Balloon day at ILA

My class of 'jumpstarts'

Last Sunday was a special day for my class of 4 and 5 year old children at ILA. The balloon modelling man came to the school. Halfway through the lesson I took them to a room where a man had made lots and lots of different balloons. Before going I taught them how to say 'one balloon please', as you can imagine they were really happy to get given a balloon. Most of the boys opted for a sword and the girls for a flower.

 

I thought it was a good chance to take some pictures of my students.

 

I've had this class since April and for a lot of them it was their first time in a classroom. I must say they are an absolute pleasure and joy to teach. They are all keen to learn, all want to play and they laugh at anything. I usually teach them about 5 words a lesson and play games around the new words for an hour before getting them to do some colouring in. We also do lots of singing and colouring in pictures. Its great fun and at times I can't believe I get paid to just play around for two hours.

 

It's so rewarding because you see them learn every week and know its because of what you have taught them. This class has about 14 students and they all play nicely together. 

 

I hurt my shoulder in class yesterday, I made the mistake of picking one of them up and throwing them in the air. The others saw this and all wanted a turn. After about 20 lifts I got a pain in my shoulder and think I pulled a muscle, it hurts today so I may think twice before doing that again.

Big house flood

Me and my flatmates were chatting the other day about how little rain we've had in the rainy season compared to last year. Its not rained for days. This changed a couple of evening back..... big time.
 

I'd just walked to one of my favourite Vietnam eateries - Pizza Hut when it started raining, it got heavier and heavier and more intense, then it started thunder and lightening too. It got worse and worse and just kept going. The street was flooded but as it wasn't stopping so after about 30 minutes I though it take a drenching and walk home.
 

When I got home our ground floor was flooded. The water was coming from the top floor. I took this video footage attached of our living room. You can see the waterfall like water coming from the roof and down the stairs.

 

 

 

It appears our top floor drain got overwhelmed and blocked so when I went to the top floor it was covered in water and flowing off the balcony into the house and down the stairs.

 

Only one of my other flatmate was is who I awoke from his sleep and we started filling buckets of water from the roof and trying to unblock the drain in the middle of the thunder storm. It wasn't very sensible as we were stood in a few inches of water with lightening above us.

 

 

 

We must have filled about 80 buckets before the rain stopped and we got it under control. We then did the same to my other flatmates room after as we noticed the water was coming up through her balcony drain and flowing back into her room.

 

We then had to clean up the house which took us only a few hours which was pretty quick considering the mess. Nothing got ruined so it was ok and it was quite a good bonding experience with my flatmates. Its a good job we didn't have carpets but then its probably one of the reasons they don't have carpets in Vietnam.

 

Back to work

A fine piece of art

Sorry I've not updated the blog for a few weeks. After getting back from Kuala Lumpur I've got straight back into work. Pictures this week are from various places around HCMC including the beautiful concrete flower roundabout. Its very popular with locals in the evening.

I'm going to be very busy again for the next 12 weeks. I'm teaching 24 hours of English a week, both adults and children and 8 hours of English which doesn't sound like a full time working week but you need to plan your lessons so it works out I'll be working pretty hard.

Back of the Notre Dam church

I think I've made a rough plan for the imminent future. Next week (1st September) will be my one year anniversary as a teacher which is quite a nice milestone for me. My e-commerce semester ends on 2nd November so I'm going to work hard till then. After this I'm going to cut down my hours, then at the end of November go on a two week holiday (location to be decided) before coming back to England for 3/4 weeks for Christmas then coming back to Vietnam again.

Vincom shopping centre in HCMC, its not that good

Long term I'm not sure if I will keep working in Vietnam. But it will be a good place for me to work whilst I look at the next place on my list. Korea, China and Taipei are all places that appeal but I'm just going to play in by ear.

Still enjoy living in Vietnam so I'm in no rush to move on. Our house contract is up in mid September which means I'll have to move house which I'm not going to look forward to but we might be able to extend it for a few more months which would work out perfect for me.

