Last Days April 10, 2009
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During my last days in Vietnam, there were a lot of goodbyes. I had a going away dinner with friends, a last church get together for lunch, a coffee shop get together with students, and a layover with Elizabeth in tokyo on my flight back. It was the time of the Tokyo Cherry Blossoms so that was kinda cool. Finally when I got back to the USA is when I made all these post cause the internet is slow in Vietnam and it sucks having to wait for it so long to do things.
Teaching English in Vietnam April 10, 2009
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In the above pictures is an orphanage & school, along with a picture of some students and then my student Nhu & I. My experience working as a teacher had good points and bad/frustrating points. By far, the best thing about teaching was the students in Vietnam. They were fun, mostly respectful, and overall not that hard to teach. Most other teachers were pretty friendly too.
The worst thing about teaching was the administration and the work teachers have to do for no pay. As a teacher at the school I was at, you’re expected to spend like 1-2 hours preparing a lesson for each class, dress up in trousers, a nice shirt & tie, travel to wherever that class is (it took 30-40 minutes to get to my school), get there about 10-20 minutes early, teach the class for 90 minutes on 30 minutes of material, learn to remember student’s names which you can’t say or spell, and then fill out an after class report by hand. In the end you got paid a relatively low wage for only 1.5 hours out of every 5 hours of work/your time used up because of the job (1.5 hours prep + 5 min to change + 30 minutes travel to class + 20 minutes till class starts + 1.5 hours for class + 20 minutes to fill out after class report + 30 minutes travel home + 15 minutes to shower and change back into normal clothes). Also you were sometimes expected to attend “workshops” on your weekend for no pay also. Here is a quote, “I expect to see all the teachers of ****** (at the workshop seminar thing) for the teaching quality of Communication courses.”
Additionally the school had a “new policy” where the teachers had to buy (they were illegal copies, but asia pays no attention to copyright laws) of the teaching materials from the school for every class. On top of them wanting you to buy an illegal copy of the book and cds for the class, the books the school had chosen for classes were cheaper books with blatant errors which any native English speaker could see. I talked with another teacher and he’d told me that he told them he was not going to buy the books to teach the class and if they were going to make him pay, he’d leave. Of course they tried to say to him later “okay just for you we can let you get the book for free,” but he told me he told them “oh no, no sneaky rule bending, either every teacher gets the books for free too, or I don’t.” He also said when he asked them why they made the policy that they said it was because the teachers were quitting and taking the books with them so the school was losing money on teacher’s books (and remember they’re talking about copies of books) and that this was their solution.
Communication between the school and I was terrible to say the least. They’d given me no employee’s name, position/title, or contact information or even said what they’d like me to do in class really, other than page numbers in a book. Two weeks after I started teaching, the guy who hired me called me over and said “What’s this?” pointing to my clothes. I said, “black jeans and a dress shirt?” Then he said, “company policy is trousers and dress shirt & tie. Also I heard you did not have the teaching book before the class this afternoon. We don’t want the students complaining about your dress or unpreparedness in teaching the class.” Then I said, “well now that I know you’d like me wear trousers and a tie I’ll go buy some, and as for the book, I tried to pick it up before and you didn’t have one for me, so today I came in an hour early to get the book and prepare for class. As for complaints, I’m pretty sure the students like me as a teacher and understand my lessons, have I had any complaints?” Then he said “No you haven’t had any complaints so far, but do you think an hour is enough time to prepare?” I said, “It isn’t ample time, but today is their very first lesson so it isn’t very difficult and there isn’t too much prep necessary.”
I was particularly frustrated with this guy even before this conversation as I had said I did not want to teach at this campus and was only available in the afternoons when I interviewed with him. Then he’d given me all my classes at this campus (the farthest one from me) and they were morning and afternoon classes, causing me to travel 2 times a day to the farthest campus from me, during a time I said I was not available. I was not even sure if I was going to get my pay in the end as they had not responded to my e-mails &/or messages, they didn’t tell me about the first payday (so I missed it), they hadn’t told me when they’d got replacement teachers for my class until I had already prepared and showed up to teach on my last days, and they hadn’t followed through on anything they told me they’d do. However I did get my pay with the help of other nice employees at the school, never hearing from the guy who was supposed to let me know.
As for anyone reading this wondering what the teaching English requires and/or actually involves, it is like this:
To teach English most places you need three things:
1. be a native English speaker (they don’t say it but I think they prefer it if you’re white too).
