Go Canucks Go!!

With the NHL playoffs beginning last week I had to find a way to watch the games if I could.  That of course was easier said than done.  Hockey obviously isn't very popular in this part of the world and the games aren't even broadcast on satellite in SE Asia so forget going to a bar or restaurant to watch.

So what is an NHL fan to do?  Well I installed a program called Sopcast on the laptop and by checking the schedule at http://myp2p.eu / i've actually been able to watch the first 3 games on the internet.  The games have started between 6-9am so are over early in the morning and haven't interfered with our day's plans too much and Betsy has been right there next to me cheering on the good guys!

The picture quality has actually been pretty good (better than my slingbox, truth be told) with little to no dropouts.  We sat in the garden of our hotel and watched game 2 on Saturday morning and watched the first two periods of game 3 as we got ready to get on the bus to Saigon from Dalat this morning.

We had a 7 hour bus ride today and I was desperate to find out what happened in the game.  At our first rest stop I checked for a wifi signal and actually found and connected to a strong signal but couldn't pull up any pages. I think someone's router needed to be rebooted.

Next try was when we were going through a fairly good sized town at slow speeds I managed to connect to a network briefly and half pull up TSN's homepage where I at least saw the headline "Blues on Brink", "Canucks up 3-0" so I knew they had won.

When our bus stopped for lunch I checked again for a wifi signal and got a strong signal that allowed me to download the podcast for the 3rd period to my IPOD and listen to it (with Betsy) on the bus after lunch.

All I can say is thank god for the Internet!  I am not sure what will happen when we get to Laos, not sure I'll get the same download speeds or wifi access I've gotten in Vietnam!  Might have to change the itinerary if the Canucks go on a roll!