A dog ride, some World Cup, and a bit of insight into Vietnam

It seems that almost the entire world is World Cup crazy right now. I'm not a huge fan but I do like a party every now and then so I am been participating a bit, but haven't actually seen any full game up to this point.

Yesterday morning England was playing vs Mexico and a great many of my local expat friends are from the UK so this one was always going to have a decent attendance. The game was at 7am, which is a bit early for me so when I woke up and the game had been delayed because of a storm that worked out just fine for me.

I did have the issue of my doggy friend not wanting me to leave the house without her so we ate up our reheated leftovers from yesterday and then I strapped her into this harness that I have for her that would enable me to wear her like a backpack.

The first time I tried to put her in this thing she was not really keen on wearing it because she doesn't like being put into things. Over time though she has learned that by putting it on it means that she is going to get to "go fly" on the bicycle or motorbike and she loves both of those things. So she calmly allows me to put it on her these days.

We biked around a bit and then this was also helpful for getting a ton of attention when I went into the bars. Everyone loves a cut situation like this it turns out. I didn't go into the first bar because there was too many people at it and while Nadi does pretty well around people she has two characteristics about her that aren't the greatest in crowds. For one, she is small and could be accidentally stepped on or sat on in a crowded place and I don't want that to happen. The second thing is a bit more dire in that she bites children. Normally there wouldn't be children in the pubs but it was morning, so there were a few of them kicking about. Nadi doesn't seek children out but children seek her out and she has the reaction of "bite first, ask questions later."

I have no idea why she decides that all kids are for bitin' but that is what she does. I tire of telling all parents that my dog will bite their kid and one person said to me "then why do you bring it to the bar?" to which I responded "why are you bringing your kid to a bar?" This is just unnecessary conflict so I'll just take her somewhere else.

The second bar was more my speed and with a lower crowd level

Small place, small crowd, better spot for a dog. When I was walking around the place I noticed some of their window stickers.

I asked the owner why it was that they had these stickers instead of something a bit more official looking and that was when I learned something new about this country. They don't look upon counterfeit merchandise very positively and will punish places quite harshly for participating in it. I was told the cops had visited to check the walls of all bars for anything other than the government approved posters and signs and would remove anything other than official FIFA posters that would of course include a bunch of advertisements for various companies.

But things like "Football Cup" with silly animals are no problem.

England won the match against Mexico in the end and while I would have been ok with a victory by other side, I did like how excited it made my friends that England was the winner. Those boys are seriously passionate about their national sports. I wouldn't say that most of the people I meet from England are particularly patriotic but when it comes to sports they definitely are.

Today we have a game with the USA in it but I am not going to go out for that. I don't know much about it but I do know that people don't really expect America to do very well in the World Cup. I'm not going to potentially ruin my morning with booze for a game that I don't really care that much about and has a great chance to end in disappointment as I believe the USA is very likely to lose to Belgium even though they have a populations of something like Ohio.

I probably will take Nadi out for another bike ride though. She really enjoyed that yesterday.