Hmm, a more updated perspective on rain. I take back many of my warm goozy feelings about rain from my September post below where I was being naive...
Now that we are well past 25 hours of non-stop, unabated torrential rain, my feelings towards rain in general have changed somewhat!! I know where all of Australia's water has gone. It's here! and none of it is draining... The rains came on Thursday, grey skies and cold but humid weather ensuring that nothing wet dries and the smell of mould permeated cupboards and clothing. The city was grey and most of us hoped the rain would simply wash the pollution away. It rains often this time of year, but usually.. IT STOPS!
Hanoi has notoriously bad drainage, and now by Saturday, well, the city is a smelly, watery brown puddle. The road outside my alley has become a vast brown river, water waist deep in parts. Hanoi is filling steadily like a blocked concrete sink trapping its occupants in their homes (the pub or wherever they happen to be).
I'm home with no cable TV (sigh), gas or food to cook with anyway. But high and 'dry' and happy to have power, fingers crossed. Around the city, there are people in bad positions, as many lakes have burst banks. So far more than 80 people have died, including a few electrocutions due to shoddy wiring hitting wet streets.
We all hope it let's up soon, I've never seen so many Hanoi expats on Facebook at the same time!
Today was an amazing day! Blissful silver days like today don't come around that often... My new quote: "If it's not a rainy day, simply don't go outside!"
Up early to the sound of.. dogs barking outside my bedroom window. A cool morning with recent typhoon weather washing Hanoi clean. Outside it drizzled rain, a still, silver day.. perfect weather to go to the pool :)
My house is nestled in a courtyard surrounding a pond, green fir trees and stylised Vietnamese houses. I love living in a communal setting. Each day I try to start with some time on our roof. Surrounded by a sea of coloured roofs, luscious rooftop gardens, washing blowing in the breeze and far below winding lanes and suburban activity bustles. It's peaceful!
A ring of the doorbell lets me know Carrie is here. She tosses her curly red hair and spins the bike in the right direction. She's new to motorbike driving, but as a bicycle rider she's as cool and confident as they come. Just the same it's tough negotiating my winding alley. Rough cobbled concrete create grooves that trap tires, potholes. A variety of motorists, pedestrians and school children come from all directions. After hectic minutes we pop out of the alley, get absorbed into traffic and head on our merry way towards West Lake.
The drive between West Lake and Thuch Bach Lake is gorgeous, especially at sunset. Swan shaped paddle boats dot the horizon and floating restaurants fill for lunch or dinner. Food sellers line the edges of the road, Vietnamese couples parked on their bikes snatch quick kisses and if it's hot, ice cream sellers appear in full force to tempt drivers off the roads.
But today with the rain, it's slow and quiet, swan boats are safety berthed and bobbing on the edge of the lake.
In no time at all, we've arrived at the pool. Thang Loi Hotel is impressive with flourishing indoor atrium and waterfall. As you walk towards the pool the whole of West Lake greets you. The swimming pool is set almost on the edge of the shimmering lake, lined with palm trees, scattered pool chairs (and enough chlorine in the water to kill all but the most resistant bacteria). Sunset here is the best time of day. There's nothing better than sipping coffee and watching golden colours drip down from the sky while Vietnamese fishermen in conical hats standing waist deep in water cast lines below you.. beautiful!
But on this silver day, it was just Carrie and I.. rare. Normally swimming is like negotiating an obstacle course! Vietnamese swim like they drive... so today was a more relaxed affair.
I'm starving after the swim, so it's time to hunt down breakfast. And surprise, we snaffle exactly what we want.. Vietnam's favorite bread and eggs. You see sellers on the street with boxes filled with bread. The ladies deftly whip together eggs and stuff a crunchy white baugette with meaty pate, sliced chicken, a sprinkling of MSG... (I knew I couldn't get through a post without talking about food!)
With our take-away egg sandwiches we find a quaint French cafe and eat eggy goodness washed down with fresh mango, mint and honey, yogurt smoothies.. breakfast bliss for under $2.
Today I have a health appointment with healer and herbalist, Dr Thuy. She provides health assessments, acupuncture, massage at the Yakashi Healing Center. Her clinic is a divine herb scented, beautiful and welcoming space. It's a classy joint and Dr Thuy is a healer personified. Calm and professional, she provides holistic therapies and other services for the natural health conscious.
Teaching English in the evenings means it's easy to take advantage of a day. Even if it was a rainy one! After work Sim and I caught up for chat over a couple of Singapore Slings (cocktails on a school night, naughty, I know) and enjoyed some nice tunes at Mao's.
