so where've you been? 10 vietnam; crap at languages

"I'm crap at languages," said the british expat whose hotel I was staying at. "I think it's a national characteristic. Don't you agree?"

No. While cheerfully admitting I've no real facility for picking up languages, I don't think we're so bad. In five days in North Sulawesi, I managed to learn bahasa Indonesia for the following phrases:
Hello, how are you, fine thanks, ok, good morning (7 variants), tasty, looks great (landscape), looks great (women), looks great (men), maybe, excuse me, really?, thanks, every type of food I could find, and happy birthday.

Sat on the prow of a dive boat, I'm practising my pronunciation with Ben, when an american missionary from the south jumps away from the sea spray. "Ohhh, ah git mahself < impronounceable word for wet >."
"See, she speak Indonesian. Is good. You should learn." says Ben.
I ask her. While it's pretty rare for *any* american or australian I've met to speak any other language, she's lived here spreading religious fundamentalism from the motherland for two years.

Later, underwater, Ben signals a request to look at my air gauge. I have 80 bar remaining, and he laughs and snorts (a deliberate show off tactic underwater, because it wastes more air) a double take of disbelief, and points to his own 140 bar of air. On the surface, he laughs about it again, and I ask him how long he's been diving. "Five years."
I point to myself. "Five weeks."

Yesterday was my first day in Vietnam. When I wrote down all the vietnamese phrases I'd tried to use at the end of the day, there were thirty three I could remember without looking anything up. I'm quite pleased with that.

Small steps. That la la.

And then someone explained the pronunciation to me, and I realised there are 45 more letters to the vietnamese alphabet than I thought, and I promptly forgot all 33 phrases, and I realised I will never ever manage this language. Ack.