Saturday 8th October 2011
After 8 straight days of training and matches it was time for a well deserved rest but unfortunately it wasn’t a complete rest day as we had to travel from Binh Duong to Bac Lieu – a 250km journey and you never know how long that’s going to take in Vietnam!!
After working until 1.45am I was up at 4 hours later to pack everything up and make sure our hotel bill was correct – it took the hotel 45 minutes to get it right but after paying up they were still chasing me 4 hours later saying we owed them more!! We all had breakfast together and then at 8am got a taxi to the club expecting the bus to leave at 10am as scheduled. I should have remembered that it’s never that straightforward in Vietnam and at 9.55am we were told we’d have to wait until after the singles matches before the bus would leave. That wasn’t all bad as it gave Mia a chance to watch and analyse the girl’s semi-finals before we left. The plan was changed again at 11.30am and we were told we were leaving in 5 minutes. Our team got on the bus first and as nobody was taking responsibility to pack the bags on the bus I decided I would do it – unforced error on my part there! After doing it for 20 minutes I looked like this:
Glad I packed a spare T-shirt!
And the seats behind where we were sitting looked like this:
. . . and Yes they did fall on my head a few times on the way!
We eventually got away just after 12pm and that was after people from our hotel had arrived at the club and tried to tell me they hadn’t charged us enough for our stay! I wasn’t having any of that and got on the bus and away we went.
After a gruelling 8 hour 30 minute journey, only stopping once, we arrived in Bac Lieu around 8.45pm. It wasn’t a very comfortable trip but Mia’s DVDs and a combination of my singing and Mia’s dancing got us through!!
After meeting our translator for the week we all hit the supermarket to stock up on water, fruit and cereal before having a quick bite to eat for dinner and then heading off to bed for a well deserve nights sleep. It’s good to be back in Bac Lieu – this is one of the best Grade 5 tournaments I’ve ever been too so I’m really looking forward to a great week.
