New Year's Eve Comes Early

I'm 7 hours ahead of the UK so I get to celebrate early except that enforced jollity it not really my thing.  Also I'm English and we don't really do New Year.  Putting those things aside for a moment, I am about to go out to meet some friends and see in the New Year but quite gently as I'm off to a fancy beach resort tomorrow for a long weekend of eating fish, swimming in the sea and swinging in a hammock.

New Year is supposed to be at time of reflection as well as getting drunk and for me there's a lot to look back on and think about.  The last decade has seen huge changes for me. It started with a move to Spain, then back to England and then China. That was followed by a year at the university of Westminster where I met some truly  inspiring people and now in Vietnam.  I just hope the next ten years will be some stimulating and demanding and different from the last.

a 5 star Christmas

I'm having a five star Christmas, Vietnam style along with affluent locals and Westerners in two fancy hotels.  I was invited for lunch and dinner and, as I'm greedy, I accepted both offers. They both involved eating from the buffet as the waitresses come round constantly filling my glass with more wine.

My day started with me listening to a few carols form King's College Cambridge before switching to my favourite Christmas song, 'A Fairytale of New York'.  I caught the 11am bus into town and headed for lunch at the 'Intercontinental' where I carefully selected only high value low carb food, oysters, giant prawns and rare beef all washed down with the contents of my ever refilling wine glass.  There were even sprouts!

The hotel had a choir and a Santa to entertain us between 12 noon and 2:30 as we tucked in.  The food was impressive and I ate loads, including my first ever go on a chocolate fountain.

After lunch I made my way to the Botanical Gardens and Zoo for a snooze in the shade by a lake with a monkey island in the middle. The monkeys were running along their scaffolding poles and flinging themselves into netting whilst I rested and digested ready for the 6pm start at the 'New World' hotel.

By 9pm I was stuffed and couldn't eat or drink another thing so I headed out into the mayhem of the town centre traffic, into a taxi and home.  Christmas over for me for another year.

Christmas

Christmas is coming even here in Vietnam and there is no escaping snow, tinsel and Santa and his eves.  Even if the snow isn't real Santa and his elves can surely make it this far from the North Pole.

A quick wander around town last weekend revealed these photos. There are many more I could have taken of Christmas trees, reindeer and sleighs but restrained myself.  I particularly liked the snow storm in a window, polystyrene is about as close as I'm going to get to snow this year thankfully.


There will be parties around here and I have a full day of eating and drinking in fancy hotels lined up for the big day and various Christmas Eve social events too.  We have Friday off and I think I really need a rest after quite a lot of work over the last few months and more to come before a proper break during the new year celebrations of Tet.

The snowman outside an HSBC bank is may favourite.  Their banks all over the world look the same. Same logo, same colour scheme, same furniture only this one has a Santa and I don't think the one in Muswell Hill Broadway has.

Fit

I'm no stranger to the gym. I enjoy pounding the treadmill and feebly pushing up the odd weight so wherever I work I try to find a gym that fits with my daily routine. It probably helps to stay active. I'm fighting against the slippery slope of middle age valiantly by going twice a week, more if I can find the time.

The RMIT gym is small but well equipped and frequented by largely the same group of stringy young guys. They're never going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and neither am I but we look like we are enjoying ourselves. Apart from exercising I like to watch the other people doing their stuff. In one corner there's usually a group of boys laughing and shouting raucously at each other and Vietnamese is a very raucous language indeed. At the other end I often see a smaller group in quiet conversation with each other whilst gently bouncing on the large rubber exercise balls. These balls are there to be used in all sorts of fiendish ways to make muscles stronger and more supple but this little group use them as improvised stools. The other major piece of equipment getting the most use is the floor to ceiling mirror that they all take a moment or two to pose in front of as they move from one social group to the next.

I'm somewhere between the two groups, either on the running machine or the weight machines isolating myself from the noise with my ipod and hoping that the ball bouncers have finished their conversations before I need a ball for my sit-ups.

