Yep, it's been 6 months already. October held many ups and downs, such a shocker it took deep breaths and the majority of November to get back to some semblance of normality... but change is what life's about right..!? Work wise, my contract with the Yamaha corporation ended and October saw me working with Teach International.. again, assisting in the set up, organization and delivery of their Hanoi TESOL course. 12 Australians teacher trainees flew to Hanoi to complete the course here :) It was a very busy two weeks ensuring the teacher/students were oriented and settled. Definitely hectic at times and I was in a constant state of busyness!! But there were amazing friendships formed and a lot of support during prac week as the teachers headed into the schoolroom for the first time.
Two teachers have decided to stay on in Hanoi for the long term and have both been offered jobs already, I'm sure more than a few others will be back in the near future! Most of my time off recently sees me drumming with a group of djembe drummers. We're learning traditional West African rhythms. The group performs in Hanoi (recently at the multicultural festival). I've purchased a Vietnamese made drum, it sounds good. And I've been having loads of fun, but, even after 5 years of hitting skin, my left hand still does exactly the opposite of what I tell it.
Musical instrument and mat street :) Hang Manh Old Quarter, Hanoi
If you've ever wanted to be a multilingual, jazz guitar playing, belly dancing martial artist who cooks a mean Pho noodle soup... you've come to the right city!
With so many extracurricular activities offered in Hanoi it's hard to simply choose ONE to do. (Although it seems the favored past time of the average expat drinking more than anything else.)
I'm a huge fan of accumulating pointless knowledge. Over the years I've learned more than my fair share. Let's see.. skateboarding (a lost art), stilt walking, pan pipes, guitar, crochet, fire twirling, basket weaving, oh and my recent favorite a hell-bent desire to perfect contact juggling (yes, I loved The Labyrinth), none of which I can perform with any skill.
Anyway, for the eternal procrastinator you may find yourself learning a language (Spanish anyone?), tango, Shaolin kung fu, Viet cooking, performance art, photography etc etc the list is endless.
For art lovers Hanoi is scattered with arts museums, galleries and alternative art and photography (it's big here, everywhere you see dudes wearing khaki vests with serious lenses rivaling small artillery).
There's the Geothe Institute, the Cinematheque, bowling, roller disco, Tay Ho amusement park, karaoke, opera house and jazz clubs...
My favorite way to spend a Sunday afternoon is to hoof it down to tree covered Lenin Park and spend an afternoon in the sun with fire twirlers and drumming circle or hang around a little later in the twilight to perfect that Thai Chi stance with a personal teacher.
Hanoi has become one giant city of LIGHT! There's light doing amazing stuff everywhere here. Each day is more beautiful than the last with bright, blue skies, wispy white clouds and gorgeous dappled light filling the city. November's a popular time to travel to Vietnam and I can see why! Apart from the spectacular deluge that hit the city a few weeks ago, days here are sunny with a cool, crisp feeling in the air. And with the steady stream of new tourists in the Old Quarter each day, it's obvious most people enjoy travelling in the cooler weather. Personally, I enjoy a tropical environment and have been quietly freaking out about our steady journey into what will be a cold, cold winter.
For weeks shop fronts have been displaying padded jackets and fur lined coats, colourful scarves and gloves and the inhabitants of the city are rugging up and showing off their winter attire. I've invested in comfy tracksuit pants, mittens, head gear, socks etc etc ... Since this is my first Hanoi winter, I don't know if I'm overreacting, but there's nothing worse than being too cold in my books.
Speaking of cold, I've just gotten back from a few days chilling in the mountains. I visited Sapa.. July I think.. it was gorgeous but the weather was cool even in the middle of summer. So again, I packed my backpack and caught the night train to the town of Lao Cai then up the snaking mountain to Sapa.
I stayed in a nice guesthouse with a balcony overlooking the mountain range shrouded with bamboo and white mist. I was literally, chilling, haha, an Aussie icicle, and glad I packed a few extra pairs of warm socks. Because of the fog and the cloud that envelops the high mountain town most tourists have stayed away ensuring I had a full few days of peace and quiet in the fresh air. It was as beautiful as I remembered it.
Living in such an aggressively busy, smog filled city really affects your sense of inner calm...throw in the traffic, a few constantly barking dogs, one very sick sounding rooster, crying babies and the occasional jackhammer and you find that stress builds up quite quickly if you don't take a break.
A quick visit to the mountains is always a good way to reconnect and stay sane :)
Independent travel to Sapa is easy as pie! A train ticket to Sapa will cost you 200, 000 for a soft sleeper. Guesthouses scatter the town and you can find a nice, clean room for around $4 - $6.
Tickets can be bought directly from Hanoi Train Station (Ga Hanoi) Le Duan Street and bus tickets from Lao Cai station to Sapa town are 30, 000, easily purchased when you arrive in Lao Cai.
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!
Yep, it's been 6 months already.