A moon lover (and pastry lover) like myself truly appreciated the revelry of the full moon festival this weekend. It's a festival 1000's of years old and celebrated in lots of places in South East Asia, oh what fun!
I love festivals, this one is on the full moon in mid-autumn and called the Children's Festival.. lucky kiddies.
You couldn't miss the fact that something was happening in Hanoi... as always the first thing to go was the traffic, it disintegrates into chaos at the sniff of any major event!
Little star shaped lanterns covered in tinsel and glitter were being sold on the streets, delicious sweet basted mooncakes made from ground coloured beans bought as gifts, Chinese dancing dragons and a general feeling something was happening filled the air.
Most of the festivities centre around the 12 major lakes in Hanoi. They are scattered throughout the city, tree lined and green. Many of them are bomb crater lakes, pieces of tranquil beauty created and enjoyed enmasse by city dwellers long after the negative events that created them. Hundreds of families gathered where the usual aerobics ladies and old men in short shorts doing calisthenics usually congregate.
The weather has been perfect for it... still... a cool autumn... pfffft, I think not. Under a hot, muggy sky, sitting on my open rooftop I watched as hundreds of lanterns drifted up into the night sky lit by the light of a beautifully clear moon... and tried, oh how I tried, not to think of the litter and eventual post-festival journey to the sea... every lantern a visual prayer or heartfelt wish let off from a family's rooftop or at the lakes...
I figure it's got to be an auspicious way to start a new phase of my life in Vietnam, for better or worse we'll see... I'm looking after myself, healing after a slight chest infection... sick and feverish yes, though not as bad as that time I caught pneumonia in Nepal near the base of Mount Annapurna... a sign from the gods maybe... slow down... take it easier... look after myself for a while...
I'm also heading off to house-sit again next week... and look after Gus, the slightly damaged, small eared, traumatised but lovely little black dog (animal lovers beware, Vietnam is difficult in this regard, you may come back to Australia with a few strays)... it all makes me miss having my own little rag-tag ball o' fluff daughter around.
Hanoi, Ha Noi...potent and latent, deep as lakes, veils rise from my eyes. Silken constructed, built up, rushing, pushing forward, flowing with time. An ancient, modern insatiable emblem of rough, rotten stomping capitalisation, a relic, a token of ritual awoken and breathing 2000 years in time.
Cracked streets, hugging heat, a sweaty drumbeat, the pulsating rhythm of this city of mine. A rugged hand up, a friend to cross the road, a small kindness, smiling disdain of this ignorance. A fast paced mad hattedness, desperate focus, demons for dollars, wealth on a backdrop of women with baskets, babies, work, hunger and history, crunchy French bread, intricate streets, thin buildings and a worship of the dead.
The evening falls quickly on rooftop beauties, coloured edges jutting towards the skyline, filtered yellow lights, green, growing hopes all dancing quiet and silent above busy concrete streets, cracked and hard, riding motorbikes rough and broken. A life of ups and downs, a series of near misses, close calls and above it all a hazy, thick sky enveloping a city propelled forward quickly flying through time.
When I first arrived in Hanoi it was peak season for English teaching jobs - summer school! I was offered four jobs in the first four days (and all I was doing was frequenting local bars). But it's true, anytime of year is good for finding work in Hanoi. Every day new positions are advertised and new arrivals can find a good job within days... if they want to.
Many of the jobs I was offered were teaching English to kids, great for a new teacher. But I didn't want to teach kids. Really, I didn't. So I waited, travelled, ate and hung out with the cat until I was offered some hours in a business college. It sounded interesting and a bit of a challenge. So here I am. English teacher... in a motorbike shop...
My office space is truly glitzy, located in the downtown Yamaha showroom. The building pops out of the gloomy streets at night in a truly impressive show of how to reeeaaaally, properly use electricity! Each evening, waiting out front for my driver, I see Vietnamese ride past, really slowly, their eyes glued to the shiny new bike models glittering under the spotlights... so warning, be extra careful crossing Pho Thai Phien for this exact reason! Vietnamese drivers, totally blinded by bright lights, shiny motorbikes and deep in dreams of the day they can afford one... don't care too much for the average pedestrian Western or otherwise. I am the only teacher for the company and have two main classes with a mixture of employees. I have division managers in my beginner classes and advanced receptionists in my intermediate classes.. and occasionally a very beginner manager in my higher level class (simply because he is a manager). Also because of the nature of the business environment I get a scattering of attendance, it ranges from a maximum of 25 students to occasionally just two.
