Phu Quoc - paradise!

I'm writing this from the departure lounge in Kuala Lumpar, on my way back to England. I've paid to go in one of the fancy lounges because I can have a shower, and there's free food and drink! I've just got back from an amazing few days on the island of Phu Quoc, which is off the south coast of Vietnam, quite near Cambodia. It's a 40 minute flight and dirt cheap, and I'd heard great things about Phu Quoc so I decided to treat myself to a one-year anniversary present to myself!
People weren't wrong in there descriptions of Phu Quoc - it really is paradise. It is only just opening up as a tourist resort so it is completely unspoilt. I stayed in a lttle hotel which was right on the beach and every day I had the whole beach to myself. The sound of the waves lulled me to sleep every night and I whiled away the days reading and sunbathing. I really wanted a few days away as I was feeling very tired and drained from quite an intensive two months of living out of a suitcase in various places doing workshops. I loved that, but I needed some quality me time to chill out before coming back, as I didn't want to arrive back to people telling me how tired I looked! I spent five days there, quite literally doing nothing, but I feel so much better for it. I ate fresh seafood every day and went for a couple of runs along the beach during my more energetic moments. I also met some lovely people at the hotel who were travelling around Vietnam and even won a game of scrabble on the last night!
So, I'm now fully refreshed and very excited/nervous about coming back to the UK tomorrow. It's interesting the difference I feel between when I came back for Christmas last year and coming back now. On both occasions, I've obviously been dying to see family and friends again as I miss you all so much. Yet, at Christmas, when I was still not yet settled in Yen Bai, I was longing to come back and always referred to it as going home. Yet now, I am much more settled, and since being in Phu Quoc, I've had text messages and calls from my Vietnamese friends telling me that they miss me. A few have texted me to ask me when I'm going home. I've found this question strange as they all know that I'm coming back to Yen Bai on 30 August with my mum and sister, and then I realise that they mean back home to the UK, not Yen Bai. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of extending my stay in Vietnam or living here, but for now it's home.

One year on

Recently, I've been reflecting on my life and experiences in Vietnam, I think because I've just got my visa for a second year here, and I found it hard to believe that I've been here for nearly a year already. I have to say that at times, it's felt much longer, but on the whole it seems to have flown by. I'm coming back to the UK for three weeks on the 23 July, and I'm obviously really looking forward to seeing my family and friends again. I'm also a bit aprehensive about coming back, as I feel very much out of the loop. I was speaking to my mum on the phone the other night and saying that she's going to have to help me when I get back in case I behave or say anything inappropriate! I was joking that I might get funny looks when I flick my fish bones, skin and anything else I don't want to eat onto the floor of a restaurant, ask people very personal questions on first meeting them, and I am sure I have lost all dress sense!
I'm in Hanoi now, but for the last few weeks I've been working in some remote districts in Yen Bai. A new English textbook is being introduced for grade 9 students so the workshops were based on teaching the new book. They went very well, and I really enjoyed getting to know the teachers as many of them I hadn't met before. The first week, I was lucky enough to stay in a hotel and I was sharing a room with a teacher from the college who is my closest friend in Yen Bai. We had a really great time together and in the evenings we were usually invited to eat at a teacher's house. At the end of the six days, I was exhausted as we were working long hours and we usually sat up chatting until quite late, but it was well worth it. There were a couple of blips, as I had some problems with leery men and rice wine - the usual story! I have now found the ultimate way to avoid drinking rice wine though and I truly believe I will never experience these problems again. In the end it was quite simple, but found out purely by accident - the key was to cry! On the last day of the first workshop, there were a lot of men pressurising me to drink and I think I was a bit tired as well, and I felt angry that the other male college teachers were not doing anything to help me. The women couldn't do anything, because they are women, but the older men could have helped me, but didn't and I ended up bursting into tears at the dinner table. Crying is very socially unacceptable in Vietnam and nobody knew what to do. The trouble was that once I'd started I couldn't stop! In the end my friend told me that maybe I should go back to the hotel room.
There was also another problem as I had planned to stay with one of my students and her family for the second week, because I was doing another workshop in a district nearby, but I knew that the living conditions there were very poor. Also, my friend was going back to Yen Bai and another college teacher was coming to do the second workshop with me, and we don't get on so well so I really wasn't keen to stay there. In order to stay with a Vietnamese family here, permission is needed from the police, but as my student's father is a policeman, this wasn't going to be a problem. Also, my student had offered to take me to work every morning and collect me every evening by motorbike (about 10km each way). However, some of the college teachers disagreed with my plans. After my dinner table outburst though, I was given permission to stay there! I'm so glad I did as I had such a good time. Her family were so incredible welcoming and really made me feel like part of there family. In the evenings, we'd all eat together (and her mum is a seriously good cook!) and then watch TV, or go to a coffee bar. They had a nice house and a western-style toilet which is always a big bonus! I felt really comfortable there and even got used to sleeping without a mattress! By the end of the second week, I was really quite sad to be leaving, and on the last night, her mum got a photographer to come and take photos of us all. When my mum and sister come to Yen Bai at the end of August, they've arranged so that they will be in Yen Bai City so they can meet them and eat with us. This means them getting a couple of days off work and travelling over two hours by motobike, but they insisted that it was no trouble. It's times like that which really make me feel in awe of Vietnamese hospitality and kindness.
The second week also saw a major breakthrough in the problems of rice-wine drinking. For the first couple of days after me crying, the male college teachers seemed quite embarrassed around me and would often giggle and hurry off every time they saw me. Halfway through the week we had another lunch with some people from the education authority and of course there was rice-wine. This time though, I wasn't even given a glass and all of the college teachers made sure that nobody even asked me to drink. I was obviously relieved as rice-wine is so disgusting and drinking it makes me gag. It's all home made and so strong, it feels like it burns the lining off my stomach! Also, one of the male college teachers who'd been with me the week before came over and apologised for not protecting me from the men asking me to drink, I think he felt a bit guilty! However, I felt bad because the other female college teachers were not so lucky and they had the same problems that I usually have. So on the last day when we all had lunch together again, I was so happy when I saw that very table had three cans of 7up so that we could use this instead of rice wine - much more pleasant!
All in all, it was a very successful two weeks, and I've made a lot of nice friends and had a lot of lovely experiences. I'm now in Hanoi and I'm going down to the south of Vietnam tomorrow for a week before flying back to the UK. I'll be in England for three weeks and then my mum and sister will be coming back to Vietnam with me for three weeks, so I'm really looking forward to a great couple of months.

