In transit

So a nice gentle flight ensued from HCMC to Kuala Lumpur, allowing me to watch games 3 and 4 of the World Cup I was en route to during my medium length stopover. I immediately found seemingly the only bar in KLIA that showed football and ordered some overpriced beer and food to sustain me as South Korea dismantled Greece and Argentina edged Nigeria. Found myself sat next to an English teacher from Yokohama who plays in the Tokyo Metropolitan league, so i got the lowdown from him on football in Japan and enlightened him on "Bong Da".

Unfortunately I had to fly during the England USA game, but my little blue friend and the tickets I collected upon arrival at Cape Town International rendered that a minor irritation (combined with the fact that Robert Green's blunder will be repeated on TV for eons - much to my delight).

Collected by my host family Kotze, we made the way to Stellenbosch, the Afrikaans University town that I had visited on a whirlwind tour of the Western Cape, on a day's respite from my penguin squeezing adventures 5 years ago. Coming from stuffy Saigon, the first thing I noticed was the temperature, and how insufficient my wardrobe is for the coming couple of weeks. I'm basically having to wear all the warm weather clothes I have at once, so I'm fooked if I get soaked.

Helping the culture shock to remain at a minimum, is a very accommodating host family including three cats, to soften the blow of leaving my own two behind.