2. have a 4 year degree at an accredited college
3. have a TEFL certificate (you can get good one at www.icalweb.com for $265)
To teach english in vietnam I know one guy who just has requirement #1 and after you get a job then pretty much all the schools here don’t seem to care a whole lot about #2 or #3 because you have experience.
There is a Vietnamese teacher and you the foreign teacher for one class. The Vietnamese teacher teaches like 2 out 3 classes and the foreign teacher teaches the 1 out of 3 classes the Vietnamese teacher doesn’t teach. There is no paper grading or test writing/grading or contracts (maybe there are teaching contracts some places). All the school really cares about is what the students are saying about the teacher, because the more positive things the student say to their friends or whatever, the more likely they’ll come to that school (there are lots of English schools competeing) and the school will get more money due to more students and most everything in Asia in general is about money. If a cop pulls you over, you’re pretty much expected to bribe them and they’ll let you go. Some schools are shady and won’t pay or will put it off as much as possible.
There are places in Saigon you can live where it costs around $250/month for a studio type thing with electric and internet included; this is where a lot of teachers live. I’m not positive but I think it is better to work for schools and/or corporations that require some sort of experience and/or qualifications so you can get better pay, probably have a better idea of what is expected of you, and feel confident that you’ll actually get the money you worked for without having to seemingly fight for it.
Vung (puddle) Tau (ships) April 9, 2009
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Cathy (my friend from church http://www.nlfvietnam.com/ ) and I went to Vung Tau, a smaller touristy town about 1.5 hours away from saigon by boat ($10 one way). If you ever go get your ticket back to saigon before the scalpers buy up all the tickets and try to rip you off on your way back to saigon (we got lucky and didn’t have to buy from the scalper). It was a kinda cool town with good seafood and a giant Jesus statue on top of a mountain. You probably had to walk up about 2-3 hundred stairs to get to it.
Cathy is Canadian and speaks Vietnamese. Since she can understand what was being said, apparently lot of people thought we were married saying things like: “they’ll have mixed children, ha ha ha” and “so you and your husband have come back to visit the homeland.” LOL.
At one point we were at some tourist park somewhere along the beach. You had to pay a little to get in and then you had to pay to sit in a chair. While I did enjoy sitting along the beach in the wind (although sand did get blown all over you), I was pretty annoyed that after paying to enter a place which had almost nothing but animal statues and a fountain, I had to pay to sit down. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but I was sitting/sleeping there for 10 minutes before some guy came up and started yelling at me in vietnamese because I needed to pay him 90 cents to sit there. it’s vietnam…
Nha Trang trip April 9, 2009
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Trang and I took the bus (8 hour trip from Saigon) to Nha Trang, which turned out to be my favorite place I visited in Vietnam. Nha Trang is a beach town with many different types of restaurants serving all types of food, so most people could find a restaurant serving t. It was here I found out the best ice cream is Vietnam is Fanny’s (http://www.fanny.com.vn/en.html) ice cream, particularly the dragonfruit flavor. We stayed at the Diamond Bay resort (http://www.diamondbayresort.vn/en-US/default.cco) which was pretty nice.
Although I amazed I don’t have any pictures, Nha Trang is famous for the natural hot spring mud bath place Tháp Bà Hot spring http://www.thapbahotspring.com.vn/index.php?ha=home which we went to. The mud bath wasn’t really what I expected though, as it was like getting into a shallow lukewarm medium tub of kinda a muddy liquid that had the consistency of really soapy water, but it wasn’t soap. You could also float in it (although it was hard because it was only like a foot deep), like the salt water of the dead sea. I kinda thought it would be deeper, warmer, thicker, & in a bigger tub. Surprisingly, although the mud bath isn’t too hot, everything else you do there is decently hot (not burning, but hot) spring water. The rinsing area, the washing off bath, the entire pool, they’re all hot. Finally there is a normal pool at the end which is kinda nice because Vietnam is a hot place and you don’t really want to be in a hot spring water pool, under the hot sun, in a hot place.
Also in Nha Trang is scuba diving. It is like $30 for one dive or $60 for 2 dives from http://www.scubazone-vn.com/tour_e.html . Some foreigners worked there which I thought was kinda cool, because it was something other than teaching English for a cooler job. We went for 2 dives and it was fun. I jumped off the top of the boat, diving into the water. It is a little scary doing that though as if you slipped or didn’t jump out far enough you’d definitely hit the deck of the boat below you head on and probably hurt yourself pretty bad… so of course I jumped off twice as the first time wasn’t caught by the camera. you can also take a Gondola/cable car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift out to the islands, which I thought was odd and cool at the same time.