Don’t let the bedbugs bite!

Last month, someone from VSO came to Yen Bai for a meeting as I was having a few problems with work, mainly that I didn’t have enough. I know that you are probably thinking that I must be crazy to complain about having too little work, but in a place like Yen Bai, you don’t want to have too much freetime on your hands! Don’t get me wrong, I love living here and it’s incredibly beautiful, but there is nothing to do here and it was starting to drive me stir crazy! I have never read so much in my life and I started feeling a bit homesick and generally down, but with work to do I feel fine. The meeting was a success and when I came back form Sa Pa and Bac Ha, my boss came to inform that he had organised an extra one-week workshop for me in a nearby district.
I had a week to get prepared and a teacher from the college was coming with me and running the first day of the workshop. I didn’t know this teacher very well so I was looking forward to getting to know her better.
We arrived early Monday morning, and it was an easy day for me as it was Binh who was training. The whole district of English teachers turned up and the first thing we had to do was find a bigger room as there were 50 teachers in a classroom which could only accommodate 30 at a push! In the end, we moved all the desks and chairs into a classroom the other side of the school playground. The teachers were great, the best I’ve worked with so far. They all had a very good level of English so there was no need to translate as there is in some districts, and they were super-keen.
I was running the other sessions for the next three days, and it all went well, with one teacher saying that it was the best workshop she’d been to. However, Binh turned out to be quite lazy! I think she thought that after the first day, she could just sit and listen, and one particularly busy afternoon, I couldn’t find her anywhere. When she finally came back in she told me that she’d felt tired and had gone for a nap in one of the classrooms - I had to admire her honestly!
The conditions were difficult as we rarely had electricity so it was unimaginably hot, yet despite that the teachers all worked exceptionally hard. Electricity is a big problem at the moment as in the north it is generated by a hydro-electric plant but there hasn’t been enough rain so power cuts are frequent and lengthy. This district was particularly bad and we usually didn’t have electricity until about 8 p.m. and then it would go off again at 7 a.m. The only good thing was that we slept ok because we could use fans at night.
I had been warned that conditions would be very basic in this district, however, I struggled to believe that it could get any more basic than sharing a bed with a teacher and her daughter and washing in cold water in a bowl in her kitchen. I was very pleasantly surprised as there was a proper toilet and a shower – the first time I’ve had either. And it wasn’t that stinky – amazing! With the weather so hot, it was such a relief to jump under a cold shower about three times a day! In the evenings, the teachers wold usually come to visit us, and we went to the lake a couple of times and stood on the main bridge eating ice cream as it’s the only place where there is a cool breeze.

