I’ve moved my blog to http://hochiminhandme.blogspot.com/ for some reason I couldn’t access WordPress blogs either from home or work so rather than continue I’ve switched providers. Same stuff just a different place.
It had to happen, I couldn’t just sit around all the time drinking iced coffee and eating noodles, I had to go to work. It’s a gentle start for me with three days of induction followed by a week of materials development and preparation before meeting the students and starting to teach them.
The university is 15 minutes walk from the Sky Gardens tower block complex of apartment buildings in the Phu My Hung residential district where I’m living. Its a collection of modern buildings surrounded by brown-watered, sludge-filled creeks that will eventually find their way into the Saigon River. The creeks fill and empty in tune with the daily cycle of heavy rain that falls at this time of year and maybe the tide, as we are not that far from the sea. The buildings are fronted by the busy Nguyen Van Linh toll road that brings traffic out of the narrow chaotic city streets towards the more open southern extension of the city. It’s a six lane highway with four of them full of motorbikes.
I’ve joined a large group of American, Australian and English teaching staff administering to 3000 or so students studying English and Business and, in a slightly randomly twist on the usual subjects, a bit of Art and Design. The well healed of HCMC send their sons and daughters here to get the coveted English education that will hopefully one day give them access to the wide world of foreign business opportunities. The main building is 5 stories high with a pair of wide, sculptural looking external stairwells giving access to the floors. The English department has taken over the top floor and some of one of the two outlying buildings placed across an adjoining lawn. We all have a desk, there’s a room full of books and photocopiers and stationary. Its clean, modern and open-plan all so very very different from the crappy London language school I was used to in my previous job.
Beyond these buildings is the new sports complex with gym, sports hall and, worryingly, the medical centre. Surely sport and illness are separate things and cannot be in the same building. I’ll be joining the gym soon and be pounding the treadmill again during my non work hours, in the pointless pursuit of physical fitness. I’ve read in ‘The Word’, HCMC’s glossy, expat advertising magazine, that a cricket club operates out of the university for us colonial types so I might give that a look too.
Because we are in Asia a large part of the complex is given over to food outlets where we can buy our breakfast and lunch and snacks in between. There’s an indoor air conditioned area and an outdoor tent-like construction serving foods of the region and sandwiches too. Eating is a constant event, I can’t detect any obvious meal times, you just have what you want when you want it and nearly all of it comes with chillies. There’s little wheat or dairy so people don’t get as fat as we do in Europe. Except the children who have developed a taste for KFC and burgers.
On my way home each day I come across a woman sitting by the side of the road with a bag of snakes for sale and it brings me back to the reality of Asian life. They can build big roads and modern clean universities and apartments but the people here will still crouch down next to the traffic selling weird stuff to the passers-by if they can.
I’ve been shown an architects model of the completed campus, an array of neat glass blocks circled by blue water and miniature trees. It is small and perfectly formed, the Kylie Minogue of universities and a charmingly pleasant place to live and work.
Finally a post to my new blog and the big news is things are looking good. I arrived last Friday after a long and tiresome journey from Heathrow. As the tube rumbled slowly towards the airport the knot in my stomach started to loosen its grip and I began to relax after a few tense weeks of organising and fixing my flat prior to leaving for a year in Vietnam. It is a long but uncomplicated ride from zone 3 at the Eastern end of the Piccadilly Line to the airport. After a while, as the commuters left the train I got a seat and, resting, willed the tension of the last weeks to dissolve. There’s nothing like leaving for a long time to put petty domestic concerns into perspective.
The inevitable flight delays meant a free meal voucher given by the airline which I blew on a fancy seafood stall in terminal 3, wine and Guinness before finally leaving 4 hours later feeling relaxed and slightly mellow. The flight was full, the entertainment meagre but we passengers endured somehow and emerged 10 hours later in Bangkok and then onward to Saigon, or HCMC depending on your political preference. I’m inclined to the more modern HCMC. Uncle Ho didn’t fight for the independence of his country and get a city name after him for no one to call it by its new name. A very nice man picked me up from the airport, placed me in the front seat of his monster of a Toyota 4X4 and barrelled his way through the crazy city traffic towards our destination, The Vien Dong Hotel, Phu My Hung, District 7, HCMC.
If you’ve read my previous blog covering my holiday earlier in the year you’ll know that I was impressed by HCMC’s energy and I still am. There was constant noise, mad traffic, narrow cluttered streets and bright lights as we made our way through District 1 in the centre of the city. There was grubbiness, potholed roads and confusion in District 4 as we headed towards our more peaceful destination, the southern suburb.
The university is south of the city in District 7, modern, open and quieter than downtown but still distinctively Vietnamese this is where I will most probably end up living. I could go for the comfort and convenience of this suburb with the university a 15 minute walk or 5 minute motorbike ride from the hotel or I might opt for the more ‘authentic’ atmosphere of the city centre. Local opinion amongst teachers seems to be in favour of convenience over commuting and I’m tending that way myself. The local areas might be a little bland but it has bars, restaurants, a pool and what need do I have of excitement and nightlife? I’ve posted a video of the place which is here if you want to take a look. Its an attractive place with a grid of well laid out roads filling rapidly with apartment buildings, villas, hotels, restaurants and shops as the area grows. The Saigon river snakes greasily through the city and this area has a network of murky channels and canals draining into it. This was probably a swamp a few years ago but now its been taken over by the modern world and Vietnam’s economic progress.
After catching up on my missing sleep I went out the following day and found 3 other teachers all living within a few streets of the hotel and we have been trying the local eateries and making tentative trips out and about getting ready for the next week when we turn up at the university and start work. I have a feeling that this will be a good place to be.
Previously on WordPress I wrote about my experiences travelling through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. I had a great time and my blog is still there if you want to read about my trip. One of my thoughts on the journey was to find a place to work during the coming year. Each country had it’s attractions and suggested itself as a place to live. Charity work in Laos reading to children was a possibility and that might yet happened but in the end a university in Vietnam made a generous offer that I didn’t refuse and I’m off at the end of the month. They pay quite well and will put me up in a hotel for the first week but after that it’s up to me where I live. That’s an exciting prospect as I may be able to afford a nice apartment in the centre of the town and hope to learn how to drive a motor bike. If I don’t get mown down in an horrendous traffic accident I’ll blog about my experiences as often as I can.
Before that I have 2 weeks to visit friends and family and sort out my flat prior to it being rented out. It’s going to be a wrench to depersonalise my home after being here for 5 years but it must be done and I’ve made a start with trips to the local charity shops with stuff I haven’t used for ages. I get my visa on Wednesday and have already booked my ticket, one way via Bangkok on the 30th, with no ideas on when or how to return.
my life in Ho Chi Minh City ..... 