I left my tennis rackets behind when I left for Vietnam. As a matter of fact, I think Jerry got my tennis bag. :-) There are some tennis courts here, but they're not public courts and it can be expensive to play. So today I went and bought a badminton racket and went down to Linh Đàm park with Nam and Thế Anh to play.
Since so many people like to play, what happens is you just find a net and wait. When a team loses you can rotate in with your partner. Thế Anh and I were partners and won 3 games in a row. :-) He's a quick little guy, and I picked up the game pretty quickly. Of course, next time we'll play against people that know what they're doing and get slaughtered, haha!
Badminton is so popular here, you can find people playing it everywhere. It's a common sport used to exercise in the morning as well. You'll find many people out playing at 6 AM, especially older ones. I didn't realize how competitive it was until I saw a match on television last year. It's a big deal! Badminton is the fastest racket sport in the world, with shuttles reaching speeds up to 206 mph (332 km/h). Now I'm wishing I'd asked chị Hồng for some lessons!
Yay! Jeff found a new sport to replace tennis! =)
ReplyDeleteBadminton is pretty fun, it's amazing how fast those shuttles fly. I always end up with broken shuttles :(
At least they're cheap over there!
great now when you visit you're going to correct our badminton grips
ReplyDeleteSo if white men can't jump what can't pale men do? Oh that's right they can't play badminton!
ReplyDeleteI have played tennis against Jeff and let me tell you he get's mad at anything you do. In fact he pulls out the rule book and quotes from it on every service, so I can only imagine what the friends over there will get. "No no no, you can't serve with your mouth open!!!" I can see the headlines now... Pale American Assults Local With a Badminton Racket...
No Chris, I wouldn't want to damage a perfectly good badminton racket...
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