Blogs from Binh Duong New City , Binh Duong, Southeast, Vietnam, Asia

Russ has been busy socialising with his students! On 30 October they had a wild Halloween party. The boy band and girl dancers were brilliant and the fashion show organised by the University was amazing. Sadly we had just returned from Saigon and the camera batteries were exhausted after half an hour. The crab soup wasn't too bad, although one student did refer to it as "crap" soup in a later essay!! The following week we met up with a whole load of students at Dai Nam Wonderland, the local version of Disneyland!! We had expected to stay for an hour before politely making our excuses and leaving. We ended up staying the whole day - well, until the monsoon rains arrived at around 3pm anyway. It was kitsch but it was cool. The "Gates of ... read more

Binh Duong New City is exactly what it says it is - a new city! That's where we are going to be living. We were quite excited that within a week of our arrival the apartment block we will be living in was formally opened. Okay, so it wasn't quite ready for habitation but it was very close! We were met at our hotel by a Becamex driver who took us the 12km out of town to the IJC Aroma apartment block. Getting out of the car we were greeted by beautiful ladies in traditional costume, colourful dragons and the loud beat of the drums. We felt like VIPs!! The ceremony itself wasn't too interesting. There were four of us from the University who were there to ceremoniously receive keys to our apartments. We seemed to ... read more