Exploring Hanoi

Good afternoon from Hanoi,

It is after lunchtime here and one of the rare days the Vietnamese have as a public holiday - Independence Day. Rob has had a bit of a sore throat so slept in a bit this morning and then has chilled on his laptop and Becky went out with the girls last night so needed a sleep in...

This last week has been busy! We have both been training but also getting used to our new

surroundings. It is safe to say we both really like Hanoi and our local area. We have a Bahn Mi place round the corner - see pictures right and left - and you can grab your Banh Mi Breakfast for around 60p. There are multiple coffee shops within walking distance. Next to the Banh Mi place is Cafe Moc where you can grab a super strong Vietnamese coffee for 68p and if you want something a bit more up market there is Sapio Coffee or a further walk away we have Highlands Coffee which is a bit like a chain like Costa/Starbucks... although the coffee is significantly cheaper. Becky has

View from Fast Food restaurant

shared several trips there with our housemates and the last one involved cake - see picture left. It is easy to grab products for your room and ours is now fully equipped just from using a street 2 minutes away and the
local mall. This street has an array of interesting, if not bizarre shops from the local laundrette where the man who takes your clothes is constantly high to the simple bathroom shop. There is lots of street food, some which you would probably avoid (I'm sorry to say it does include dog - we have not tried) and nice restaurants like our new favourite local place - Fast Food - not really fast food as we see it but really nice fresh juices, burgers, pizzas and pasta (and cheap beer!).

Parental pick up by bike at NGU HIEP Primary School

Cowboy Joes

Apart from exploring and Rob learning the layout of the city inside out we have had not one but TWO trial lessons this week. On Tuesday 29th August Becky was up for the 6:50am bus to make her way to NGU HIEP Primary School which was some way out of town - normally an indicator the level of English is lower. Becky was teaching the Grade 4 students ways in which they might describe how they feel such as happy, unhappy, ok. The lesson went fairly well and boosted her confidence. Rob cannot remember the name of his school but was relatively close to town but had a badly behaved set of Grade 5 students! He had to teach them how to say an address which was quite hard given the Vietnamese addresses seem to work in a completely different way to in the UK! His Teaching Assistance (TA) was nonetheless impressed with how he handled this difficult class. Rob had already been put down to teach secondary because in Vietnam it is fairly standard that they choose male foreign teachers to command respect in front of Grade 6-8. But Becky decided to email asking if she could also do secondary and was then given a trial lesson to do on Friday 1st Sept, as well as Rob. We both went to Tam Hiep Secondary School. We had observed lessons there on the Thursday, it was quite far out of town and we observed the level of English was quite low. We also got to witness a rehearsal opening ceremony for the schools - how they start their academic year. We will see our own opening ceremony for BME next Monday and then our school opening ceremonies on Tuesday. Robert taught his Grade 8 class about musical instruments and really enjoyed the lesson. He felt it went very smoothly and got complimented by his TA. Becky taught her class how to talk about their Homes. As she didn't have a partner she was observed by one of experienced BME teachers - Magda. The lesson went quite well and both of us are looking forward to hopefully getting some secondary school students to teach.

Lantern Lounge

Rachel advertises Miniso shop

Between our two trial lessons we had more lectures and training and finally broke down and needed steak which resulted in a trip to the quite expensive American Diner - Cowboy Joes. We have now discussed a Vietnamese steak place which does nice steak for a much lower price! On Thursday night we had dinner with some of our housemates and other friends. Becky has gone on a few shopping trips with our housemates Rachel, Liv and Sabrina. We also spent an evening having a few drinks in the Fast Food restaurant with our housemate Louise and spent a lot of our training time with Emma. Last night Becky was at the Lantern Lounge which was gorgeous! The mojitos were strong and the Banh Mi had proper bacon in. 