But the more interesting exercise sights are to be seen not in the gym but outside my window in Sky Gardens. In the opposite block, on floor 3, there's an apartment occupied by a local family who have a cramped terrace that they fill with potted plants and plastic furniture. It has a low fence around the outside and a corrugated plastic roof to keep off the rain. Each morning the lady of the house emerges in her floral pyjamas with her hair in rollers to begin her morning workout. She starts with a bit of running on the spot followed by some arm swinging and finishes with some hip twirling. She has a bouncing, half-hearted run that's never going to get her very far and her hips are somewhat stiff. She's not fat just thick set and the hip twirling looks painful. The arm swinging consists of her throwing both arms forward cross her stout body and then jerking them backwards finishing with a sharp jerk of her shoulders. I hope she's OK because some of her routine looks like it may result in a sporting injury.

Also out of my window I often see an middle aged guy doing the arm throwing and hip twirling although he is slimmer and can get his hips moving around quiet fluidly. His arm movements are more flappy. He flings his limp arms around his body slapping himself alternately on his chest and back. He looks very pleased with himself most mornings as he takes prime position in full view of anyone who cares to watch him. Perhaps he and the running on the spot woman should get together sometime for a bit of one-on-one exercise activity.

We also have power-walking people, usually older Korean men, who march along in a very determined manner pumping their arms high across their bodies whilst clenching their fists and sticking their chins forward in a determined and quite proud way. But mainly we have slow wandering families or nannies minding babies. They sit around on benches and gossip which must be healthier than all that jerking, jogging and twisting.

The Tavern

Some years ago I lived in Spain and would travel back to England from time to time through Alicante airport. The airport there caters mainly for holiday makers and their tour buses but also had a small but loyal customer base of ex-pats flying from home to home or eking out their pensions in the sun.

The airport operated a long queue policy to annoy their customers by having 40 or so check-in desks all closed with all the passengers waiting anxiously at the few that were open. We would shuffle slowly along dragging our bags whilst jealously eyeing up the other queue to see if it was shuffling faster than ours. We were all getting on the same plane but somehow it was still frustrating to see other people getting on it first.

Once through the formalities and in the departure lounge I would head for the John Bull pub – an ersatz English, counterfeit home counties pub area partitioned off from the expanse of the departures hall. There I would drink overpriced Guinness sitting on a heavily upholstered chair next to a circular mahogany pub table. It was a decompression chamber letting me readjust from the depths of Spain and its claustrophobic spanishness and re-enter the English world again. A sort of half way house/pub to help me adjust. Anyway, The Tavern is a bit like that, England or maybe Australia reimagined in Phu My Hung.

Going to the Tavern serves the same purpose as the John Bull if you miss England but, as I don't, I rarely go there. Last night it played host to the school's irregular quiz night, eight teams of raucous and eager teachers trying to guess the answers to impenetrable questions that even the wildest guess couldn't provide an answer for. We occupied the third floor leaving the ground floor and outdoor terrace to the normal customers. The organisers shouted out the questions, the teams argued about the answers and the staff gamely ran about getting people drinks.

We came a close third losing out to the previous winners who clearly had pub quiz form. Next time maybe we'll be luckier. If only my team mates had listened to my right answers and ignored my wrong ones we could have won. But I liked the Tavern. It may be full of ex-pats and it may show football constantly but I might go again.

Wildlife

It's hot here and sticky and there's lots to eat so it comes as no surprise that there's a lot of wildlife too. Phu My Hung isn't exactly the countryside, although that isn't far away but there's a lot creeping and crawling about. We are also surrounded by water, some flowing and some stagnant. There's a ditch alongside Sky Gardens which I can see from my living room window and on the the other side of that there's a patch of undrained and as yet unused ground which I refer to as 'the swamp'. Over by the university there's a couple of wide channels flowing with a mixture of organic debris and plastic bags. The water is milk chocolate brown with suspended mud and whatever effluent the city discharges into it. We are not far from the sea so there's the occasional tidal backwash to contend with too which adds a salty tang to the mix. Even in my little area, which is still being developed, there are overgrown vacant plots between some of the buildings covered in a low lying but dense hatch of undergrowth.