As you might have guessed from the title though, there was one bad thing! While reading by torchlight on the first night, I discovered all sorts of creatures living in the mattress, and silver fish darting about as well. There was little I could do, but lay a blanket that I found over the top and sleep on that, in the hope that they would climb through and bite me. Thankfully it worked, but I am now prepared for that eventuality when I go to another district today, as I bought a silk sleeping bag in Hanoi so that I don’t have to sleep against any more bug infested beds!

Has anyone got a shoe horn?

Reading this title, you might think that I went shoe shopping today. Unfortunately it was much much worse!
A couple of months ago some local English teachers came to see me about doing an evening class to improve their fluency in English. I was happy to help and we have been having lessons once a week since then. I don’t accept any payment for these lessons, and they said on Friday that they would like to take me shopping to say thank you for my help, as the lessons are stopping for the summer. So today I was picked up by one of the teachers and we went to a nearby clothes shop. I was told that they wanted to buy me a top and a bottom, so we started looking at tops and blouses. I tried on a couple but none looked right so we went to another shop which was much bigger. We had instant success and I found a lovely pink t-shirt top. Full of new-found enthusiasm (it was very hot and we had started to wilt) we started looking at trousers. I am often complimented that I look like a Vietnamese person, however, when people say this, they usually haven’t looked at my rather large backside! There was an occasion (which I try to put out of my mind!) when I went shopping in December. My friend insisted that I tried on some trousers which I knew would be too small. I told her my bum was too big to get into them but she insisted they’d be fine and pushed me into the changing room. On hearing me giggle, she opened the curtain to find me with the trousers only just over my butt and the button nowhere near the hole. She laughed as well and then proceeded to tell the people in the shop that yes, I may look Vietnamese but I do have a big butt. I just hide it well!
My friend today was slightly more sensitive, but after having tried on loads of trousers, all too small, we were starting to get disheartened. I think my friend was under orders from the others that everything must be bought today, and we nearly had some luck when I tried on a medium which was too big. With a flourish, we grabbed a small off the rack but once again the button and hole were strangers. I was pulling my trousers back on when my friend told me to hang on. She then came back and pushed a final pair of trousers into the changing room. I tried them on and they fitted perfectly; my friend was elated and said I looked wonderful (although I’m sure she’d have said that whatever just so that we could go home!). They did look quite good, however there is a very clear reason why these trousers fit when all others didn’t – they have a very big elasticated waist!
Shopping humiliation over, we went and had a much-needed sugar cane juice before going home.

