Flying back to England

 

Today is the day that I'm flying back to England. I'm leaving for the airport, which is only 20 minutes from my house, in a few hours time.

 

I'm flying with Emirates who I've flown with before and are very good. I fly from HCMC to Dubai, wait a couple of hours then get another plane to Gatwick.

 

Total flying time is about 15 hours and I arrive at about 7am London time. I come back to Ho Chi Minh City on 2nd January 2013.

 

Not sure how much updating of the blog I will do when I'm in England as the whole purpose was to let people know how I was getting on in Asia. I suppose now I will let people I know in Asia know how I'm getting on in England.

 

One thing I'm intested to see is how used to the heat I've got since I've been away. We will see....

 

 

 

Getting ready for England.....

Erosion of the sand dunes by thee fairy springs in Mui Ne

I got back from holiday from Mui Ne yesterday. The journey took about 7 hours which was much longer than it should have. The Ho Chi Minh City traffic was particularly bad on the way into the city.

 

For the next few days I'm going to be sorting all my stuff out and getting ready for my flight. I fly at 2025 on 10th December. I change in Dubai before moving onto Gatwick. Then its the National Express back to Poole.

 

 

Cham tower in Mui Ne. Picture makes it look quite good

I'm getting myself ready for the cold, it will have been 572 days since I left England when I arrive home. 

 

I've added a few pictures from my recent holiday. Both places would be great to go back to for a holiday.

 

The first one is of some of the sand at the fairy springs. It was fascinating to see how the sand was been eroded away.

 

The second is of one of the Cham towers in Mui Me and the final picture is of our chilli plant in our garden. Its a great plant, it makes so many chillis!!!

 

So many chillis!!!

 

Mui Ne and Pham Thiet, Vietnam

Nha Trang to Mui Ne

 

 

Red sand dunes.

We travelled from Nha Trang to Mui Ne a few days ago. Mui Ne is a little bit closer to home and somewhere I've wanted to visit for a while. The beach is no way near as nice as Nha Trang but there are some good things to see.

 

We hired a motorbike as a lot of the sights are spread out. There are some red and white sand dunes which may not sound very interesting but they are just in land and not next to the sea. We had to visit them early as the sand gets too hot. There were locals who you could hire boards off to slide down the dunes which was pretty cool.

 

Fairy Springs

There is also a place called the 'fairy springs' which is a small stream next to some red and white sand dunes in Mui Ne . The spring flows to the sea from a waterfall avbout 1km in land. As its next to the sand dunes the river is red with the sand and you can walk all the way to the small waterfall. It was great walking up this stream in bare feet.

 

We also visited the town Pham Thiet which wasn't anything special and a few Cham Towers. The Cham people lived in Vietnam around a thousand years ago and built some towers in various places. There are some in Nha Trang too. The towers aren't that visually impressive and I feel bad saying that as they were built by some people about 1000 years ago but they were still good to see.

 

It's back to HCMC tomorrow to get ready for m return to England on 10th December.

Nha Trang, Vietnam

Nha Trang beach

I've been in Nha Trang for the past 5 nights. It's a great small town with a fantastic beach. We've done all the sight seeing things and have relaxed on the beach. The weather, as always, has been great.

 

We went out on a snorkeling trip yesterday. - which was amazing with the best fish I've seen in Asia. We hired a motorbike to see the sights around the town the day before and went to a water park / arcade / theme park place called Vinland the day before.

 

 

 

 

View of Nha Trang from Vinland

Most nights we have eaten in the local night market where they cook fresh seafood. One of the other nights we went to a place where they put a BBQ on your table and you cook beef. It was excellent.

 

It's a great place and definitely somewhere I'd want to come back to. I'm off to another beach town tomorrow for a few nights called Mui Ne then after that it's back to HCMC before flying to England.

Holiday begins....

Tonight I leave Ho Chi Minh City for Nha Trang. I'm in the process of packing all my stuff from my house. I'm quite impressed with how little stuff I've accumulated over the past year so packing has been quite easy.

 

Ho Chi Minh City - Nha Trang

 

We're getting an overnight sleeper coach which is said to take 9 hours. From my experience in Asia a good idea is to add 20% time on to the estimated journey time so I'm expecting about an 11 hour trip. This is fine as we leave at 9:30pm so should get there around 8am having had a nice sleep.

 

Nha Trang is a nice beach town with a great beach, good diving, snorkeling, sea food and entertainment. There are also mountain close by. We've got just over a week so are going to chill out and perhaps move to one of a couple of other town close by but will just see how we feel.

 

Tourist map of Nha Trang town centre

 

No more work till January!!!!!

My 'jumpstart' class at Halloween

I've just finished my last weekend working at my school until January. So now I have five weeks off. Two I will spend on holiday in Vietnam and three I will spend in England. It was sad to say goodbye to my classes as all but one of them I will not be able to carry on teaching due to having a long break. I was given some 'goodbye' cards and was even told by one student I was the best English teacher they ever day (I hope I've not been their only teacher)

 

The HCMC skyline from ILA's teacher room balcony

It was also 'teachers day' last week in Vietnam. This is an annual day in the year where to say thank you to the teachers the students buy presents. I got 5 presents this year for teaching the Queens English to my students which was very nice. This included two ties, some fresh coffee, a story book and a toy train (!?).

 

I'm also moving house in the next few days. I'm in the process of packing my stuff up and getting ready for my 10 day holiday.

 

 

See you in January ILA!!! taken from the school balcony

After my 10 day holiday I'm back in HCMC for a few days, I'll stay in a guest house before flying to England on 10th December. I arrive on 11th December at 6am so should be home around lunchtime. I'm flying with emirates which is good for two reasons, firstly they're a great airline and secondly they sponsor Arsenal FC so it feels like I'm contributing to them buying new players.

 

Tomorrow I'm off to Nha Trang which is a beach place on the coast. I'm probably going to stay there for a while but there are a few other places I want to visit but will just play it by ear.

 

Saying goodbye to my class.....

Building the towers

Last week I had to say goodbye to one of my classes. This class is one that I have had for over a year now. They are high level juniors (9-11 year olds with pretty good English). The course had come to an end and as I'm not working for five weeks the class will be handed to a new year. It feels quite sad but it will be good for them to get a new teacher with new ideas.

 

For an end of course party I bought pizza and put you tube on one of the interactive whiteboards.

 

 



Adding the sweets

We also played a pretty cool game which involves building a tower. They have to build a tower out of 10 sheets of A4 paper and some sticky tape that can hold sweets a certain height above the ground. I've played this before with other classes and the find it quite fun.

 

Once they've designed the tower I put sweets into it one at a time until it falls over. However many sweets get put in the tower before it falls the students get to keep. As I've played this before I know a good amount of sweets is 40 and I built a tower with 50 once.

 

My student with all his sweets in the tower

This time I underestimated one of my kids who may well be the next Christopher Wren as he built a tower that managed to hold 150 sweets. Not even the older kids managed this. I had to call it a day at 150 sweets because he'd cleaned me out. It was great fun though.

 

I will miss this class but promised I'd get them a souvenir from England. I might be able to find something in poundland over Christmas.

 

 

 

The towers under construction

I've only got one more week to work now then I'm going on a 10 day holiday to a couple of places in Vietnam. I thin k its going to be Nha Trang and Mui Ne as well as a couple of other little stops.

 

Yesterday was 18 months since I left England. It doesn't feel like that long. It's also only three weeks now until I fly back to England. I'm looking forward to a nice long Christmas break. Below is a Video of one of the towers being filled up by my students.