meant, so not us) or those with small children being allowed to board first was announced.  But did this party of Lawrences really have any small children anymore?  Trixie, by her own definition, was a big girl, and so we were in a quandary.  Should we reject the opportunity to board first as we were all too old or should we bend the many rules?  Edwin settled it by saying "I have never been first on to a plane before," and so off we dashed before we had time to consider the whys and wherefores any further.

Off to the perfume pagoda tomorrow.

Earlier this year Lawrences had a delightful time on the Indonesian Island of Pulau Weh, off the north coast of Sumatra, in Aceh province.  The Island and the resort that we stayed at were delightful places, so much so that I have gone out of my way to recommend both to lots of people.  Relatives are heading over to the same island and resort very soon based on our collective recommendations.

While we were there preparations for the Indonesian election were well under way with plenty of campaign posters, banners and slogans on display.  Many of the posters included iconographic images to help convey the messages of the party in question.   One particular image showed a woman dancing with a red line through it clearly suggesting that a vote for this party would be a vote for outlawing women wearing dresses from dancing.

Similarly, non electoral signs were on display at some of the beaches where bikinis were apparently prohibited.  I wasn’t going to wear one, but then I reckoned that the sign wasn’t aimed at me.  (The radical in me was tempted though just to see what the reaction would be.)

The news coming from Aceh Province today though is not good.  Two young men being publicly beaten for having consensual sex with each other.  The pictures posted on The Guardian and BBC’s website make for chilling viewing showing a hooded human beating another human in front of a crowd of men who are calling for the cane to be used again and again.  “Lagi!” is the call.  

Not only is this an act of state tolerated barbarism but it is also a complete waste of time.  For centuries, and for a wide range of misplaced reasons, humans have sought to demonise and punish fellow human beings for the simple act of loving who they choose to love.  Shamefully it has taken large parts of the world a much longer time than it should have done to realise that humans have to be treated equally in love and law and now many countries across the world allow adults to marry, co-habit with or simply enjoy partnerships with another adult whom they love regardless of their sex.   

As can be seen from Aceh there is still a long way to go in many areas before real equality is welcomed and then enforced.  The comments from the Mayor of Aceh “We do not hate the people, we just hate what they do,” demonstrate that this small region has a long way to go.

My thoughts are with those two men this evening who appear to have done nothing wrong apart from being themselves together.  

I am a fully committed secularist when it comes to governance and politics and believe that human issues should be dealt with in a humane way free from religious teachings or dogma.  I also support the freedom to practise the peace loving religion of any person’s choice.  For me the two are entirely possible.

Lawrences now have some tricky choices to make about Aceh.  It is a beautiful province and, following the tsunami, continues to need as much support and as many tourist dollars as possible.  Aceh officials publicly beating fellow Aceh citizens makes me question whether it is right to boycott  the province and its economy or whether it is better to visit again and ask the difficult questions that really need asking.