The northern mountains of Vietnam

Yen Bai is a mountainous region but the province to the north, which also borders China, is even higher and more mountainous. I was lucky enough to visit another volunteer who lives in a place called Bac Ha, quite near the Chinese border. She is a pre/primary school teacher trainer and has done some great work since arriving there. The area is poor and is mostly an ethnic minority called H’Mong. Her main achievements so far have been setting up libraries in lots of schools and equiping them with books and games. She has trained teachers to organise and run the libraries and start after-school clubs, and got the local community involved in building a playground. She faces different difficulties than I do, one of which is persuading parents to send their daughters to school and keeping them in school. H’Mong women are often married by the age of 14, to boys aged 12. In reality this isn’t a marriage, but a family gaining a daughter-in-law and so an extra pair of hands. I visited some of the schools that my friend works in, and the poor conditions that these people live in are apparent. However, it must be very satisfying for my friend to see them enjoying the libraries, books and after-school clubs which she helped initiate.
At the weekend, I went to a place called Sa Pa which is a tourist hotspot and was a popular summer destination for the French when it was a French colony. It has magnificent landscape and is famous for its agreeable climate – not too hot in the summer and nice and cool in the evenings (although very cold in the winter, and the only place that gets snow). It also has the highest mountain, Fan Si Pan, which I am intending to climb later on in the year – hopefully!
In Sa Pa, I went on a trek to some of the surrounding villages. This area has a large number of ethnic minority groups, particularly H’Mong and Red Dao. Their traditional costumes are beautiful, and they are all around Sa Pa selling embroidered table cloths, blankets, etc. My guide for the day was a local H’Mong girl aged 16. She has never been to school and yet her English was outstanding, learnt simply by listening to and conversing with tourists. She cannot read or write in English and is now attending some evening classes to learn to read and write in Vietnamese (as her first language is H’Mong), and I think she is probably the main bread-winner in the household, as her parents work in the paddy fields. The trek was amazing, I am a converted mountains person now! We stopped to have lunch by a bubbling river where local children were running and bombing into the river and generally having fun, and it was great to watch. I also learnt a lot from speaking to her about her customs and culture and how it is changing with tourism and development.
We had excellent weather and it was warm and sunny – stronger than I thought as my face and arms burnt. When I arrived back in Yen Bai, the look on my friend’s face was a picture. Vietnamese women go to great lengths to keep their skin white, by wearing ‘sun gloves’ – long gloves to cover all there arms, or their husband’s shirts over their clothes, as well as using a hat/umbrella and skin whitening lotion (I have also seen skin whitening roll-on deodorant?!). She didn’t say anything immediately, but when my other friend mentioned it over dinner, I told her that the sun was strong in Sa Pa but not to worry as it’d be brown by tomorrow. At this point my friend sucked in her breath in horror, saying ‘What a pity, dark skin, so terrible’ or words to that effect. I have told her numerous times that a tan in the western world is usually viewed as a good thing as we say that it makes us look healthy, but in Vietnam it is a sign of poverty. Farmers and manual workers have dark skin due to working outside, so therefore pale skin is a sign of affluence.
All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable trip, and as it’s only about 4 hours away from Yen Bai, I think I might be popping up there a bit more often!

Massage in Hanoi

A couple of weeks ago I went to Hanoi for the weekend, the main reason being that my computer broke and couldn’t be fixed in Yen Bai, and the other reason being that after a month in Yen Bai, I start going a bit crazy and need a weekend away! It’s five and a half very painful hours to Hanoi, but worth it once a month as it is an amazing city. My usual itinerary is to have lunch with the VSO staff (as I arrive at lunchtime) and then do some shopping, stocking up on all the things I can’t get in Yen Bai. There are quite a few volunteers who work in Hanoi, so I spent the rest of my time meeting up with them and eating all the food that I miss. The last two times I’ve been in Hanoi, I’ve also had a massage, as all the hand-washing over my bathroom tap kills my back!
The first time I went with a friend who’d been recommended a place by another friend. It was, quite literally painfully naked! We were in a small room separated by a partition, and we both opted for the hot stones massage which is good for muscle ache. I should have ran the moment I heard my friend scream in pain, but no, glutton for punishment, I gritted my teeth and wriggled around as boiling hot stones were put on the soles of my feet – I kid you not! The massage lasted a painful hour and a half, during which time, boiling hot stones were put on various places on my back - ouch!
As I said, it was also a very naked experience for me, something I feel quite uncomfortable with being from prudish England. I find it strange that Vietnamese women, who are so conservative in dress and behaviour, seem fine with nakedness, particularly in a very confined space. I am used to non-naked massages in the UK, where I get down to my underwear and put a towel round myself before the masseuse enters, and the towel covering me at all times. Therefore, when I strip down to my underwear here, and she tells me to take everything off, and put a small pair of men’s boxer’s on, imagine my horror!
However, I felt it unfair to be put off by one bad experience, and my back was aching a bit, so I decided to have another go but at a different place. I regular go to a café near my hotel, and I’ve seen Thai massage advertised in the hotel next door, so I thought I’d give it a go. Thai massage is the closest thing to what I have back in the UK (how I miss Mr. Hersey!) as it involves massage and then cracking of the joints in my back. It sounds painful but it’s actually a big relief.
It seemed quite professional as it was in a big hotel, and I paid beforehand and was then led into a room with a friendly Vietnamese girl. I have accepted the fact that nakedness is obviously something I have to expect from a Vietnamese massage and just try to jump face down onto the bed as fast as I can (I can’t help it, I’m conditioned this way!). She gave an excellent massage although I was slightly perturbed when she started using her feet and knees! She cracked all my joints and I felt a lot better. We chatted a bit in a mix of Vietnamese and English, and I was planning to come back here again. Getting dressed was a bit of a nightmare as she attempted to help me put my underwear on – this way exceeded my comfort zone. I intended to leave a tip and I felt that she expected it as well, which is fair enough. I paid 100,000 dong for the massage. This is quite a lot of money for a massage but the going rate in hotels. I planned to leave 10-15% tip and I was given a piece of paper to give my opinion of the massage and a place where I can write the tip I want to leave. In my purse I only had a 10,000 dong note some very small change and some 100,000 dong notes, so I looked in my purse and took out the 10,000. When I gave it to her and said thanks, she peered in my purse and asked if I had anything bigger! She told me that apparently most people leave 50,000 dong as a tip. I replied that most people must earn more money than me! At which point, she left the room, never to be seen again – a shame because I really wanted to go back there again, but a 50% tip seems quite excessive. Oh well, the massage saga continues, I’ll keep you informed!

