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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Motorbike

Here is a picture of my motorbike. I've been riding it every day now for the past 5 months and its great fun! Not bad for $200.

 

It's a Honda wave and its red. I've no idea about any of its other specs and frankly don't care. I'm not sure how fast it goes for two reasons, firstly the speedo doesn't work and secondly getting the opportunities to drive faster than 30mph in the city are few and far between. It cost $3.50 to fill it up which lasts me about 10 days (35 cents a day). It's great fun driving around the city and parking your bike outside restaurant for free.

 

My motorbike

 

It's been pretty good to me so far. It did get a puncture a month or so back, I took it to some lady on the street to fix it. After overcharging me for a new innnertube she ending up not putting the brakes back properly which resulted in her doing more damage to the bike. This meant I had to get new back bits for my brakes from another chap just over the road from her. Though charades he suggested I should walk out the road and do harm to her for her incompetence (I didn't) This fiasco set me back about $20 - a lot cheaper than the highwayman at Renault Megane.

 

Not much else has happened as I've been doing lots of hours this week. I saw an albino Vietnamese chap which was good. Next week is my last week of teaching before my nice end of year break. Holiday planning is still in progress and now only one month until I fly to England!!!

Kids on bikes

 

In a lot of places in Vietnam there are dangerous things that we would never consider doing in the west but are pretty normal for most people here, there are lots of examples and you see all the time but today I thought I'd so a special edition of the blog called 'kids on bikes'.

 

I've got some good photos of kids being put on bikes that would probably make front page news in England. Sorry for the quality of some of the photos but I had to take them whilst on the back of a bike which was moving, which is itself pretty dangerous.

 

 

The first picture is the familiar 'foursome', this is a whole family on the bike. It's surprisingly common to see four people on a bike. I have seen five before but this is quite rare. Notice the lack on space means the kid in the middle has to stand up and of course there are no helmets for the kids.

 

Positives are they're only using one bike which is good for the environment.

 

 

 

 

Front seat kid with hoody helmet

The second picture is the front seat kid. This one does not have a traditional helmet but has instead gone for an all on one jacket with hood.

 

Lot of families build a high chair in the front of the bike for the kids which is very clever and more comfortable for the child.

 

The kids do look like they enjoy the front seat view around the city.

I don't do helmets

This is probably my personal favourite photo. This guy just doesn't do helmets. Not for him nor the family. 

 

He's got that look on his face that he doesn't really care what people think either. The kid here is in the traditional front seat position and looks quite comfortable.

The lady is also in the traditional side saddle position due to wearing a skirt. Also very common to see this and quite sensible.

 

 



Small child

The final picture is of a very small baby being carried on the bike. Due to wriggling around alot he's kept in the middle to keep him safe. Again no helmet but a white hoody.

 

Sorry for the poor quality on this one but they were driving quit fast and we couldn't catch them up.

 

I have seen better ones but its all about timing and having a camera available to get a picture. I've seen three dogs on a bike before which was pretty cool. We watched them get on the bike, they all knew where to sit as they'd just been for a walk and were loving it. My mate as also seen a lady breast feeding on the back on the bike which is pretty unique.

 

Only three more weeks of work, then two weeks holiday and then back to England for three weeks.