Yes. I'm 30. Three whole decades since I appeared in a maternity hospital called Little Thorpe in County Durham on a hot July day in 1979. I had a double chin and weighed in at 9 pounds. My weight hasn't changed much since then, I just got longer. I doubt that back in 1979 anyone guessed I'd spend my 30th birthday as an English teacher in north Vietnam. For a start, I doubt many people in the west imagined a future in Vietnam in those days. And then there were the career options. Firstly, by chance of geography I might have been a coal miner like my dad, his dad and his dad's dad...but I wanted to be a sailor. "A captain of a big ship" in fact. I even signed up (or I thought I ... read more

I took these photos on a walk from our house to Apollo, to give you some idea of what we see each day. When you do it all the time you stop seeing some of the most unusual sights and and it all becomes more normal. Taking photos of everything opened my eyes again to the fascinating place we live in. ... read more

Time for an update I think, so here goes. A rag tag mix of recent events... It's in two parts. Here goes part one..... Haiphong Medical University English Festival!!! In our kids classes on Saturdays and SUndays we occasionally have a teaching assistant to help out. This is basically someone Vietnamese who can help out with low level classes and translate some instructions to the kids. Or to help stop them killing each other - whichever is a priority at the time. Anyway, most teaching assistants are students and it's their part time job at the weekend. 2 women in particular are medical students - Tao and Trang (pronounced Chang). It turned out recently that Tao and Trang were organising an English language competition at their university and needed some native speakers to help out. So ... read more

The Tet - Lunar New Year - holiday brought with it a gift of a week's holiday from work. Never ones to pass up the opportunity to explore, we decided to spend a few days down in Hoi An, on the Central coast. We flew down from Hanoi to Danang with Jetstar Asia at a very good price, and took a taxi to remaining 30km from Danang to Hoi An. Hoi An is a pretty riverside town and a World Heritage site, which grew from it's position as a major trading port from the 2nd century. The influence of all the traders is evident all around the town. Many of the houses are of the same colonial style that we saw in Luang Prabang in Laos, two story houses with balconies, both painted yellow and in ... read more

This blog may seem a bit disjointed and doesn't really follow any chronological order...it's just a few snapshots from our last few weeks in our new home... House-warming the flat As we pointed out in a previous blog - with pictures - we moved into 1 bedroom flat in Haiphong just before Christmas. Once the festive season (as much as there was of one in Vietnam..!) had subsided, we decided it was time to toast our new abode with a get-together. So we set about inviting all and sundry. We then found out that we were planning to have our party on the same night that Lisa (a fellow teacher, from New York) was planning to have her leaving drinks. Her contract had expired and she was moving on. As things turned out we decided to ... read more