The Weather

Being British, I like talking about the weather, and living in the north of Vietnam gives me almost as much to talk about as living in the UK. In the south of Vietnam, there are only two seasons – dry and wet, and the temperature never falls below the mid 20’s, but in the north it is very different.
I’ve been told numerous times that there are four seasons in Vietnam, but I am not convinced, unless one season can last about two weeks! I moaned terribly about the weather from January to mid-April (as those of you who spoke to me will know very well!) which I can honestly say was the worst I’ve ever experienced in my life. The temperature never dropped below about 5 degrees, which is not that cold compared to frosty mornings in the UK. But there are two very big differences about a Vietnamese and British winter, the first being the humidity. I lost the fight against mould in about March, when I came back from a week away to find black kitchen top surfaces, black wash basins, and mould growing on my laptop, water filter, flip flops, and any other surface that could harbour mould. I can live with mould though, but I can’t live with the damp. At night, I would get under my 2 duvets and they would feel damp, I would wear 5 layers of clothing but the damp would seep through, and washing took two weeks to dry, and then often had to be washed again because it smelt. My friend in Hanoi described the damp as like living in a horror movie with the walls streaming – it really has to be seen to be believed!
The second big difference about a Vietnamese and British winter is central heating. Oh, how I dreamt of central heating during those months! The fact is that heating doesn’t exist here, and although I managed to buy the only heater which seemed to exist in Yen Bai, it did little apart from warm my toes a bit. People still sat with their front doors open because it made no difference, and I once described it to my sister as feeling like I’m permanently camping. My house is my tent and my bed is my sleeping bag, and I really felt like lighting a fire in the middle of the room! I think what I found the most difficult was not having any escape from the cold, day or night. I quite frequently went to bed in hat, scarf and gloves, and numerous pairs of socks because cold feet keeps me awake. During the day I would have to soak them nearly every hour to get the blood circulating in them again, and at night I would sit in a bowl of hot water (I have no bath) in an attempt to warm up. I would sit at my desk and be blowing white steam out of my mouth!
To be honest, my coping mechanism was to sleep, and I did lots of it under my two duvets. The TV and DVD player got moved into the bedroom and I spent as much time as possible in bed with my hot water bottle and a film!
It’s all over now though and it is scorching hot. It went from the cold to the hot with maybe two weeks of what we would describe as mild weather, and was called spring here. It now hits the late 30’s during the day and has reached 40 a few days, and the air conditioning is on full power. I am not complaining though and I refuse to, because however unpleasant the hot is, it is nothing compared to the cold. The main difference being that I can escape into my air-conditioned bedroom and cool down. The other day I was thinking of the advantages of the hot weather (as I was feeling hot and bothered and reminding myself of how awful I felt in winter) and the list was as follows:
In summer:
- I don’t have to hairdry my underwear dry every day
- I’m getting a tan (to the horror of my Vietnamese friends!)
- My hair is lightening therefore my highlights growing out is less noticeable.
- Clothes dry in hours rather than weeks
- It is not painful to be too hot
- There is a much wider variety of fruit

The only disadvantage I can see is that I do a lot more washing as although I wear less clothes, I actually wear more, if that makes sense! All in all, summer, however hot and sticky, is far preferable!