Shopping

I’m usually quite careful with money.  I’ve had a few years of training recently when I haven’t had much cash to thank for that.  My new job, coupled with a very low cost of living, has meant that now, for the first time for a while I can buy most things that I want.  Most within reason of course.  I still can’t afford an iPhone 4 or an iPad but as I don’t want either of these things I’m not bothered.  ( well I could be tempted by the iPad ).   So it was a surprise to me that on Sunday I had a bit of a splurge. 

There’s a bus from Phu My Hung into town that drops and picks up along Dong Koi Street, right in the heart of the expensive tourist district and I often take it at the weekend.   When you get off the bus there’s always a group of motorbike taxi guys touting for business and various people selling cigarettes and newspapers to the rich foreigners.  Amongst these there is a bunch of fruit sellers with baskets mangos or oranges or melons depending on the season.  I love mangos but they are usually sold green and eaten either soaked in spicy oil or dipped in salt and chilli so I don’t usually buy them.  Along the street there’s a woman who must have realised that Westerners like mangos sweet as she has a basket of them just about on the turn.  They are soft, slightly bruised but if you get them home in one piece and eat them up quickly they are fantastic.  They make for a very messy eating experience, with mango juice dripping everywhere, but a very rewarding one too.  

I’ve become a bit of a regular with the lady who sells the mangos now and always stop to say hello.  She knows that I’m going to buy from her and makes a big show of selecting the ‘best’ ones from her basket.  I always get a free sample and sometimes a free banana too.  For about £2 I came home with five squashy mangos, which are now in my fridge ready to be dissected and eaten over the next few days.  I hope they last until Thursday.

Next to the fruit sellers and motorbike guys there’s a small indoor tourist market.  It’s much less hassle than the main market in the centre of town but sells more or less the same stuff.  It’s has the things that tourists are assumed to want, joke t-shirts, ethnic bags and fancy scarves.  The people there have a photographic memory for faces as I discovered yesterday.  I bought one shirt a few weeks ago and they still remember me and the price I managed to bargain them down to.  So, as I walked past the stall yesterday the woman dragged me in and somehow managed to sell me not one more shirt but three!  For £8 each I now have three silk shirts.  They are large, baggy and very comfortable in the heat and humidity and quite subtle in colour.  The trouble is they don’t all go with my trousers so I may have to go back next weekend for more clothes.  

A bike ride to Hiep Phouc

The original plan was a ride out to the Mekong delta and an overnight stay down there.  Nobody was up for it ( except me and the organiser ) so we agreed on the softer option of a ride out of Phu My Hung into the countryside. 

There’s masses of building work going on here and the first part of the ride was through vast, under-construction towers.  One day this area will be occupied by the affluent escaping the cramped conditions in HCMC but right now it’s a world of construction traffic grinding along in a cloud of grit and dust, not the most pleasant of riding conditions.

But that soon gave way to a smaller village strung out along the single carriage road.  Shops, cafes, hairdressers and motorbike repair shops on both sides selling the same stuff as everywhere.  The going was better here with less traffic to dodge.  Some of the local kids waved at us.  They must think we are mad, why aren’t we in air-conditioned taxis like all the other foreigners?

Eventually the road ran out  at Hiep Phouc a sleepy village on the banks of one of the main rivers.  We looked at the river, had a rest and coffee before exploring a little further. The whole area here is a watery maze of rivers and tidal channels, all murky brown with a collection of floating debris being washed backwards and forwards with the tide.

The land is very flat and criss-crossed by muddy ditches between fields that look like they get a regular flooding.  Some of the village houses are simple wood and corrugated iron affairs and some are huge villas guarded by heavy gates and barking dogs.  The divide between rich and poor reaches down to this little village from the city quite easily.

We rode back on a different route, past an industrial estate and through more local districts before returning to Phu My hung and it’s fancy shops, restaurants and luxury housing.  After 4 hours of cycling I was exhausted.  I need to spend more time on my bike getting fit.

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.

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.