In the first few weeks I spent hours and hours developing lesson plans, creating fun worksheets and generally getting swamped in the details. But now, things are a little more chilled. I am generally planning lessons (with no teacher's book to speak of) in under 2 hours, which for me, is a real achievement.
Actually, teaching business English is tougher than I thought. Firstly, in this type of environment you're totally on your own without anyone else to bounce off. There's no training or additional support offered, just the belief that as a native speaker you'll be fine (which is partly true).
A school environment offers more by way of training, resources, teachers staffrooms (a great way to find out new activities and get tips) and other support. It means that you are probably able to learn more and learn it faster.
But I like the autonomy that comes with working independently, I like the shiny lights and for $25 an hour, I can't really go wrong!
So today, I came home, walked into my lounge room and see Malcolm being measured by his tailor... yes, that's right... his tailor does house calls.
I've had a pretty full couple of weeks and am just now taking a breather. I'm teaching but also busily preparing prac places for the upcoming Teach International course. The last few days have been oppressively humid, there hasn't been a sniff of a breeze. The city is sluggish and the pressure is building, we're all hoping for some rain.
Life goes on, and in saying that, it's generally been a happy blend of socialising, shopping, sneezing, drinking, massage, housesitting, dog whispering, nurturing good friends, creativity and general enjoyment... and shopping!
Being in a country that creates and has a reputation for manufacture, it's no wonder people can get exactly what they want (copied, made, designed and created). For example, a friend has a unique pair of Italian heels she nabbed in an op shop in San Fransisco, what luck! One of a kind you say!
Well, maybe in any other country than Vietnam...
.... even as I type, a hardworking Vietnamese cobbler is replicating the shoes and producing an identical pair for me for $9, mind you, finding his shop, the explanation, pattern picking and bargaining process took almost 2 hours and we'll see what happens when I pick up the shoes. So yes, you get what you want, however you need patience, NO expectations and a sense of humour in equal measures.
The Old Quarter is where most people spend their time shopping. There's a street for almost everything you need or want. Forget one stop shopping, for better or worse Hanoi makes the average shopper travel to each part of the city to find what they want! There's Silk Street, Bamboo Furniture Street, Shoe Street, Metal Pots and Pans Street, Ribbon Alley, Cushion Street... possibly read the Lonely Planet for a more correct description. Regardless, most of these places are situated in the Old Quarter.
From my house the Old Quarter is about a 15 min ride. It's a short motorbike ride through our laneway., down the packed popular shopping street of Doi Can, zoom past my favourite street in Hanoi... Chicken Street...
...On a delicious, totally off topic side note, it's now my personal belief that while Colonel Sanders served in the army... bear with me... he visited Hanoi and sampled barbeque chicken on Ly Van Phucwent back to America and made a poor reproduction in his Kentucky restaurant, haha. Each little restaurant that lines the street has their own closely guarded family recipe and spices, and it's chicken unequaled by anything I have eaten so far (being a fried chicken lover I can say this with certainty).
Imagine an entire street of small open area restaurants totally dedicated to cooking, making and selling chicken... you sit on the side of the road on small plastic chairs and are served enormous succulent glistening pieces of fresh chicken. The legs, wings (or feet depending on your fancy) are skewered on a stick, glistening hot and saucy, steaming fresh off the barbeque... complemented with hot spiced potato pieces and honey bread on sticks and washed down with bubbling Hanoian beer... it's heaven on a stick, a rare creation worthy of a chicken sacrifice.... or two, three, four...
Ah... give me a minute to wipe the saliva from my mouth...
... so zipping and zooming in and out of traffic after Chicken Street (with a full belly) you pass the pale high walls of the Temple of Literature and straight into the bustling, greedy heart of the Old Quarter.
I get the distinct feeling many travellers come to Hanoi and after spending a lot of time in the Old Quarter quickly become tired of the constant flow of people, street vendors, shops and other tourists.
On some faces you see a tic appear every time a street vendor calls out.. "You want a _______.' [insert cyclo/xe om/banh mi/leather wallet/Uncle Ho lighter/street map/ book/ fruit etc] It's fair enough... the flow of the Old Quarter is constant and busy, it's hot and compact and when you are living in it can be a little overwhelming.
Compared to most people I've come into the quiet and relative stability of an already established household outside of the compact Old Quarter and had a very positive introduction so far. Plus, living so close to Chicken Street, I can't really go wrong. I'm off tomorrow to find a standing hammock so I can relax and swing in the breeze (but since there's none of that) just to swing and relax and read a book on my rooftop... and sweat!
