Silliness

On Friday a new guest arrived at the house, Jessica's friend Crystal. She will be staying with us for three weeks and will accompany us on our trip to Hanoi and Luang Prabang when my mum arrives. Last night we took Crystal to the Taiwanese Commercial Chamber's dinner event, which we had been invited to by Yvonne. Yvonne and Nguyen, another friend of mine, did a Zumba performance at the beginning of the evening. This turned out to be the highlight of what was to be a very noisy and chaotic affair. Earlier Jessica had been adamant that I didn't wear the long black dress I had chosen to wear for the night, and it seemed she was right. The whole evening was a succession of noisy beer drinking and mass on-stage karaoke. "What did I tell you?" Jessica said wearily.

Zumba Gangnam Style

Enthusiastic but noisy karaoke

At the end of the evening we were each laden down with no less than two large plastic bags, a huge giftbag and a heavy cardboard box full of gifts donated by the event's sponsors. All of the products were made in Vietnam by Taiwanese companies, and included baby lotions, sweets, instant noodles, crisps, frozen fish heads and toilet brushes. After arriving home we spent some time going through these things and thinking of who we could pass each item on to.

This morning the three of us went along to Yvonne's Zumba class at the Taipei school for some refreshing morning exercise. Then we headed to the Crescent mall to watch the departure of the annual Saigon cyclo race for charity. We sat outside at an Australian bar and ate lunch in the sunshine while men racing on behalf of Pizza Hut and HSBC zipped up and down on cyclo bicycles.

Crowds cheered at the cyclo drivers passing by...

...but I was more interested in my penne verde