Studying

Well, I’ve finally got around to writing another blog. My main excuse is that I’ve started studying – it’s a part-time online TEFL course that will keep me very busy for the next ten months. The induction course was conducted over twelve days at the British Council school in Kuala Lumpur. The school is spitting distance from the Petronas Towers (it would have to be a long spit but, well, you know what I mean). The towers look absolutely amazing – especially at night.

They kept us fairly busy on the course but I survived. All went well apart from one little glitch on my written assignment. The tutor meant to write ‘You have looked at pron (short for pronunciation) …’ but she misspelled it and actually wrote ‘You have look at porn …’ I rather wish she’d been a little more careful - that sort of thing can get you in trouble y’know.

Now I’m back in Hanoi and studying as hard as I can manage. I have to pop in to work most days of course but I get to the climbing wall a bit and I’m still playing badminton on the street (we’ve found a better place now).

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Around Hanoi

There are a fair number of mausoleums in the world with the remains of past leaders in them. There’s Mao in Beijing and Lenin in Moscow for example and in Hanoi there’s Ho Chi Minh. HCM is highly revered in Vietnam – more so than any other political leader I can think of. His mausoleum seems to be something of a shrine for the Vietnamese to visit - there were far more Vietnamese in the queue than tourists as far as I could see.

The queue was quite long – about 1km - but moved at walking pace so we got in fairly soon. The actual chamber though is just a walkway around the glass cabinet guarded by four soldiers in white uniforms, rifles and bayonets. You’re not allowed to even smile and I suspect they’d use those bayonets if anyone did something silly. So, I walked past in sombre fashion and stayed in one piece. HCM looks like a waxwork but is in fact embalmed. He goes to Russia for a month or so each year to be restored I’m told.

Cameras are forbidden so the best I could do was take a pic from the outside. The square outside is a really popular spot in the evenings when people walk vigorously up and down (and even backwards) for fitness. Keeping fit is a public thing in Hanoi. From about 6am there are folk out exercising in groups, but you’ll see it at all times of day. Elderly folk are often the keenest and can be seen walking vigorously and swinging their arms, doing Tai Chi or playing badminton.

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Everywhere you go you will find people lighting fires in the streets. Often up against walls or trees. It looks a little dodgy to me. At first I thought it was just a rather handy way to get rid of your rubbish, but I have been informed that it is in fact, offerings. Burning ‘lucky money’ is thought to provide money for dead ancestors eg. to buy them a house, car, food. About 20,000 dong (1 dollar) will buy 1 million lucky dollars so they do OK up there. It is only necessary on the 1^st and 15^th of the lunar month however.

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I can now say ‘Toi khong thich an thit cho’ rather well. (I don’t like to eat dog.) I like to get this point firmly established with any Vietnamese who want to take me out for a ‘traditional’ meal – just in case. I went for a meal with my neighbours, Hanh and Khoi, recently. On the way Khoi asked me ‘Have you ever eaten leeches?’  Have you ever been asked that? It was a first for me. I quickly pointed out that this was not something that I would consider eating – too much blood. I prefer my meat well-done. As it turned out we had a variety of rather tasty dishes including mince in glutinous rice with sausage meat on the side, samosas and shredded shrimp pasted onto a sugar cane (and then cut off).

 

I bought my first dragon fruit the other day. They’re quite nice.

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Giving flowers is a bit of a minefield I discovered. A few months ago I had my cooker rings cleaned by our in-house cleaner. She doesn’t usually clean my flat so I thought I’d buy her some flowers to say thank you. It all seemed perfectly reasonable. So, when she had finished, I gave the flowers and off she went. She came back 10 minutes later with the landlord and the flowers in a vase. He said they would look nice on my table and gave them to me. I sensed something was wrong so I just took them and said thank you. I closed the door and wondered what had gone wrong…

I have since found out that flowers can mean a few things … marking the anniversary of the death of a family member or a suggestion that you might like to marry. In this case though, she probably just thought that I wanted a vase. I hope so. I have been told that a nice envelope with about 20,000 dong is the usual way to say thank you in these parts. Must remember that …

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I’ll leave you with a little Health & Safety – Vietnamese style. I watched this chap from my living room window the other day – he’s about 6 storeys up and hanging from a rope ladder. He swung across to the air-conditioning unit and climbed on top of it. The other chap hanging out of the window pulled the ladder away and then threw it back when all was done. Those units have been there a while and I imagine the brackets are getting a bit rusty but he looked as cool as a cucumber.

