Reflections on the River

Hello all from Vientiane! Becky has allowed me a rare day off from bag carrying and photography duty, giving me a chance to express my thoughts and opinions on my time in Vietnam. Apparently this has been requested on several occasions now, so I assume that some people actually want to be subjected to my writing style – here goes!

Drifting down the Mekong river from Thailand into Laos, towards Luang Prabang, gave me plenty of time to think over my experiences of living and working in Vietnam (insert suitably contemplative picture here). Before I arrived In Vietnam I was relatively nervous about the trip; what would living for six months in another culture be like, would I enjoy teaching, and would I actually be any good at it? Perhaps most importantly there was going to be the experience of “moving in” with Becky and properly living together for the first time – whilst I was in no doubt that we would get along perfectly there’s always a slim chance something could have gone wrong!

Even more contemplation, this time with a few cocktails to help!

Suffice to say, my fears were unfounded. Becky and I have had an amazing time living together and we haven’t killed each other yet (long may it continue!). Living and working in a different culture has been interesting and engaging and, although challenging at times, overall a great experience. If you have been a regular reader of these blogs I’m sure you’ve been made aware of some of the more intriguing aspects of Vietnamese culture. All I will add is that I found the Vietnamese to be kind, helpful and friendly once you had got to know them and earnt their respect (as much as you can generalise about a people). Whilst many travel sites differ and say the Vietnamese are very cold and unfriendly, I think this is just because they are normal people who reserve the right on how they interact with you based on your merits. This means that whilst Thailand is “the land of smiles” I found Thais to be far more false in how they treated you because the smiles are just a façade – at least in Vietnam if someone is smiling at you it’s probably because they genuinely want to be smiling at you!

Teaching was the biggest revelation for me – not only did I enjoy it on the whole but I was also kind of good at it. Internally I was quite nervous during my first few lessons, since it was a completely unknown work environment for me. However my confidence in my own ability quickly grew as the weeks progressed and I got to know my own particular teaching style and what was expected of during the lesson. I was also able to work out what games and activities did and didn’t work with the particular classes I had. My own favourite to play with my older classes was a game called “stop the bus”; a number of categories are written in columns on the board (e.g. where did you go on holiday?, food & drink, what will you do at the weekend?) and then a letter is written for the students to say a word that begins with the letter in each category (e.g. E: England, Egg, Eat cake). This was a good game to play as it engaged all the students in the class, could lead to some funny and interesting answers (like when a student insisted he would “clean the toilet” on holiday), and also allowed stronger students to demonstrate their ability and expanded vocabulary. I really enjoyed helping my students develop their language (and banter) skills, and although I didn’t bond with them to quite the same level as Becky, it was quite sad when I told them I was leaving. After five months I had got to know some of them quite well; playing badminton with them at breaktime, teaching them how to make proper paper aeroplanes (with the disclaimer that they shouldn’t throw them in lessons…), playing chess with them, and watching them practice for the many dancing and singing performances the kids did.

There are two particularly interesting episodes that stand out to me. The first was during my time teaching at Thinh Liet secondary school. These were my most unenjoyable lessons of the week because the children had particularly bad English - whilst the syllabus was telling me I should be teaching them how to go to the post office and send parcels my airmail most of my classes had a worse level of English than the grade 3s I taught. This meant they were particularly unengaged and uninterested in the lessons, especially once you add in the fact that Vietnamese teenagers are the same as teenagers the world over – moody and truculent. For an example of how weird the lessons could get during one of my first lessons with them I was teaching them about the pros and cons of one of their hobbies. This was originally meant to take 10 or 15 minutes of the 45 minute lesson but ended up taking the whole time, since many of them couldn’t tell me what their hobbies were. In the end I just told them to do the pros and cons of football or video games (e.g. I can play with my friends vs I might get hurt). However the girl with the strongest English decided to do hers on her hobby of “bad boys” – pros: “They make me look good and they buy me nice things”, cons: “They are easy to lose and they make me do bad things.” Obviously it was very pleasing to see someone have such a good grasp of the language, despite the strange implications. Suffice to say my lessons with that class only went on to get stranger and more frustrating!

Being witness to Vietnamese primary school drama in the classroom was also a bizarre moment. One day I was confronted with two grade 5 girls bawling their eyes out for most of the lesson. As the lesson went on I tried to understand why (fortunately it wasn’t that I was their teacher…) and it turns out that another girl had told them both that they would never find husbands. In Vietnam this is a mortal insult – pretty much the second question anyone ever asked me (after “how old are you”) was “do you have a wife?” and most people were shocked that I didn’t at 24 (especially someone as handsome as I am). I had to continue teaching the lesson whilst trying to console the girls, since they were distracting the entire class, and passing them tissues to soak up their tears at the same time as trying to understand why they were so upset. Fortunately another girl in that class had good enough English to explain to me the problem and I’d finally managed to calm them down by the end of the lesson, although I think my lesson plan had gone out of the window by that point! I hope these two amusing asides help to illuminate some of the bizarre challenges that were thrown at me during my time teaching in Vietnam!

Overall Vietnam is great. The country is beautiful, the people kind and interesting, and the culture a nice change. Working there was a great privilege and I hope that the children I helped to teach have the opportunity to put their English to good use. Of course, Becky and I both enjoyed the experience of immersing ourselves in another culture and teaching so much that we have a year contract out in China – so I’m sure you’ll be able to tune in again for our sequel blog “little trouble(s) in big China!” Anyway that’s it from me – I’m sure we’ll be back to regular service next time where we will recount our adventures from Chiang Mai into Laos.