Welcome to Vietnam

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Well here I am, a week and a half into my adventure in Vietnam and there is a ridiculous amount of stuff to talk about. I'm not even sure where to start...


The School, ILA Vietnam: I teach at ILA 1 in District 3 of Vietnam, the biggest ILA school in the country. It is housed in a 9 story building, has 100 teachers, tons of support staff, and somewhere between 3-5000 students. So far I can't say enough good things about the school. The teaching support is top notch, there are 5 academic coordinators who are always happy to help you with lesson planning, there is a living coordinator (or something, not sure of his title) that helps out with all things outside of the school (housing, documentation, etc.) and every teacher I have met ha been friendly and ridiculously helpful. Today when I was lesson planning Amir, a teacher I met the other day, just up and gave me one of his more successful activities (involving Louis Armstrong! boo-yeah) and told me exactly how to adapt it to my classes. This sort of thing has happens almost every day. The conversation usually goes something like...

"I'm teaching my S-5A's (class designation) tomorrow about (some aspect of grammar or vocab)." -Me
"Oh, I have an activity that would be perfect for that, let me get you this great worksheet/resource."-Random Teacher

I still feel like the new guy and as such I need to ask lots of questions and have to remember a metric ton of names per day, but I feel like I'm starting to fit into things quite well. As of now I only teach on the weekends (three classes per day) but that will change as I start to pick up a full schedule (anywhere from 22-30 hours per week). I'll put more up about teaching as I get into my classes more.

A Note about Traffic in Saigon: Well, first I should mention that the city is actually Ho Chi Minh City, but everyone here still calls it Saigon, hell the airport code is still SGN. Apparently if you are from the North you call it Ho Chi Minh City, if you are from the South it's Saigon. Anyway, the traffic in Saigon...

The first time you walk onto a busy street in Saigon, you are faced with a whirlwind of scooters, bikes, taxis, buses, trucks, cyclo drivers (I'll explain those guys in a later post) flying up and down streets with little regard for traffic laws or Western notions about "safety". One-way streets are more of a suggestion. Traffic lights? Hah! While they do exist on some of the major roads they are, once again, more of a suggestion. I've been here for a week and a half and crossing a busy street still scares the hell out of me. There really is no protocol beyond waiting for a slight lull in traffic, walking out into the street and weaving your way in between the hundreds of scooters and taxis that will zip by inches from you at varying speeds. The horn, something that we Westerners rarely use is an absolute necessity of the Saigon traffic scene. A horn can mean anything from "I'm turning here", to "I'm about to cross through a busy intersection, so watch out" to "Get your stupid American ass out of my way before I run you over." While this all might sound like absolute anarchy there is an overarching mentality behind the traffic. I've been told to think of it like a school of fish, or a giant raging river. Right-of-way is determined by size and shear balls more than any actual set rules. I do plan on getting a motorbike sometime soon (I'll write about the Vietnamese driver's license procedure in a different post--rest assured, it is shady as hell) but I'm going to wait until my health insurance kicks in. One more thing that I've come to learn, there is an 100% import tax on vehicles, which means that $180,000 Porsche SUV that just drove by costs twice as much--absolute madness.

District 1 or the Backpacker District: This was the area that I stayed in for my first week here. I stayed in a hotel on Bui Vien street, one of the main drags in the area. I was unprepared for the whirlwind of sights and sounds of this area. Let me take you through a day of living there. You wake up whenever the rooster living in the apartment across the alleyway decides to start his morning routine. Rolling out of bed you chug a pre-emptive bottle of water (either in preparation for the coming day or to fend of the fleeting hangover from last night) and put on a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals. Your body is still not used to the tropical heat of Saigon so you start sweating the minute you leave the A/C of your hotel room. You walk downstairs, say hi to the new expats checking in downstairs and walk out onto Bui Vien street. Before you can walk 10 feet you will have been propositioned by 3-10 xe om (motorbike taxis) asking you first: "you need motorbike?" and then, depending on time of day, "you need something? mari-wana, opium, good time?" Also, street vendors will see you coming from blocks away and offer you trinkets, Zippos with the country engraved on them, textile goods, and bootleg books/music/DVDs. Brushing off the over-zealous xe om guys and vendors, you start wandering down the street in search of breakfast. You stop in at Pho 24, a Vietnemese joint that serves heaping bowels of pho (kinda like a ridiculously good chicken/beef soup with noodles and local vegetables and spices) and some deep fried spring rolls. Following your delicious repast you decide to wander the streets of Pham Ngu Lao (the backpacker area). You pass every kind of shop imaginable: fine clothing, street food vendors, bootleg everything, bars, restaurants, hotels, massage parlors (never go there, seriously, just don't), KFC (yeah they have it here, and the Vietnamese love it), t-shirt shops with moronic English phrases on them ("Vietnam: Not Just a War"), laundry services, film developing services, airlines, travel agents, the list goes on and on....to be continued.

Anyway that's all I feel like writing now, I'll try to start updating this thing more frequently.

Love you all.
-Spencer

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Comments

[Will]

Nice post, I'm glad you decided to get back to blogging. I think I asked you this already, but did you see the _Top Gear_ episode where they went to Vietnam. I've got a pretty good mental image of what you're talking about re: the traffic.

[Sarah Van Druten]

I'm glad you're blogging about your adventures and, of course, that you're enjoying yourself.