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Bike photo of the month

The black block bike. These blocks are sold to people to put in their little stove which they use to cook food or brew up on the street.

 Oh, and I have to show you this one …

Summer in Hanoi

As the weather warms up the cockroaches and rats have started to wander around more. It’s quite common to see a rat – often at restaurants if they have an outside area (and sometimes inside too …). I’m getting used to cockroaches though. I don’t consider any of them to be personal friends, but they worry me less than they used to.

As I was in the kitchen at work the other day, getting my sandwiches, I came across a Vietnamese colleague preparing her lunch – rice & maggots. She said they’re very tasty. I must try them one day in the (very distant) future. 

It gets very crowded in the kitchen around lunchtime as it’s rather small and the Vietnamese staff bring in their lunch in Tupperware boxes and stick them in the microwave. The expat staff usually order something from the local sandwich shops. I mix it up with a few of my own sandwiches (not so good), the local sandwich shops (much better) or the cafe at work.

I went for a meal at one of the local street cafes the other night - one of those places that physically drag the customers in (see last blog). I ordered fried chicken. It duly arrived and I started on a piece of unidentifiable chicken covered in batter (using my chopsticks rather expertly I think!!). I couldn't find any meat on it though and was biting for a while. It was only when the eyeball popped out that I realised what I was trying to eat ...

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I decided that, as I was living in Vietnam, it made sense to learn to dive so I nipped off to Nha Trang in April, one of the best sites, and did my ‘Open Water Diver’ qualification. I had a great time – one morning in the pool followed by two out at sea. The instructor set me a range of tricky tasks which included taking my mask off at 7m down and then putting it back on and clearing it. The worst one was the ascent to the surface without your air supply – easy, just make sure you keep breathing out all the way (which is not instinctive I can tell you). I only just made it to the surface without breathing. If I had breathed, I'd have had to do it again.

They start young these days.

We finished with a dive to 18m - the deepest you can go with this qualification. There wasn't much there at our location and all I could think of was that it was a long way to the surface if I needed to get there in a hurry. Well I didn't and now look forward to the next diving trip. Vietnam has a lot of rather nice locations...

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Vietnamese words are extremely short – the longest word that I have seen has seven letters but most have six letters or fewer. Many words are clipped at the end so some letters aren’t pronounced. So, when you say Hanoi you say the whole word but it is actually spelled Hà Nội. and the dot is an accent which tells the speaker to stop. You just don’t get to the end of the word. That’s fine but Vietnamese apply the same rule to English, which is a shame, because it just doesn’t work. The Xe Om drivers say ‘You wan motobye?’ as they have not pronounced some letters. This causes more than a few difficulties when teaching as the students have all sorts of trouble pronouncing words. Some English sounds just don’t exist in Vietnamese so they have never said them and they habitually drop sounds off the end of words, even if they can pronounce them. It makes for entertaining lessons...

In an effort to improve my speaking I have made friends with Duc, a retired Vietnamese chap who wants to brush up his English. He invited Luyen along (who is at my linguistic level) and we have a chat in a local cafe most weeks.

Being much better than the two of us, Duc leads the proceedings and tells us what he wants us to say: "Graham, ask Luyen what he had for breakfast." I then cobble together a few words and quickly get corrected (or sometimes get it right!). Luyen will then ask me something in English and so on ... If I can keep this up, I should see some improvement.

