Hi folks. I'm in Hoi An now, as I move down the coast of Vietnam. Another UNESCO beauty. I went to the beach today. Yay! First day at a beach. This one was a nice metaphor for tourism. The hill separating beach from road was decorated with signs advertising a restaurant with the added words "Go to beach." At the top of the hill, the restaurant patio directly in my path offered free chair under umbrella when you buy lunch or you can pay for it. My fellow tourists were laying out in traditional Western swimwear. Not a bad price for chair and I would have stayed there, but I felt like a bit of a walk, during which I noticed that not far down the beach there was a small ?grove? of palm trees under which all the Vietnamese folk were sitting for free. Only thing was on that side of the beach I had to swim in my clothes. Long story short, I ended up spending a couple of hours with some 15 year olds practicing greetings and preliminary questions in English and being fed biscuits. I happened to have some question hearts in my bag (last pack Kat, thanks!!) and they were a big hit: I made the kids read them out loud - "Hot Lips, Email Me," etc - before they ate them. Then - "you want go in beach with us?" - fresh from the sea and off of my guard, I was accosted by a woman selling pineapple. It was sweet how the kids seemed concerned for me as they walked by watching the woman tell me all the reasons why I just HAD to buy some. Then later as I distributed the pineapple, they asked me how much I paid for it and seemed bothered by the fact that I (knowingly) paid 10 times what they would have paid. It's all very complex; contrast the kids' reaction with this short story (sorry, this is long and I haven't even given you any pictures!): A woman walked away in a huff when she didn't like my rebuttal price for her offer to thread the hair off of my legs (effect=waxing) while I sat on the beach. Fed up with being treated (not all the time of course, but too often of late for my sensitive soul) like I'm a bad person for not buying everything that everyone sells -and at their asking price - I asked her, in so many words, "What, are you angry?" Her friend, selling necklaces, replied, "She not angry, she hungry." Whether or not this was true is not the point. (A stone necklace with your Chinese calendar sign for anyone who can figure out what it is and let me know.)