Oh and I've been a bit slack recently with blog updates, I think because I've 'misplaced' my camera (probably permanently) so sadly until I buy another there'll be no pics for a while...
Finally, after only a month I've given up my official position as Cat Nanny... a great job, if you have large wads of cash to live off. I have started teaching English (which is what I came here to do in the first place)!
I have to say, so far teaching is great. I've ended up getting a job in a business college of all places. I looked around at a few schools and was going to apply at one down the road, but I have to say the idea of teaching adults really appeals to me.
So anyway!
I'm teaching managers and sales and marketing staff at Yamaha motorbike company and getting paid a sweet penny to do it. Classes are held in the glitzy company offices above the main motorbike showroom. The building itself stunning, the bikes expensive and shiny and the students enthusiastic and simply stoked to have a teacher who plays games and activities. My first class was a winner and I'm looking forward to my next group. I'm teaching different levels and it's interesting to meet all kinds of professionals and looking into getting a staff discount on a motorbike, haha.
Oh, and this is the scrappy lad Houdini... aw, will you look at that face!!!!
An update on our Hanoi hacienda... Mal, Simone, Houdini (the magic kitten) and I are now fully installed in our beautiful house... Yes, it’s true for a weekend while we were here it was still a fully functioning school with 100’s of small children running up and down the stairs yelling and screaming. Yes, it’s true, the building was dirty, the walls had been drawn on, there was no furniture, no gas...
...and yes, the idea of moving into a school although bold and exciting, was probably not the most well thought out plan, but looking and living in this incredible living space now, I am glad we did.
It took a while but the house is fully equipped, sign taken down, oven included (which is rare here), beautiful bamboo furniture, walls freshly painted, floors scrubbed clean. It’s tall and thin like most Vietnamese houses, 5 stories in all.
My bedroom and bathroom are on the 4th floor. This means there are 54 stairs from the ground floor to my bedroom... I’ve counted. (But considering I'm in a perpetual state of butter-chicken-bliss here in Vietnam, I view these stairs in a positive light.) So starting from the top... Yoga/ exercise room on the 5th floor (again who can complain about stairs when you are working out), a roof terrace which houses a gigantic Vietnamese altar and our laundry. My room is on the 4th floor with the band room directly opposite (lucky me). Mal and Sim’s room is on the 3rd complete with ensuite and opposite them is a guest room for friends and family.
(deep breath, there's more)
...the 2nd floor holds the office and three desks and what will be a movie/lounge room. On the ground floor we have a lovely kitchen and a chill out space. There are a good 15 living spaces in this house, 7 rooms, three bathrooms, two lounges… and a fish pond (still to come).
Beeeeeeaaaaaaaaauuuuuuutiful!
For those of you viewing this on a click through from the house advertisment, click for bigger pics or visit www.flickr.com/tabithatravels for MORE!!!
The Museum of Ethnology provides a deeper look into the life and culture of the Vietnamese hill tribes as colourful and varied as they are.
I caught a xe om to the museum for a little more than 10, 000VND and had a bit of fun poking around the various clothing, jewellery, religious and birthing exhibits. My xe om driver insisted on being my tour guide, but with his terrible English it seemed better simply to read the tiny plaques.
The wander through the museum is nice! I love the difference between traditional clothing of the men and women of the tribes..the men's costumes are rough with bits of twine and bark quickly sewn together in jagged lines, covering only important parts. The women's costumes are lined with colors and intricate patterning and tiny detailed work..hahaha, typical!
Outside the main building there is a large space where they have built gorgeous traditional houses and huts as well as burial tombs. It's the first time I've seen a set up like this, and a walk inside the creaking bamboo of the houses is really something special! There's a water puppet theatre with the backdrop of a wonderful traditional house. In fact there are many traditional houses spread over a large area in the back of the museum.
This photo is of decorations on a traditional tomb was by far my highlight, hehehe, even my guide had a giggle at that.
Nguyen Van Huyen Road Cau Giay District Hanoi, Vietnam
Hmm, a more updated perspective on rain. I take back many of my warm goozy feelings about rain from my September post below where I was being naive... 
The rains came on Thursday, grey skies and cold but humid weather ensuring that nothing wet dries and the smell of mould permeated cupboards and clothing. The city was grey and most of us hoped the rain would simply wash the pollution away. It rains often this time of year, but usually.. IT STOPS!
I'm home with no cable TV (sigh), gas or food to cook with anyway. But high and 'dry' and happy to have power, fingers crossed. Around the city, there are people in bad positions, as many lakes have burst banks. So far more than 80 people have died, including a few electrocutions due to shoddy wiring hitting wet streets.
