Hanoi (My home away from home)

Well I could ramble on about Hanoi all day long as there is so much I learnt about the Vietnamese culture, traditions & people while living here. When I got to Hanoi I wasn't that impressed with it to be honest. The city seemed quite pretty as many people had told me. It had tree lined boulevards with lakes & small parks but the people came off no where near as nice as the South Vietnamese as far as shopping & crossing the road just seemed harder.

We (Mel & I) decided to holiday for a little longer before starting work as we were both nervous to begin teaching English & were definitely not in a rush to jump straight in. From the Victory Hotel which was Intrepids choice, we moved into the Especen Hotel located in the old quarter.

After emailing about twenty English schools in Hanoi we managed to get a reply from nearly all of them. We interviewed at a few small ones on the out skirts of Hanoi but definitely didn't feel comfortable with any of them. Our last interview of the day was at Cleverlearn in the Ba Dinh district. The Academic Coordinator, Matthew Low cam down to ask us a few questions & then show us through the school. He asked us if we liked it & if we would like to start soon. With no hesitation we both answered "yes". This was easily the best school we had seen & the one that we both wanted to work at. It had a gym, a movie cinema & most importantly big classrooms with movable seats. We emailed Cleverlearn a few days later just to let them know that we were serious & keen to start. It was the very next week that I was given my first adult class to teach & then the week after Mel was given her first class.

After a few ups & downs with the teaching thing we both finally seemed to be getting into it. Before we knew it it was almost Christmas & I was asked by the school to play Santa Clause for the kids & give out presents. “Sure” I said. I will never have the chance to do this again I thought. Matt the Academic Coordinator had a chuckle to himself and said “thanks heaps I’ll owe you a few beers”. Cleverlearn put on a big show for the children called “Jingle Bells”. They even invited a famous “Vietnamese Rock Star”. So as she warmed the crowd up for me (I hope she didn’t mind being the support act) I carefully slid into the pre loved Santa outfit. They gave us our sacks which contained 250 presents each and with little direction except to "be ready" and "start giving the presents out" we made our appearance. OH MY GOD, the children went ape shit. We were both swamped with children pulling at the bag, my pants and suit. There were children getting trampled on, pushed and shoved. I could no longer get any presents out as the 14 kids on the bag alone weighed it down. We snatched the bag and I made my way up to the stage where there were children dancers, who then realized that Santa was here and forgot that they should be dancing. It all ended with about 67 children yelling ME, ME, ME but sadly I was out of presents.

To get to & from work we decided it would be best if we had a motorbike . Not only would it make the commute easier but we would be able to drive it around on the weekends to see a bit more of the city than was possible on foot. So one evening we decided to go and pay for it & drive it home. Now I hadn't ridden a motorbike before but figured it wasn't that hard. I'd go & pick it up at night when the traffic wasn't as bad as the day & if I did stack it no one would see because it was dark. Well I was wrong wasn't I.......... The night we decided to go & pick up the bike was the last night of the 2006 APEC summit so the traffic was terrible. After an uncertain start though we were off and luckily all went well.

On the 4th of Jan after having several problems with our hotel including theft of our motorbike we decided to move out into our own place. It was finally nice to have a place to call home. We managed to talk out landlords down slightly from $450 USD a month to $430. In Vietnam that saving could buy us quite a few meals. We were still aware however that we were paying about 5 times too much for the place but we figured we don’t want to live in a hotel anymore and we could afford it. We thought we were doing all right with our price as we managed to get cable, Internet, water & a maid included & we were also paying a lot less than everyone else we knew in Hanoi.

For the next few weeks we hardly left the house, as it was such a nice escape from the everyday antics that you get a bit sick of when you live there. We also had enough of the restaurants for a while as we had eaten almost every meal in them for the past three months. So as we occasionally shopped in the local stores & ogled the western goods that we could buy, our daily meals included a lot of toasted sandwiches. We had meat ones, ham ones, some with ham & cheese, baked beans, baked beans & cheese, tuna & even ones with tuna fritters. We did eat other things as well though like noodles, rice, chili con carne, tuna wraps, nachos, tuna burgers, Sultana Bran & Special K.

We did the occasional sight seeing at places like the “Hanoi Hilton” prison, a B52 bomber that we happened across one day & just a lot riding all over Hanoi checking out every little winding alley or back street that could give us a good insight into the real Vietnam. We also had a few visitors come over to see us while we were there. The first was Kath who turned up at the end of Jan for a week & a half stay. While there we both took a little time off work & ventured around Hanoi with her to show her the sights & also took some time off work to head out to the beautiful Halong Bay again.Our decision to visit Cat Ba Island again with Kath was definitely a good one. This time round we enjoyed it way more than the trip with Intrepid. We actually had a chance to venture out into the local communities, which was well worth the visit.

A few months after this Mel's parents came over to Vietnam so Mel decided to take some time off work & flew down to HCMC to travel up with them. I opted to stay & cover Mel's classes as she had only given 1 weeks notice to work that she wouldn't be in.

Another of our visitors was Peter Taylor from Melbourne. Me & Peter met one my very first trip overseas. It was on the tour of Egypt that I did with my sister, & girlfriend at the time. He came over to do a big tour of South East Asia & I took him around to a few places on our motorbike.

A few more months down the track & it had come to that time of the trip. Giving notice at work. Eeek! It's not that we were ready or even wanting to leave Vietnam but our Canadian visa was running out so we decided it was time for a change. We gave Clevelearn notice & they began to panic a little so we extended our stay for another 3 weeks. Once again it was all happening to quick. We didn't really have much to do but we didn't want to go. We started going out every night to have a bit of a drink to soak up the Vietnam that we came to love. It was just going into the best time of year in Hanoi as well. So the lovely hot days made it even harder to say goodbye.

We had our farewell with a few of the guys from school. Our farewell just happened to fall on my birthday which tied in with Paul & Karen's birthday as well so we made it a big join event. We all decided to meet at the front gates of Cleverlearn & ride like the Hells Angels to the other side of Hanoi for our festivities. The night began as we entered the huge soundproof room to be greeted by lots of beer & a huge chocolate birthday cake. As the beer began to flow, so to did the songs. Before we knew it our 2 hours was up & there was no option to extend as it was the government election period & they were enforcing curfew. So after making our way to a few random little pubs that were also enforcing the law, we finished the night off at "The Spotted Cow" (an Aussie Pub of all places).

After picking up our last pay on Saturday the 12th May 2007 we flew out for Saigon on Sunday & then for Vancouver Canada on Friday 18th May 2007.