It was a day back in the office for me today. Yes, for the first time in two months I returned to a football ground!

I decided to leave the paper and pen at home, there was no laptop in sight and, for once, I enjoyed a footy match without having the pressures of work.

The game - Vietnam v Japan in the Asian Cup.  The football wasn’t of the highest quality, Japan showed some neat touches as they won the match 4-1, but with Qatar failing to beat UAE, Vietnam progressed to the quarter finals and the country is now absolutely buzzing!

The four of us purchased some “genuine” Vietnam shirts, we accompanied (or was it we were accompanied by?) 16 others to the game and, being Westerners in Vietnam attire, it made us very popular people.

On the way to the ground we were clapped and cheered, on arrival we were interviewed by Qatar TV, in the stadium we had our photos taken by several local supporters, we enjoyed a real carnival atmosphere throughout and both Jason and myself danced around outside the stadium after the game whilst being filmed by the local Vietnam TV station.

We ended the day with some ‘traditional’ local food, Pizza, had a few drinks, had yet more photos taken of us, did more dancing and finally arrived back at the Hostel feeling like local Celebs.  A truly brilliant day. Yet another, I must add in this fantastic country.

Tomorow we head north for a five day tour so the site will be a little quiet until then - sincere apologies!

From sunny Hanoi it’s Jay Sugar reporting for TripRoast.com

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 5:50 pm and is filed under On the move, SE Asia, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.