All this make for a great habitat for wildlife. Snakes are supposed to be common but timid so the only ones I've seen have been for sale alongside the road towards the university. The woman who sells them keeps them in mesh sacks next to a set of kitchen scales all set up on the kerbside. I can't imagine a snake coiling quietly on the scales whilst being weighed and have yet to see anyone buy one.

The vacant plots between the buildings are mainly home to rats which scurry about at night dodging between the buildings. When you get near one they shoot off into the weed patches unlike London rats which I swear give you a sullen look and almost say 'wot-evah' at you. The local cats look no match for them as they are too small and boney. In a fight between cat and rat my money would definitely be on rat. After a bit of rain, and that's most days, you might find a giant snail slowly making it's way long the road. Frogs are common too given the amount of water around. They're quiet most nights but from time to time they let rip with their froggy croaking and they often hop along the road next to the snails.

My apartment is also home to the odd creature or two. I have minute ants that come out from nowhere when I eat fruit. I bought sugar last week and they found that too, where I hid it from them, in one of my many kitchen cupboards. I think they found it quicker than I did. I have so many cupboards to search through I sometimes lose food. But today a saw a tiny gecko in the kitchen when I came home from the shops. I was pleased to see it and told it to set to work on the ants but I don't think it heard me as it shot off rather quickly underneath a cupboard. Hopefully it'll be out when I'm asleep and be tucking into an ant supper.

Weather

I've been reading the Guardian on the internet these days as usual and have been doggedly following the news from back home. Luckily I don't have to worry about the education cuts or Irish sovereign debt crisis that I've been reading about right now. Asian economies are apparently continuing to grow at a stupid rate, if you believe the government figures that is.

The thing that has attracted my attention, admittedly at a very superficial level, is the weather. I hear that it is really cold right now in England. Charlotte, my daughter and grass jelly recipient, emailed me today to say that she had to remove snow from the windscreen of her car. I've sneaked past the internet censors here and peeked at the BBC homepage and seen this  to confirm her report. I'm imagining Londoners having to stay in bed instead of trudging towards the tube in an inch of slush and motorways scattered with abandoned vehicles given up to the elements. 

Call me shallow but one of the reasons I've come to Vietnam is to escape the cold. I'm a hard core warmth lover, I don't even put the air conditioning on in the apartment so I don't ever feel cold. It's still in the 30's here, dropping to a cooling mid 20's at night sometimes. And it's still raining each day, usually in the late afternoon, but the mornings are often sunny and a good time to hit the pool. I can't unfortunately as I work, but there's always the weekend.

But I think the local bar owners have been watching the UK weather forecasts too as they have been bringing out lumps of cotton wool and draping them over the tropical plants surrounding their terraces. I think that they may have been doing this to make us feel more at home, thinking that perhaps that we have been missing the cold.

Then I realised, they are getting ready for Christmas. They are festooning their premises with fake snow and maybe tomorrow I'll see fake holly and fairy lights and maybe even the odd Santa or two. No matter where you go in the world you cannot escape Christmas. Maybe in North Korea or Saudi Arabia its been banned but here in Phu My Hung it looks like we are in for a white one.

Grass Jelly Goes Global

Since discovering grass jelly just after I arrived in Vietnam and blogging slightly about it its popularity has increased. I might be the cause of a global taste sensation as people all around the world begin to clamour for the stuff. I'll admit for now that this groundswell of culinary excitement is so far limited to just one of my children but hey, trends normally start small before going viral. Perhaps I should have tweeted about grass jelly. Blogging is so last year.

I have been asked to post my grass jelly back to Northampton so one of my daughters can try it but the only way to do that is to visit HCMC's central post office which I did on Sunday. It's a pleasure to take the bus into town and exchange Phu My Hung's quiet streets and familiar bars and restaurants with the big city life of motorbike mayhem. I added a visit to the city's art gallery to the post office trip and grabbed a drink in the back packer ghetto too.