Liv gets protection from the bug spray

Another strange occurrence this week was one we actually missed... but were informed of by our housemates. Whilst we were at secondary school someone frantically banged at the door around 9am on Friday. Liv begrudgingly went to the door, obviously thinking what the hell is going on! It turns out they come into the houses to fumigate - particularly during epidemics of the dreaded Dengue Fever (which there is at the moment). Everyone got kicked out of the house with a warning not to return for at least 30 minutes whilst they got all the bugs out. The street then became crowded with cockroaches and Sabrina described a sort of 'Cockroach Festival' where all the old men started stamping on the cockroaches! We were super confused when we arrived home to find dozens of dead cockroaches in the street. Liv tried to return to see when it was over but the fumes were so powerful that she was given a mask.

Today we plan to relax and go to the Lotte to watch the Independence Day fireworks and party this evening. Goodluck Rob with his 9am start tomorrow - timetable collection. We may have just returned to the steak restaurant... 

We have our BME opening ceremony on Monday 4th September and then start our teaching on the Tuesday after the opening ceremonies... which begin at 7am, pick up at 6am. Rob is delighted.

Anyway all the best for now and we will try post soon!

Home Sweet Home

Evening from us in Hanoi,

How to tell the time

We have arrived in our new accommodation and thought it was time for another blog post!

Our Orientation Week has come to an end in Hanoi and it has been busy but fun and really useful. Rob hadn't even realised we hadn't posted for a week, it has gone by so quickly. On Monday and Tuesday we had more learning and talks getting us ready to teach. We had a fantastic guy called Alex who teaches in Malaysia for ELC (the place who sort our placements). We also began to learn some Vietnamese and can now count to 30 and say basic greetings. We had some new friends - Hannah and Ed - round for a few rounds of President and beer. We also spent a lovely evening by West Lake hanging out with Sabrina and getting some delicious ice cream milkshakes after a hot hot day. Fortunately the weather broke and it rained extremely heavily, so much so we could barely see out of our window - see the photos below.

Mr Blobby on Tour

It was on one of these slightly cooler days that we started the next part of the work permit process  - the dreaded health check. This was a slightly bizarre experience but apparently we are both fit to work. The health check consisted of a very public blood test, blood pressure, weight, height, general examination, eye, nose, mouth, throat, dental, X-ray, Ultrasound, urine sample and we think that is it.... Anyway we left the health check to head back for more internship lectures and in one of these we met our new bosses - BME. These talks went long into the evening so we got an early night after desperately searching the internet to stream an episode of Battlestar Galatcica and failing (the wifi is still superb though, GOT has not been missed yet!).

The next morning (Thursday 24th August) we had more Vietnamese lessons and then the afternoon was spent observing a class at a local school with a BME teacher. This was a surreal experience. Upon arrival at the school we were greeted like rock stars with the children running towards the bus, screaming and wanting to give us high fives. When we entered the classroom the normally well-behaved children burst into cheers and laughter. The lesson was really useful to observe, Jonny taught them all about daily routines and given they are only about 10 years old their English was good. It was a really motivational experience. We spent Thursday evening with the wonderful Liz, sitting out on our balcony and enjoying some really expensive beer - four tinnies for about £1.50.

Friday was our last full day of Orientation Week. We visited a local village in the morning which specialises in making pottery (see picture to the right and Rob in the Pottery Workshop below). We went and observed this being made and then wandered the village checking out the local market and the Red River (see left). After grabbing dinner it was time to head to the alcohol fuelled Farewell Drinks which were enormous fun. We both sang karaoke - Summer Nights of course. Rob was fairly confident but Becky looked like she was about to shit her pants, but as Rob said if you can sing in front of 140 contemporaries you can probably teach a class of 50. We spent most of our evening with Lucy and Brent taking full advantage of Brent's very strong arms for lots of beers (celebrations can be seen below).

Today was essentially a move in day - we left the hotel around midday and ended up in our new room which is already looking quite homely. Becky got decorating almost as soon as we got into the room - see below. We then headed out to get a few essentials, like toilet paper and water, and grab some lunch. We spent the evening bonding with some of our new housemates - Liv, Sabrina, Rachel and Louise - over pizza takeaway. The delivery of the pizza caused more stress than you can imagine as we don't really understand what our address is or where we are! But it allowed Rob to save the day and he was very happy/relieved when the pizza arrived. Tomorrow we are doing some more teacher training and then we both teach our first trial class on Tuesday.