Options of places to go are Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Sapa, Huy and Hoi An all in Vietnam. Bali in Indonesia. Dubai, or Ko Tao in Thailand to get a diving certificate. Nice to have these options!!

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I've just got back from a four day trip to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I flew from Ho Chi Minh City airport to the city with Air Asia which took about 1h 30mins.

Its a nice city with some good things to see. It's alot more modern that HCMC which was quite nice but at the same time it still has some good old areas with street food. We had a nice hotel which was near a city monorail which could take use to the busy areas pretty quickly.

Me by the Petronas Towers

There was a little India and Chinatown, which had some good old buildings as well as some more modern areas that had skyscrapers. Its also the city which has the Petronas Towers which are one of the biggest buildings in the world. They were pretty impressive.

We spent most of the four days going around the city looking at stuff. We spent one day in a park which was pretty cool. It had lots of jungle forest and looked like the place in Jurassic park.

Sultan Abdul Samad Building

The shopping malls here are pretty amazing, there is lots of them and they are huge. You could probably spend most of the day looking around them. I think four days was enough to see the whole city. It's somewhere I'd like to go back to at some point in the future and I'd definitly want to see more of Malaysia.

I've added a few videos below. One of them is showing the Petronas Towers and the other is of a view from the Kuala Lumpur tower which is a communications tower but very tall and one of the biggest in the world.

Dalat, Vietnam

HCMC to Dalat

I've just returned from a 3 day trip to a place in Vietnam called Dalat. It a place in Vietnam's central highlands. Everyone told me it would be cold before I went but I didn't believe them as I didn't think Vietnam does cold. We took an overnight sleeper from HCMC, leaving at 11:30pm and arriving at 6am.

When I woke up surprisingly refreshed at 6am in Dalat the first thing I noticed was that everyone was wearing coats. When I got off the bus, it turns out what I was told is true... it was very cold. I've not been cold outside since I arrived in Vietnam over a year ago so the fresh, cold air was very nice..... for bout 5 minutes, I think all this time in a hot place has made me a wuss when it comes to the cold. Fortunately I had my hoody which I'd not worn since leaving heathrow airport.

Nice valley in Dalat

The reason it was so cold is that Dalat is over 1,500m above sea level which is pretty high when you consider Ben Nevis is only around 1,300m above sea level.

We went on a couple of tours and hired a motorbike. Its a very pretty town as its set in the mountains. On the tour we went to a flower farm, a cricket farm (where they breed them for restaurants), a coffee farm and a silk farm. All of these were quite interesting.

Some great views in Dalat

One thing I had been looking forward to ever since England was the 'crazy house' which is a tall house done in a kind of 'Alicce in Wonderland' way. This was very disappointing. It was being renovated but I still think it would have been rubbish, fortunately it was only about $1.50 to enter. We also went to see a great waterfall and a valley in the hills. (see the video below)

One thing I really wanted to do was walk up the Dalat mountain which was 2,100m above sea level. you can see it in the picture to the left. However I really didn't have the clothes so had to give it a miss. There is lots of our door things to do here such as mountain biking, canyoning, canoeing so I may come back here sometime in the future.

Indiana Jones bridge

In the evenings there was a night market where they sell all the fruit, vegetables and flowers. There was also a couple of nice restaurants.

One thing also worth a mention is the bridge in the town which goes across a river. It had a couple of plans missing and many of the others were close to breaking, however it works so I doubt it will be fixed anytime soon.

I've added another album with some nice photos so have a look.

Ive added a couple of videos below. The first one is of the waterfall which was cool. We we got to walk down to it which was pretty dangerous in the flip flops I was wearing.

The second is of a view across the Dalat mountains. It was on our way to visit a 'minority village'. I've seen a few of these on my travels and they never really live up to the imagination. Most of them had TVs and satellite dishes. We even walked past one house and could hear them singing karaoke.