The ladies at the post office asked me to fill in a form saying what was in my envelop which I had carefully folded and taped so the jelly would survive the journey. This was a bit embarrassing as I didn't want them to think I was some sort of idiot would post grass jelly back to England? They were very sweet and polite about it so I dutifully completed the paperwork and handed the packet and form across the counter. Not happy with my packing or maybe the description on the form they proceeded to open the envelop and tip the contents out over their counter. They looked at the jelly, then at me and started to giggle at one another. Stuck for anything sensible to say to explain myself I told them them that grass jelly was very hard to come by in England, at least for the time being, and people there really wanted to eat it. Once Northampton gets to know about it who knows where it might spread to next. ( Milton Keynes perhaps!! )

I do have a worry however as I had to complete another form which was stuck on the newly re-wrapped envelop. My parcel is now clearly labelled 'grass jelly' and shows my address and my daughter's. When the UK customs sees it there is no way they'll let such a dangerous substance into the country. The jelly will be confiscated and will sit in a warehouse somewhere near Heathrow for years, or be subjected to rigourous drugs tests or maybe destroyed in a controlled explosion as a suspected terrorist device.

If grass jelly is to become the new, must have foody delight, as I'm sure it will, I'll have to find a more efficient and simpler way of getting it out there so the world can enjoy this new taste sensation.

Clean

My lovely new apartment is so clean.  It had its first visit today from Tay, my new cleaner.  She's a tiny Vietnamese lady, somewhere in her thirties, dressed in the local style of ladies from the delta, floral pyjamas.  She arrived early, giving me time to head of to work after letting her in and showing her what to do.  This was more like me pointing at things and her nodding as we have no common language.

The place can get dirty quite quickly even if I impose a no shoes rule in the house.  There are always glasses and cups to deal with, floors to sweep and mop and shirts to iron.  I've asked her to come a, probably unnecessary, twice a week so domestic things don't get out of hand.  She brought a bag of cleaning products and paraphernalia ready to work her magic on my grubby home and I went off to work.

When I got home tonight everything was in perfect order.  Kitchen shiny, bed made, washing drying quietly on the balcony and floors immaculate.  It took a while for me find my flip flops which usually lurk next to the door in a heap with the other shoes.  Tay had neatly filled them all away in a cupboard.  She's has also placed little mats  outside the bathroom doors to stop my wet feet from treading dirt all around the place. I find these moments of order and domesticity quite touching.

Tay comes recommended by a teacher from work and I hope she's happy to stay and look after the place and me.  I don't pay her much but I think I pay her fairly and if the money helps her support her family I'll be happy and I won't have to do any housework.

Sport

I don't mind a bit of sport from time to time.  I have no favourite or claim to be any good at any of them but I'll have a go at most things with varying degrees of success or failure.  Sadly, my latest foray into the world of racquet and ball was definitely a failure.

The other day, in a rush of enthusiasm, I entered myself into the RMIT tennis tournament.  I've knocked a ball backwards and forwards on the broken down ( but free ) courts in Crouch End's Priory Park before. I even took lessons once many years ago where they taught me to do a cunningly concealed swerving serve.  It was all in the grip as I recall. Now, after all that time I've no idea what that grip was.

One of the teachers who was returning to his home country sold me his rather nice racquet at a very good price so, armed with that and my distant memories of hitting a tennis ball I got myself down to the courts on Friday afternoon.  The university has a brand spanking new sports complex with gym,  a large indoor space for 5-a-side football, badminton and basketball and a large field on the edge of which they have 3 courts.

The games started at 4pm with a doubles match, two teachers against two young, athletic and well trained students.  The teachers battled heroically for an hour against their opponents finally losing in a tie break.  My problem was that one of the young, athletic and well trained students was playing me next.

Some of these kids are rich.  They have iphones, designer clothes, an expensive foreign education and tennis lessons.  Needless to say I lost.  I did manage to get him to deuce in two out of seven games we played though.  I'm not going to give up, just pick my opponents a little more carefully in future.

Escape from Phu My Hung

I've not left the cosy confines of Phu My Hung for two whole weeks now. During that time I've been preoccupied with moving into my new apartment and buying stuff for it. I now have two plates and a bowl to add to the kettle, frying pan and pot that I bought previously. Today I thought it might be time to step outside this little world and venture into HCMC proper. Anyway, I had to go to the post office in town. I can't really believe that going to the central post office is the only way to post stuff back to England but I've been told that it is.

