Rain, rain, rain. It's been rain here for a few days now. It lightens up every now and then but this is rainy season. The temperatures are nice. The humidity is of course through the roof. The rice is going great guns. I see fields bare one day and in full rice growth a few days later. Things grow fast here.

I got cable TV finally. It is costing me about around $11USD a month. I get 73 channels including FoxNews, BBC, Bloomberg and others. Languages include Vietnamese, German, French, Italian, Indian, Thai and English. I have not seen Spanish. When they came to set it up there were 3 guys, a truck and a bamboo ladder. One guy climbed the pole and plugged it in. That took about 3 minutes. Another took the cash. I had to pay 2 months in advance. The third guy stood by and looked good.

The little street I live on has only 4 residents. There are probably 20 houses in different stages of being built but they have been abandonded. This appears to happen a lot here. They will start a building and not finish it but just move on. The houses on my street still have building materials strewn around and scaffolding still up against buildings etc. It looks they were working and someone came by and said "That's it. Go." Nothing is cleaned up and useable materials are just laying there. Now everything is overgrown with shrubs and weeds etc. Refer back to "Things grow fast here." These places look as though they have been abandonded for years.