Vague general update here as I’ve been sick for the last couple of destinations and not been keeping up to date.

Next stop after Hue was a bus journey down to Hoi An. Very pretty old town but with the lurgey coming down I spent a lot of the time in the hotel watching CNN, sweating and reading while Denise went for strolls.

You’ll have a job keeping me from a beer in the evening though and we were still with Jed when we had one interesting moment in a bar on the first night. When we arrived, Jed went up to ask one of the waitresses if there was live music on (as described in Lonely Planet) but was told there was none that night – shame.

Ten minutes later, we’re sat down with our 2-for-1 meths cocktails having a chat when someone from the bar walked up to Jed and held their hand up at him, palm upwards. On it was written a single word:

“Die.”

Now, it bears reminding that Jed is from the other side of the Atlantic and, there being a certain amount of history between the two countries, this isn’t the kind of thing you really want to hear.

“What….does that mean?”

She pointed at her hand again.

“You want ME to die?” (pointing at her hand and then himself)

She nodded her head.

“Er, really?”

She then started making animated gestures towards the dark alley parallel to where we were sitting and again showed him her hand.

“You want me to die down there?”

More head-nodding.

Soooo, she walked back to the bar and left us sitting there looking at each other with gaping mouths. We spent the next 5 minutes drinking, working out a large tip and discussing what possible misunderstanding there might have been in what essentially boils down to a one-word death threat. (I have to confess, I was secretly tempted to ask loudly if anyone knew where I might contact the BRITISH embassy for some vague, non-specific reason).

When we paid up at the counter, Jed had another crack at clarifying the situation which led to the male cashier writing “Die” on a piece of paper and handing it to him with a stony expression. Well, we know how to take a hint (eventually) and moved bars to carry on the night although most of it was spent recapping the events of the night.

But then, a few hours later, who walks into our new bar but the girl with the writing on her hand! She came over to us and Jed decided to take on a bit of fierce resolve and ask her again what it was about. During his questioning I made gun-at-the-temple, head-lolling-on-shoulders actions to help try and bridge the language barrier between them.

Eventually she called over a Vietnamese barman who spoke English and explained that the music in the other bar had to “die” because of the neighbours complaining (hence the dark alley pointing). Oh how we all laughed at the cultural misunderstanding before going to the bathroom to clean up…