I shared the 1 o'clock shuttle bus with a collection of Korean housewives and their children into the centre of HCMC and set off on foot to the post office. It's a grand old building in the French Colonial style and is always full of tourists admiring the architecture. I was just there to post some letters.

After the post office I went to the Reunification Palace, another fine building, this one in 50's style, looking a bit like London's Festival Hall, lots of open staircases and wide marble floors with distinctive 50's shapes on door handles. The building looked Western but once inside the décor and furniture is pure Chinese, big pictures, lacquered wooden chairs and lots of red. Apparently it has been left untouched since the North Vietnamese army arrive in 1975. The best bit for me was the basement rooms, narrow corridors with lonely isolated cell like offices housing ancient communication equipment carefully laid out for the tourists.

I came back to Phu My Hung on the 4:30 bus and got wet again as the rain came down very heavily whilst I made my way back to the pickup point.

Reproduction paintings are popular here and there are plenty of shops in the upmarket foreigner area selling fakes. Van Gogh, Klimt and Cezanne are all popular with local painters specialising in a particular genre. Along with these there are other shops selling artist materials so I picked up a sketch pad and some pencils so I can do a bit of drawing. I can't spend all my free time in bars and restaurants can I?

Garden Centres

I'm going to a house warming party tonight hosted by two American ladies who started at the same time as me.  We call them 'The Ladies' and for some reason the name has stuck.  I've had my drinks party the other week and they are having theirs tonight.  Rather than just take booze ( although I probably will as well ) I went to one of the garden centres along the road from my building to buy a plant.  The Ladies have a fine roof terrace and they talked about filling it with plants.  There's a row of garden centres squeezed up against the main road that runs from Sky Gardens to the university and they are all busy with vans coming and going loading up with plants.

I picked out a pink lily but the woman made me put it back and pressed the one she selected on me.  They all looked the same to me. I like to play the discerning customer occasionally but thought it wise to defer to her expert knowledge.  I found a rounded, ochre coloured, ceramic pot for it and she gave everything to a boy to pot up and put stones around the rim, to help drainage I imagine.  I watched the boy doing a good job with the plant,  giving it a final spray and a wipe around the pot.

The whole thing came to 90,000 dong, about £3 for plant, pot and the service.  Quite a bargain, I hope the Ladies like it in their new home.

I've got the BBC!!

Finally I've got the internet at home.  My lovely estate agent arranged it and it's up and running but it's so slow.  Not only is it slow but a lot of sites, like BBC iplayer and Spotify, don't work if you are not in England so I've invested in a proxy.  BBC radio has been blocked by censors and quite rightly in my view.  There is nothing so subversive and a threat to social order as middle class outrage as expressed on Radio 4. But now I can go through the proxy and listen to their grumpy moaning as often as I like.

Now I'm more plugged in to UK media I found this video clip which  made me think of home.  This guy has been painting on chewing gum in and around Muswell Hill for a few years now.  Watch the clip as he talks about his work whilst lying on the pavement outside Muswell Hill library.  It made me feel quite homesick for a second or two.

Another Sunday

I woke up at 8am, not as hung over as I should have been after the Halloween party of the night before. I have no interest in Halloween which is a pointless American invention but the party was a opportunity to meet some of the other teachers at the school. It was held at a teacher's tall thin Vietnamese house in District 1 in the heart of the backpacker ghetto. On her roof terrace we had a fantastic 360 degree view of the night time city and although it was in the very centre of the city it was surprisingly quiet. I left around 1 am with an Australian couple and one of their friends and shared a taxi home.

After doing a bit of housework, a cursory mop of the floor and a quick whizz over a couple of shirts with an iron, I spent an hour in the Garden Cafe drinking iced coffee and using their WiFi before heading to one of the local Japanese restaurants to lunch on raw fish, tiny rolls of rice and vegetables and Sapporo beer. They serve salmon roe, big fat juice beads of fishy goodness that burst in your mouth when you bite down on them. I ate them with chopsticks one at a time to prolong the pleasure, one burst at a time.

