Pellknights on Tour - Goodbye!
In less than two weeks we will be venturing off to Vietnam to teach English for 6 months. We will be flying into Hanoi via Bangkok to arrive on Saturday 19th August. The first week will be spent going on tours around Hanoi, meeting other teachers, learning some in classroom teaching, and partying a bit! Thereafter we will be based in Hanoi for our teaching placement with Binh Minh Language Centre which may involve working at the language school in evenings and on the weekend or we will be leased out to local public schools. We are hoping to get a few romantic weekends together to visit places outside Hanoi. We will of course be there during Christmas which is not a national holiday in Vietnam!
The process so far has been far from simple! We had to get all our documentation legalised due to a change in UK legislation and this involved expenditure of time and money. We have had to undertake the TEFL qualification which, although useful, is quite a dry course - hopefully it will be of some assistance when we are there. We were quite efficient in getting our flights and visas sorted for the stay - the Vietnamese Embassy processed and posted both our visas within 72 hours! We are now just getting our packing together, having already sorted our vaccines and malaria tablets and we all know that Becky is a slow packer so fortunately she has at least 1 week free before we leave!
During our placement we hope to gain some independence, teaching experience and of course immerse ourselves in a completely different culture. One of the things we are most excited about is living together and actually getting to spend more time together. As most of you will know we have been in a long distance relationship from Leeds to Surrey for some time now and it will be incredible to finally get to live together. On top of that it will clearly be an exciting, engaging, and eye-opening adventure.
After our time in Hanoi we hope to travel down the country with Claire to see more of Vietnam. Our must see destinations are Halong Bay, Sapa, Hoi An, Hue and Saigon. From there Claire will depart and we will make our way from Saigon to Bangkok to travel around Thailand (potentially with Amy), Laos and then Cambodia when we will fly to Bangkok to make our way home in February.
We want to keep people up to date with what we are up to, how it is going, and of course to post lots of pictures so please follow our incredible experience on this blog and keep in touch!
