Graduation Celebrations

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Saturday 24th October 2009 - My Graduation Night! I was soooo excited about this night, it meant everything to do with my course was finished. I’d put in so much effort and had to work really hard the weeks prior - with completing the course, and then I had all of my Prac. Teaching in the few days straight after the course, this was very hectic and time consuming to prepare for, so I was so relieved to have everything finished.

Luke and I caught up with some friends from my course earlier that day for lunch, and they said we should get in touch with my course Trainer - Jackie, as a man from our course had gone on a tour and wouldn’t be able to make it to dinner - and that we should fill his spot with Luke! So I spoke with Jackie, and she said it was fine for Luke-e to come, well she said Luke - not Luke-e, and it would all be free for him also - wooo!

We all met at Hoabinh Palace Hotel, and walked around the corner, down the street, around another corner and down a bit till we arrived at Highway 4 Restaurant. It was very cozy inside - as most Restaurants are in Hanoi. Had to walk up some very narrow stairs to get up to our section for the night, we were to sit on cushions on the ground. Luke and I found our pillows, Tobi and Jackie pulled up theirs at our table and Sophie next to me. Our dinner was delicious; all different dishes were brought out for us to share at our tables. My favorite dish was Cat Fish Spring Rolls, and Luke-e loved the Banana Flower Salad. At each of the tables we got a bottle of Liqueur, ours was Plum, but there was Apple, Passion Fruit, and others floating around. So we sipped on these while having dinner - when the food ran out and our bellies were full, Tobi, Luke, Jackie and I decided to get another bottle to share, of the Plum Liqueur.

So while we weren’t too tipsy, after finishing the bottle, we weren’t ready to go home - so a few of us decided to go to a Bia Hoi (Bia Hoi is local brewed beer, brewed fresh everyday - very, very cheap). There was Greg, Sophie, Tobi, Jackie, Luke-e and I. After Bia Hoi closed and kicked us off their plastic kids stools from the corner of the road, we decided we still weren’t ready to call it a night and went to The Funky Buddha Bar for some more drinks, the drinks were a little more expensive there, so after about 3, we ventured out to find another Bar; Funky Monkey.

I think (my memory starts to get shady from here), this is when Jackie left the rest of us to go get some sleep as we had a Presentation for Hanoi Kids, Vietnamese University Students, Sunday afternoon. We found Funky Monkey, at this time of night - around 11-12ish everything starts to shut, in Hanoi there is a curfew of 11pm, most places shut, however there are some popular expat bars that stay open but shut their roller door so when the police drive past it looks like it’s shut. We only had one drink at Funky Monkey as they we were the only customers in there, and they needed to close.

So the 5 of us were trying to think of another Bar to go to - this wasn’t easy, as the only real time we’d spent in Hanoi so far was doing our course, so we weren’t very familiar with the Party-Scene - let alone how to find a pub if we knew it could be open. Greg, what a gem, led the way to a Bar that he thought might be open, and it was!
This time we had to go under the roller door that was shut, there were a lot of people in this bar, and Sophie and Greg got talking to a man who told us all to come to a Boat Party - but the time we got our group together, the man who’d asked us had slipped away under the roller door and was no-where to be seen! So out we went, not really sure where to go, there were a bunch of taxi’s out the front, so we jumped in one - 4 of us on the back seat, and Greg in the front.

What I should also mention here, is that, Sophie was staying a little out of town, so she had a ‘driver’ - a moto-taxi guy who would take here wherever she needed to go, and he’d given her a helmet to keep while she was here, so she carted that helmet with her the whole night, it was passed around for amusement throughout the night - Luke-e enjoyed playing the bongo’s on it.

The taxi ride to the Boat Place was crazy - our driver’s meter was wrong, usually it’s 11000VND per 1km, but this taxi driver was bad, the meter was going so fast - by the time we arrived at the Boat Party, his meter was up around 168,000VND - for what should have been about $30,000 at the most! So out we hopped, and argued with him about ‘you-bad-meter’ or ‘meter wrong’ - so he could understand us we spoke ‘Vietnamese’ we were also pointing and had very angry / stern looks on our faces, we also told him ‘this-good-for-you’, while handing him a 50,000VND note. He tried to scare us by not taking the money and pretending to hop in his taxi and drive away, but eventually took the 50,000VND from us.

The Boat Party was full of mainly Vietnamese people, from what I can remember, it was packed though, as we were all fairly full by this stage, it was hard keeping the group together. Greg disappeared as soon as we got there, Luke, Sophie, Tobi and I hung out by the pool table that had been turned into a Dance Floor - about 2 drinks into our time there Sophie and I were up on that Dance Floor shaking our thang! Sophie had a skirt on over her dress, so she stripped the skirt off off, Tobi was tapped on the shoulder for weeing off the side of the boat, and Luke-e sat back, drank, smoked and laughed at us. We somehow knew that it was closing time soon, so we went to the real dance floor where we found Greg getting his groove on. We all had a good dance together, to Bob Marley before walking out to brave the early hours of Sunday morning.

We hopped in a Taxi, one with an actual meter, and dropped Greg off, then went to Tobi’s hotel, which was our Training Venue for the Course - Hoabinh Palace Hotel, Sophie, Luke and I had some water there, then left Tobi to crash out, and we must have caught a taxi to Van Mieu Street, Luke and I - Sophie and her Helmet, I think by this stage my heels were in my hand, and thank god it was time for all the food stalls to open on Van Mieu, so we were able to have some breakfast at 7am on our walk home - Pho Bo (which is beef noodle soup - really tasty).

We stumbled home, Sophie claimed the lounge, and we slept for a few hours before she yelled out - “do you realize we have to be at our presentation … now”? Haha, so we took out time having showers and waking up, I do recall Sophie saying “Can we just sit, for a minute; I don’t think I can handle movement right now”. When she was ready for motion we dragged our heavy heads and bodies to KFC, which thankfully is at the end of my alley, got some popcorn chicken, and chips, and a moto-taxi to take us to our Training Venue for this Presentation.

Sunday 25th October 2009 - The presentation for the Hanoi Kids was really great. As hung over as I was, I enjoyed being there so much. There were 4 Kiwi’s in my course, so the 3 men, Dean, Kris, and Bill got up and did the Haka, it was so moving. The Students enjoyed the Slang part Kris and I did, I was Shazza and we spoke in Slang and then did it again in proper English. And at the end of the whole Presentation, we taught them the National Anthem, and I must admit, I started getting all patriotic when we were all singing it together - made me really miss Australia, we’re very a very unique culture and I’m enjoying feeling more proud to be Australian, out of Australia.

It seemed even more appropriate too, that because of the previous night’s efforts, Tobi was sent to his room to ‘rest’ by Jackie, as he wasn’t much help with the presentation cause he was back and forth to the toilet being sick! Aussie Aussie Aussie!

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Photos

My Trainers
Tobi doing it Blue Steel Style

Highway 4s Narrow Stairs
- not fun for me and my heels!

Bia Hoi
Jackie and the little Kitten

Luke and Tobi
Obviously nearing the end of the night