Two of the teachers I started with, and have been spending time with, have just moved in to an impressive 5 story house so after lunch it was back to theirs, via the fancy deli to pick up wine, for drinks on their rooftop terrace. The deli has the biggest selection of Belgian beer I've seen outside of Brussels and a small sample of it is now in my fridge, next the bag of limes, cooling nicely and ready to drink another day.

The house was lovely, very tall with countless bedrooms and bathrooms. Minimalist white walls and cream tiles with gaps in the walls to allow the free flow of air.

At around 4:30 I made my way home for a rest but texted another teacher who was at that moment having drinks with her boyfriend in a hotel bar not far from the apartment. Rather than have a nap and watch a video as I had vaguely planned, I joined them. More beer followed the afternoon's wine and that was followed by a walk to a Singaporean restaurant where I ate steamed tofu with mushrooms and spring rolls. The slipperiness of the mushrooms and the softness of the tofu contrasted with the crunchy crispness of the rolls and made an interesting if unnecessary dinner. The restaurant offered frog porridge, which is either a humorous mistranslation from the Chinese or they've got a copy of Heston Blumenthal's latest cookbook. I imagined tiny green frogs sticking heads out of lumpy grey gruel and blinking. I don't like porridge so I passed on it this time.

I was home by 9:30 after my day of drinking, eating and chatting to sip iced vodka and lime juice before heading for bed.

One week later

One week later and my apartment is still bare. There's nothing in the kitchen cupboards except the grass jelly and nothing to cook or serve it in either.

I did buy a chopping board and a Chinese style chopper and a bag of limes, some beer, wine and Bacardi for my opening drinks party last Saturday night. I invited all the people who I started with and a couple of others whom I've met since. Everyone is at a different stage in deciding where to live, how much to pay and we talked a bit about where they had seen. I'm the first in the group to move out of a hotel into a permanent place. We had good moan about some of the miserable types who populate the office. It's very corporaty and serious, unlike most language schools or universities, and some of the people won't even make eye contact. We sit in pens in an open plan office and stare at our computers until its time to go to class. I don't care, as there are enough friendly people about, the work is fine and the students pleasant enough. Tonight there is a Halloween party and I've been told they change their personalities when they get drunk. We will see.

I do plan to buy food this weekend and attempt to cook. Stupid really as Ganesha, one of the nicest Indian restaurants is just around the corner where for about £4 you can get a great curry, some naan and a beer. There's Nathalie's, the Thai where for the price of a sandwich in Pret a Monge back home you eat red curry with chicken, pork or beef. Last Sunday I splashed out a bit more on Japanese and had fish so fresh it was almost wriggling. There are endless Vietnamese places to sit and eat and drink plus weird flavoured Korean if you like strange vegetables in tiny bowls.

I also plan to buy a few bits for the apartment too and arrange for the internet to arrive as I miss not being able to sit in bed and read the Guardian in the morning.

Outside in the cool evening breeze

Whilst there's no internet in the flat yet I still needed my online fix tonight but didn't really want to traipse to the Vien Dong and buy a drink so I could use their free WiFi.  Rather than that I have slipped downstairs to the garden area between my block and the next and parked myself on a bench.  There's a breeze this evening and all the little kids have packed up their footballs and bikes and are in bed ( or watching tv and playing computer games more probably ).

I've picked up an open internet connection, maybe coming from one of the cafes on Nguyen Van Linh ( the main road on the other side of my building ) and am happily surfing.  I've sent an email, had a quick read or the Guardian and done this update.  For some mysterious reason blogging tonight appears not to be censored.

Now it's time for a nightcap before bed.  There's very cheap and nasty Hanoi vodka to finish and a little bit of Bacardi, my new spirit of choice, delicious with squirts of fresh lime juice and a splash of Sprite. And more good news, I've been paid today and had all my visa expenses reimbursed too so I'm rich.  ( well by Vietnamese standards anyway )

1F-67, where I live

Today I moved into my new apartment. I'm in block 1F on floor 7 and in apartment 6 so I've been categorised and sorted and slotted in with thousands of other people. I'm in a tiny part of the enormous Sky Gardens complex of towers marching north from my block from Sky Gardens I, Sky Gardens II and , yes , Sky Gardens III. They are tall, pale cream and uniform.