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I couldn’t stand it any longer – I had to walk up a mountain. It was easy enough to choose one – Fansipan (or Phan Xi Pang) is, at 3143m, the highest peak in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia) and it’s well set up for tourists. It requires an overnight journey on a train to get near however. Guess what? The beds aren’t long enough. I arrived at a nearby town at 5am and wasn’t at my best. I’d arranged to be picked up by a minibus though and finally got to a small hotel in Sa Pa, the hub of the tourism industry in the mountains northwest of Hanoi. 

After breakfast I met my guide, we packed our bags and then set off. The first thing Cuong, my guide did, was cut me a walking pole. He assured me I'd need it, especially as the conditions were really wet and muddy. I wasn't convinced but went along with it. Out came the machete and a bamboo walking pole was duly produced in minutes. It turned out he was right - it was really handy on the very steep muddy tracks.

Then it was time to set off. Well, I soon discovered that this was going to be tough. Sleep deprived, and being guided by a mountain goat (he's been up this mountain about 100 times), I had a spot of trouble keeping up. I used to do this sort of thing a lot but not recently so I've lost the edge I fear.

It took us (well, me) 5 hours to get to our luxury accommodation at 2,800m...

The route took us along mountain trails and through forests. The views weren't that great but I was happy enough. I've grown fond of clouds over the years.

Our hut seemed spacious until the next group arrived - about 30 rather chatty Vietnamese walkers + one Aussie. They were in bed by 7.30pm but woke up at 4.30am to start walking again. There was no chance of sleep so we were up soon after and on the track by 6.30am. Another two hours of up followed, often scrambling over rocks. I had now had two bad nights so it was getting tough. We reached the top by about 9am and were greeted by wonderful views (if you like mist).

 It was then a six hour walk back to the starting point. I'd had enough by the time we got there. I slept well on the train back home.

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There are lots of sights in Hanoi. I'm working my way through them one by one. This is the 'Hanoi Hilton'.

Not to be confused with the rather plush hotel of the same name, the 'Hanoi Hilton' was a prison, first for the Vietnamese when the country was occupied by the French, and then for American pilots in the 60s and 70s. Obviously, they were treated well enough to keep their sense of humour as they gave it its name. The Vietnamese prisoners had not been as lucky ...

One photo that interested me was this one, of John McCain, later to become Senator McCain and to run for the Presidency, being fished out of my local lake, having been shot down. Years later, he returned to Hanoi on much better terms.

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As you can imagine, The British Council, being the cultural arm of the government, is really pushing the Olympics.  There is a countdown to the start that involves posters with the number of days to go (designed by students) being displayed on the website (http://www.britishcouncil.org/vietnam.htm).

The boss wanted a suitably exciting photo for the last day. I had a think and came up with an abseil of course. Initially, I had just envisioned a simple abseil off of the 12th floor, holding a small banner. However, I then thought it would be nice if the staff could have a go. We ended up with what I think is probably the first corporate abseil in Vietnam. 23 staff abseiled about 50m down the wall and they had a great time.  

The marketing department decided to create a huge banner about 10m long, so that was hung from the balcony and a couple of posters were made for me to hold. I assume the photo will be on the website on Friday. 

A TV crew turned up to film us. You can watch the 3 minute feature at:
 http://media.vtv.vn/Media/Get/The-thao-sang---25072012-71eda497c3.html



The same gang that organised the abseil also had a climbing afternoon at someone's house last weekend. It made a change ...

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We're into the last week at school and so we have laid on special events for the students. They're taking place at our new satellite school on the outskirts of town. Our classes are in an existing school which has been designed around a central atrium that has a clear plastic roof. This roof acts a bit like a greenhouse. A greenhouse in Vietnam - can you imagine it? I think my body temperature hit 40C today. I'm back there for more tomorrow. 

If I survive, I'm flying home on Sunday and I'm really looking forward to getting home for a bit. I've now completed one year, feel like I've got the hang of Hanoi, and will be back for more in August ...

Bike photo of the month ...

The ice bike