Bringing you up to speed

Hello (or xin chào as we say here)

To bring you up to speed, I’ve been working in HCMC as an EFL teacher since December 2010, based at a foreign owned English language school with approximately 90 other teachers. The variety of British, American, Australian and South African accents in the staff room makes for quite interesting listening at times. 

I’m teaching 20 hours a week, over 4 days, so have lots of time to plan my lessons and explore. I teach young learners who are totally adorable and lots of fun. I never thought I’d be teaching barefooted, sitting cross legged on blue floor mats whilst playing games and singing nursery rhymes with 4 year olds, but it’s my favourite lesson of the week.  The little ones are giving me an excuse to regress to childhood and I look forward to my weekly 'workouts' and song 'singing' complete with actions - all kicking off at 7.45am: no rest for the wicked here I tell you. It's keeping me on my toes though and my early morning xe-om (motorbike taxi) rides through the busy city streets are certainly a good way to wake up and blow away the cobwebs. 

The city is crazy – unlike anywhere I’ve visited before: it’s quite liberating going against all your natural instincts and walking straight in to the hundreds of scooters and bicycles in order to cross the road! The motorbike taxis are fun & quite exhilarating if you choose a daredevil driver! A ride to work costs about 30p (as does most of the street food) – not bad hey.

Street food - yum, yum, yum!

There’s plenty to do from exploring the markets, museums and pagodas, to reading in the parks or shopping in the many stores throughout the districts.  There are times when you feel the need to escape – particularly on ‘I hate Saigon’ days (as any expats here will be familiar with).  Luckily, day trips to destinations like The Mekong Delta and Vung Tau beach are available and provide a nice escape from the hustle and bustle of Saigon.  Visiting both made a nice change of scene and allowed me to tick off a few more places on my map of ‘Nam.  With trips to Nha Trang and Mui Ne under my belt, I have also seen two of the ‘backpacker beaches’ here.

Saigon’s unique quirks make it easy to differentiate between expats and tourists. You can spot an expat a mile away when they don’t flinch at the sight of a cockroach or rat in a restaurant whilst tucking in to their noodle dinner!  More random observations to come shortly…

A xx