I have two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a big, open plan kitchen/dining/living space all to my self. Its all heavy brown furniture and white walls, a rectilinear Jersey cow look that may not be to all tastes and is probably not to mine really. I love the space and the openness of it and the otherness of it too. This is not like back home. One of the bedrooms has a walk-in wardrobe area which is mad as I have 4 pairs of trousers, five shirts and about 6 pairs of socks. They will be lost in the vastness of the cupboards and I'll spend hours every morning looking for something to wear.

I have a choice of bathrooms both equipped with toilet, sink, mirror and shower. I have a kitchen with lines of cupboards, all empty, and a small,balcony fit only for a washing machine and a clothes rack. Sadly, lounging on a terrace with an after-work cocktail is beyond my budget but, as I'm not that sure about heights, sitting by the window in the living area suits me just fine.

I love the uniformity of the Sky Gardens blocks and the repetition of the shapes. There are grassy sitting areas around all the blocks and a long walkway through the middle lined with estate agents and small shops.  In the evenings the local families parade up and down clutching their kids, cooling off a bit after a hot day.  Underneath all the buildings there is parking for cars and motorbikes. Its a few minutes from work and even less to the restaurants and bars of Phu My Hung. I think its going to be a good place to live.

the mysteries of the internet

After days of struggling to post my purely innocuous comments on my blog I have come to conclusion that a virtual something is standing between me, sitting in my room, and the host of my blog.  Am I paranoid about censorship and blocked access?  I can update from most internet cafes but not from home or the university.  Is there a Great Firewall of Vietnam?  I don't know but I'm now going through some flaky free proxy server which is producing results and, although it isn't perfect, it keeps me going until I find out what the problem is.

And almost the next day I read this..........  so I'm off to buy a reliable proxy server and I'll be able to blog, watch the iplayer and listen to Spotify too.

Blogging at ........http://hochiminhandme.blogspot.com/

Grass Jelly

Hey mums and dads, I've found the perfect thing to liven up your kiddies party.  Bored of strawberry and chocolate?  Ever thought of grass?  You just know they'll love it and keep  coming back for more.  It's simple to make too,  just add water, bring to boil and simmer for 3 minutes before pouring it into mounds and letting it set.  Umm or should that be Mmm?  Grass, isn't that the stuff that cows eat and that stains your trousers green if you sit on it?

I haven't got a kitchen yet so can't do much with mine but when I get one I'll have some grass jelly to keep in the cupboard. You just don't when it might come in handy.

Work

It had to happen, I couldn't just sit around all the time drinking iced coffee and eating noodles, I had to go to work. It's a gentle start for me with three days of induction followed by a week of materials development and preparation before meeting the students and starting to teach them.

The university is 15 minutes walk from the Sky Gardens tower block complex of apartment buildings in the Phu My Hung residential district where I'm living. Its a collection of modern buildings surrounded by brown-watered, sludge-filled creeks that will eventually find their way into the Saigon River. The creeks fill and empty in tune with the daily cycle of heavy rain that falls at this time of year and maybe the tide, as we are not that far from the sea. The buildings are fronted by the busy Nguyen Van Linh toll road that brings traffic out of the narrow chaotic city streets towards the more open southern extension of the city. It's a six lane highway with four of them full of motorbikes.

I've joined a large group of American, Australian and English teaching staff administering to 3000 or so students studying English and Business and, in a slightly randomly twist on the usual subjects, a bit of Art and Design. The well healed of HCMC send their sons and daughters here to get the coveted English education that will hopefully one day give them access to the wide world of foreign business opportunities. The main building is 5 stories high with a pair of wide, sculptural looking external stairwells giving access to the floors. The English department has taken over the top floor and some of one of the two outlying buildings placed across an adjoining lawn. We all have a desk, there's a room full of books and photocopiers and stationary. Its clean, modern and open-plan all so very very different from the crappy London language school I was used to in my previous job.

