You'll Never Walk Alone...

It's seems to be the fashionable thing to do these days, which makes me the follower, and people such as Dan and Charlie the pioneers (at least in my knowledge)...


Yes, I'm talking about the phenomenon that is going to a major football (soccer) match in the land of your travels, and cheering as though you have the team's song tattooed across your chest. In my case, it was a game between Vietnam and Indonesia as part of the Olympic qualifying rounds. What's that I hear you ask? Yes, granted, not superpowers in the world game, but on a cold and raining night in Hanoi, that's not what the 40,000 odd supporters thought!


As with most adventures, there's a good story to go with it: and yes, it's true that unplanned events always end up more interesting, and this is a fine example. We learned of the game on the morning of match day, and so headed off in search of tickets. Luckily we were able to get some scalped tickets at only marginally above face value - so the stage was set. Keeping the best interests of fellow travellers in mind, we'd purchased 6 tickets - two for Ros and I, two for some Kiwis we'd been travelling with for a few days, and two with the hope that we'd run into other similar minded travelling fans eager for a bit of impromptu sporting madness.

Alas we arrived at the ground without allocating the last ticket, so we had to try and scalp it at the gate - a challenge given that we had competition from about 20 other scalpers who had the advantage of actually being able to speak Vietnamese. After some interesting negotiations (which generally consisted of us holding out our ticket, and someone asking something of us in their native tongue before walking of in an amused state), we hit paydirt, and cleared the ticket at a negligible loss. And so off to the game.

It's fair to say that the Vietnamese shat all over the Indonesians who were persistent and scored an equaliser in the 88th minute in response to an early goal from the home team. The stage was set for a hero, and so extra time arrived with an anxious crowd on the edge of their seat.

But then A MOMENT OF GLORY. A chip to the top corner of the net and in response two waves of emotion rush from the stands to the pitch in celebration of a victory well deserved, but almost passed....

One side of the grandstand, seated under "Uncle Ho (Chi Mihn)"

Ros in her "Vietnam Victorious" head band, and me in my Vietnam shirt