As we near the end of Season 1, we’d like to take a brief break from blogging about our Tokyo adventures and share some of the untold stories from our time in Vietnam.  I would like to reserve a couple blog posts to pay homage to the people who made our experiences possible, who in effect gave us the material for the final minutes of Season 1.  One of our tenets is that we seek out local adventures, and foreigners can only accomplish such a thing through local friends.

You might recognize these hooligans from Episode 5, where we crashed the Vietnamese wedding in Buon Me Thout…or rather, where the Vietnamese wedding crashed us.  Rob and I shared the pleasure of teaching English classes with them, and Buon on Me Thout was just the first chapter in a long epic of good times and good people.  There were dinners and drinks, and drinks and dinners, and unsurprisingly, almost every time involved multiple rounds of “100%.”

I know it sounds like our time with them was full of drinking…well, frankly, it was, and it was a past-time no one complained about.  I will never forget when Mr. Hanh (below top), one of the primary instigators, exclaimed at the end of one of our big dinners together, “This is fantastic – 2 cultures, with different languages, coming together to laugh and drink.”

But drinking beer isn’t *all* we did.  Mr. Trung (above bottom) treated us to whiskey!  We also went bowling, rode elephants, sang karaoke, and played soccer.   They taught me how to play badminton; I taught them how to play soccer.  We tried to throw a Thanksgiving party; they ended bringing cases of beer, ordering extra food, and even giving us goodbye presents.  Check out our flickr collection for highlights: Students from the Bank

I think Mr. Trung, the owner of both the Bank and the bottle of Macallan, said it wisely and said it best: “Learning English is important, but friends are more important.  You will always have friends in Vietnam.”

It is my sincere hope that they travel to the United States when I am home, and I can show them the time that they showed me.