Beyond these buildings is the new sports complex with gym, sports hall and, worryingly, the medical centre. Sport and illness are separate things and cannot be in the same building. I'll be joining the gym soon and be pounding the treadmill again during my non work hours, in the pointless pursuit of physical fitness. I've read in 'The Word', HCMC's glossy, expat advertising magazine, that a cricket club operates out of the university for us colonial types so I might give that a look too.

Because we are in Asia a large part of the complex is given over to food outlets where we can buy our breakfast and lunch and snacks in between. There's an indoor air conditioned area and an outdoor tent-like construction serving foods of the region and sandwiches too. Eating is a constant event, I can't detect any obvious meal times, you just have what you want when you want it and nearly all of it comes with chillies. There's little wheat or dairy so people don't get as fat as we do in Europe. Except the children who have developed a taste for KFC and burgers.

On my way home each day I've come across a woman sitting by the side of the road with a bag of snakes for sale and it brings me back to the reality of Asian life. They can build big roads and modern clean universities and apartments but the people here will still crouch down next to the traffic selling weird stuff to the passers-by if they can.

I've been shown an architects model of the completed campus, an array of neat glass blocks circled by blue water and miniature trees. It is small and perfectly formed, the Kylie Minogue of universities and a charmingly pleasant place to live and work.

The Vien Dong Hotel, Phu My Hung, District 7, HCMC

Finally a post to my new blog and the big news is things are looking good. I arrived last Friday after a long and tiresome journey from Heathrow. As the tube rumbled slowly towards the airport the knot in my stomach started to loosen its grip and I began to relax after a few tense weeks of organising and fixing my flat prior to leaving for a year in Vietnam. It is a long but uncomplicated ride from zone 3 at the Eastern end of the Piccadilly Line to the airport. After a while, as the commuters left the train I got a seat and, resting, willed the tension of the last weeks to dissolve. There's nothing like leaving for a long time to put petty domestic concerns into perspective.

The inevitable flight delays meant a free meal voucher given by the airline which I blew on a fancy seafood stall in terminal 3, wine and Guinness before finally leaving 4 hours later feeling relaxed and slightly mellow. The flight was full, the entertainment meagre but we passengers endured somehow and emerged 10 hours later in Bangkok and then onward to Saigon, or HCMC depending on your political preference. I'm inclined to the more modern HCMC. Uncle Ho didn't fight for the independence of his country and get a city named after him for us not call it by its new name. A very nice man picked me up from the airport, placed me in the front seat of his monster of a Toyota 4X4 and barrelled his way through the crazy city traffic towards our destination, The Vien Dong Hotel, Phu My Hung, District 7, HCMC.

If you've read my previous blog covering my holiday earlier in the year you'll know that I was impressed by HCMC's energy and I still am. There was constant noise, mad traffic, narrow cluttered streets and bright lights as we made our way through District 1 in the centre of the city. There was grubbiness, potholed roads and confusion in District 4 as we headed towards our more peaceful destination of the southern suburb.

The university is south of the city in District 7, modern, open and quieter than downtown but still distinctively Vietnamese this is where I will most probably end up living. I could go for the comfort and convenience of this suburb with the university a 15 minute walk or 5 minute motorbike ride from the hotel or I might opt for the more 'authentic' atmosphere of the city centre. Local opinion amongst teachers seems to be in favour of convenience over commuting and I'm tending that way myself. The local areas might be a little bland but it has bars, restaurants, a pool and what need do I have of excitement and nightlife? I've posted a video of the place which is here if you want to take a look. Its an attractive place with a grid of well laid out roads filling rapidly with apartment buildings, villas, hotels, restaurants and shops as the area grows. The Saigon river snakes greasily through the city and this area has a network of murky channels and canals draining into it. This was probably a swamp a few years ago but now its been taken over by the modern world and Vietnam's economic progress.

After catching up on my missing sleep I went out the following day and found 3 other teachers all living within a few streets of the hotel and we have been trying the local eateries and making tentative trips out and about getting ready for the next week when we turn up at the university and start work. I have a feeling that this will be a good place to be.