Florentijn Hofman's giant yellow rubber duck visits Ho Chi Minh City

Exciting times last week. A famous giant yellow rubber duck designed by a Dutchmen called Florentijn Hofman has just visited Ho Chi Minh City. It was pretty massive and by far the biggest yellow rubber duck I've ever and probably will ever see. Its statistics are 600kg and 25m x 18m x 18m.

  

They set it up in a lake about 2 minutes drive from my house by my local supermarket and cinema. I've attached a link to a newspaper article which covers the event pretty well. You can see in the picture above the locals are well happy having their photo taken with it.

http://tuoitrenews.vn/lifestyle/19331/giant-rubber-duck-floats-on-saigon-lake-lures-thousands

The opening line of the article says 'Thousands of Vietnamese and foreigners on Sunday filled up the area around Ban Nguyet (Crescent) Lake in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City, to have a look at and take pictures with the giant Rubber Duck'. I can first hand vouch for this because the traffic all around my house was horrendous, in fact I'd say thousands of people could well be an understatement. It was gridlocked. 

Not realising how busy it was, we made the mistake of wanting to go to the cinema on this Sunday evening and the roads were all blocked. The Vietnamese have a good solution to busy, slow moving traffic which is to jump red lights. I have no idea why they do this because all that happens is even thicker and more gridlocked traffic. I did manage to get to the cinema eventually and could see the duck as I passed over the rivers bridge but due to the traffic problems for which it was to blame all I felt at this time towards it was rage and anger.

These negative feelings continued over the next few days because whenever I went on Facebook all anyone who I'm friends with in HCMC posted was selfies of themselves with this duck. After a few days we did go to visit it whilst we were doing our weekly shop at the supermarket. 

We had to walk through the supermarket to get to the river to see the duck. As I told you a few days ago its been ridiculously hot and this day was no exception. When I got outside I saw the duck at the other end of the river (about 100m in guessing). It was so hot I couldn't be chuffed to go and see it.

Well as the newspaper article quotes this duck has been "spreading joy around the world" since 2007 and increasing its carbon footprint by visiting many famous cities around the world such as Sydney, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Osaka, Sao Paulo and Beijing to name but a few. If your lucky, like me, you may get to experience its joy in the future.

Reunification Day / Liberation Day

Today is Reunification Day /  Liberation Day in Vietnam. This is a public holiday in Vietnam which we get each year that marks the event when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) on April 30, 1975 thus signalling the end of the Vietnam War. (Remember the picture of the tanks going through the gates in one of my previous blogs).

What does this mean for me? It means I get a day off work!!!! Also for a bonus, tomorrow is International labour day so I get another day off. What will I be doing? Going to the pub of course. One day to go to the pub and one day to recover.

Above is a picture of a statue in Ho Chi Minh City which captures the events on the day of 30-4-1975

The weather this April

Just a quick post to complain about how hot its been this year.This is my third April in Vietnam and by far the hottest. There are basically two season here, hot and wet or hot. But in many ways this is not true. In December / January the temperature in Ho Chi Minh City drops noticeably (23 Celsius is the low) then between January and May it keeps getting hotter and hotter until rainy season starts where it's still very hot but you get rain which cools it down. This lasts between late May and November. 

So at the moment we are in the hottest part of the year. The temperature has been in the late 30s every day and about 30 at night - there has been no rain - it's days like these I wish for those cold, drizzly, dull English weather days. Above is a screen print of the temperature tomorrow. The 'real feel' of the weather with the humidity is about 45 Celsius. It's so unpleasantly hot you just really don't want to go out in it unless you really have to. 

It's even been in the news about how hot its been, I'm just lucky I have a/c in my flat. I don't think I could stay here if I didn't.

Anyway the past week we did have rain once and it rained yesterday so after months with no rain I'm really hoping rainy season is here!

Hoa Vien Beer

One thing I miss about England is proper beer. There isn't any ale in Vietnam but there are some nice German / Czech style beer places. One of my favorites is called Hoa Vien. If your into your beer and are visiting Ho Chi Minh City I personally think its worth a visit.

Its a nice bar away from the backpacker area. It also does some nice snack food. It was also visited by Bill Clinton when he came to Vietnam some years back. There is a nice picture of him on the wall drinking a beer.

They also show the football at the weekend in the evenings on a big TV. The beer is very reasonably priced. If your interested, the web address is below

http://www.hoavien.vn/webapp/home.php

My Birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday. I didn't do much as I'm not really one for celebrating getting older. I went to work but did go out for a nice meal in the evening. I did get a parcel from England a day before my birthday. As you can see it contained lots of goodies (thanks mum).

As you can see the Easter eggs do not travel very well. They had melted and reformed into weird shapes. They tasted ok though.

I also got bought a birthday cake from my girlfriend. It was nice.

Not much else to report. Work is good and keeping me busy.

End of my semester and hanging out with my students

I've just come to the end of my second 10 week semester at RMIT. It's always a nice feeling when it comes to an end. The final week is exam week and the following week is a down week so I wont have a teaching schedule but will be on emergency cover.

After playing table tennis and football

On the Friday we have a 'fun day' where we basically hang out with the students. This is quite nice as you actually get to spend some time and relax with them a bit. I played table tennis and table football with mine then we spent some time playing cards.

Playing cards

They have been a nice class and I will miss them. I will see most of them around next semester as they will be progressing to the next level. I could have gone on holiday next week but have opted to save my holiday time for the end of the next 10 weeks when I should be able to have a two week break. I will definitely be going somewhere fun during this time!!!

RMIT's highs school English speaking competitions

Recently I've been lucky enough to be a judge at RMIT's high school speaking competitions. Basically local schools get the chance to visit RMIT and see the facilities. During their visit they go to one of the lecture theatres and in their teams can speak for two minutes on what they want to do when they grow up and what they want to study. 

Big group photo. I'm in the bottom right corner

As I said I have now been to two of these events and have been part of a three judge panel where we give them feedback and decide which team wins.

Me with the winners

 Its been a great experience and something very different to what you see in England. The students are always up for having fun here.

During the event

I've added some photos of the events on this post. Not much else to report. I stopped going to Vietnamese lessons after 5 lessons, lets just say it wasn't working for me. I will try and start this again in the future at some point.

Deciding on the winners

Group photo with the winners

Giving feedback

A shot of the audience

Deciding on the winners

Two people doing their presentation