Highlights of the week include meeting some lovely people, Robert being called Robert 'Huge' Pellow by a Vietnamese lady instead of Robert Hugh Pellow.... and immersing ourselves into the crazy life of Hanoi.

Freshers' Week 2.0

Greetings from Vietnam, or as they say here xin chao,  

We started our journey to Vietnam on Friday 18th August. After a comfortable

12 hour flight with lots of gin and tonic, vodka and coke and three servings of meals (happy Becky and Rob) we landed in Bangkok for our quick changeover. After that it was a 90 minute flight to Hanoi where we were met by the ELC (English Language Company) representatives and attempted some form of conversation, despite being awake close to 24 hours. A coach then drove us through Hanoi. Although we were both knackered we couldn't help but stare out of the windows in the chaos that is Hanoi. The roads are rammed with mopeds and motorcycles and there do not appear to be any rules of the road. Nonetheless the traffic seems to flow and there is a certain beauty to it..... that is not to say we will be getting on a motorcycle anytime soon. We spotted the Presidential Palace and a beautiful lake on our way to our spectacular hotel - CWD - Centre for Women's' Development.

Our views across West Lake are absolutely stunning and we have a pretty decent size double room. We suspect this will be in stark contrast to the accommodation we end up in so are enjoying every moment! The first evening was spent getting some visa practicalities sorted, catching up on a bit of sleep, and grabbing our first Vietnamese dinner. We also wondered out in the heat to explore and ended up going to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum thinking we might find water nearby.... this proved to be a struggle and eventually we found some water in a small cafe near what looked like a bus terminal. Some people in the group are not too keen on the Vietnamese cuisine but so far we have enjoyed it and are pretty certain we will both be in pretty good shape after eating this for over 5 months! There are lots of vegetables (including a dish called Morning Glory) and then soup/stew type dishes with meat, lots of rice, and soup. The hotel dinner is a mix of different dishes so we have tried a variety of foods. Tonight, for example, we had pork rolls wrapped in a green vegetable that looked like seaweed but definitely wasn't. 

The next morning - Sunday 20th August - we were up early to attend the Orientation introduction talk which Rob played very close attention too .... or rather to the camera. This was an opportunity to get to know some other interns and get practical information on our week in Hanoi. The afternoon was set aside for a tour of Hanoi. This was good fun but we didn't see much! A lot of sights were shut and people had not come equipped for temples so we revisited the mausoleum and this time we go to go inside which was interesting. That evening we had our Welcome Dinner at a restaurant and more opportunity to try Vietnamese food - eating clams with chopsticks was challenging. The beer is also remarkably cheap here - some beer is as little as 20p and the most we have spent is a staggering £1. Claire Levi's dream land. After dinner we ended up with the other interns in Beer Street and had a few drinks there before being sensible and heading to bed. 

Today was our first day of learning, hence the sensible behaviour in Beer Street. We had our first two workshops on teaching and Rob was enjoying being teachers pet. The teacher even wanted him to take on an activity by himself - normally done in groups of 5/6! After a successful day we have got the important things out of the way: Game of Thrones, dinner and early evening beer and are now getting ready for another day of excitement and learning. 

Much love x 

Last night in England

 Evening all,

We are sat here checking that we have all our documents - there would be nothing worse than arriving in Hanoi to find one of us had left our visas! We both can't quite believe that tomorrow we set off for the trip of our lifetimes. For Becky this the last night in her family home and she is quite emotional about that (her parents are moving house). Fortunately they have told her they are moving house so there won't be any awkward turning up on the doorstep in February and meeting someone different.

We have spent this last week together getting all the home comforts and luxuries we could possibly afford. On Monday Becky cooked Rob a three-course meal, Tuesday was the spa day, and today Rob was given a workout at Clubbercise. We think this will be the last chance to relax as we are given to understand that next week will be quite intensive - rather like a Freshers' Week - so we have been adjusting our bodies back to student level alcohol this week - see attached pictures.

Anyway we think we will both miss home but are excited to experience a new culture and place in a depth that is often not possible on a shorter holiday-style trip. We look forward to keeping you informed of our adventures in South East Asia.

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!