Lastly we saw the Thap Ba (Po Nagar Cham Towers) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po_nagar . They’re old and kinda unique looking. It was kinda odd that they seemed to be making a lot of new replicas (or similar towers) of these towers along the road the bus took to Nha Trang.
There was a once a month beach party at the Sailing club bar http://www.sailingclubvietnam.com/ which we went to. They have a cover charge of like $6 or something.
You can get a lobster along the cement walkway along the beach cooked for you for about $5. It was good, but I have never had lobster so I have nothing to compare it to. I also ate it in like 4-5 bites.
The old King of Vietnam’s palace is here up on a hill. Visiting it was not interesting at all. The view of the boats from up on the hill was the best part. Also there is some restraunt and a beach down a hill from the palace, which, I’m not sure, but it seems you can only get to if you pay a little bit to tour the palace area. I don’t think it is worth going to the palace area though, it is like a big old run down building with no one around.
Dalat – Crazy House, Datanla waterfall, and Elephant park February 3, 2009
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We went to Dalat, which is at an elevation of 1500m. It was quite crowded and kinda cold during the tet holiday season. They have an elephant riding place/park there called something like “c.ty co phan du lich sing thai phuong nam”. the waterfall is down the street from there and the name on the sign before you go in is “datanla”. At datanla there is a like a sort of roller coaster ride thing to take you down to the waterfall and back up the hill if you’d like. It isn’t like a fast or intense ride, think of it more like a slow glide in which you have a break lever if you want to go even slower. The crazy horse hotel is like a fairy tale place thought up by the ex-president of vietnam’s daughter. It isn’t a real hotel and it isn’t completed, but there is plenty to look at anyway as you can see from the pictures. Crazyhouse is mentioned on http://unusual-architecture.com/
If you go to a hotel in vietnam bring your passport because for some reason they need it for you to stay there. Know also if you take a bus to dalat there are no bathrooms on it, no armrest between seats, and lastly that the toilets at the stops along the way don’t have toilet paper, are disgusting, and are just like holes in the ground you squat over.
Tet – Vietnamese New Year January 29, 2009
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These are all Chinese new year pictures, tet. It lasts like 4 days.
I’m in a picture with a girl who looks a lot like a vietnamese version of my old room mate, Mayra, in one of them. The picture was taken at “Seventeen Saloon” in District 1 in the “backpacker” part of town where all the tourist are always staying. Seventeen Saloon is the most unique “club” in Saigon providing more like live shows than a club atmosphere. They have 2 seperated levels as the show areas, and in you stay in one area you end up seening two live bands, some dancers, some fire bottle jugglers, and a game show.
There’s also a picture of Kathy and two of her friends on her birthday. Then there is a picture of 4 other girsl, some from NLF church and others from this mostly american chruch out here that meets in different areas. Some of the houses in district 2 (where they once met) were gigantic, like mini modern castles. I wonder how much they cost as they’re relatively in a pretty remote area without many people. I’ll have to go back there and take pictures of these mini house castles…
“Lac canh dai nam van hien” theme park January 29, 2009
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we went to the theme park www.laccanhdainamvanhien.vn. It isn’t finished yet so there were a lot of empty parts and overall not a whole lot to do. They did have some rides, a zoo, a haunted house, a big buddist temple thing, and some fake mountains. If you go here bring toilet paper because they don’t have any in the bathrooms. The girl I’m with in some pictures is Nhi’s friend. She doesn’t speak any English, but it was fun to go with her.
IN OTHER (useful) NEWS:
Mapquest / Google maps type site for ho chi minh city http://www.1650km.com/ & http://diadiem.com/
My Tho Province January 29, 2009
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we went out to a park at a province for a bit. it wasn’t much but had a few things to see, including a monkey 
Friends and Fam December 17, 2008
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My sister visited as she was stopping by on her Semester at Sea cruise, the Bill’s brother and Dad came to visit as he was doing business out here with a factory, then Nhi’s birthday came along and her and her friends wore purple dresses and we went to a nice like restaurant/coffee place with cool seating which is picture. I also tried to get them to take a jowler photo like me but they wouldn’t do it.
Food December 17, 2008
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A picture of some dragon fruit, some really good like chicken rice eggs meat mix that Nhi makes, a picture of the menu at the beef store, some decorated ice cream, a picture of food at the rice store, and the beverage selection at citimart. food is pretty good here.
