Today has been very hard work. I have renewed respect for people who endlessly relocate and start again in different worlds. It is incredibly difficult navigating daily life when you have no language, no map, clumsy cultural etiquette and no idea how cross a road. It makes me love Gulliver’s Travels more and more, the world makes no sense at all when you are seeing it all for the first time, I wonder what powerful impressions I’ll get in reverse when the time comes to return home?
So this entry covers some dull practicalities, for those of you who like to know, I consider how to use a post office, how to use a supermarket, access to social media sites (I know, get me), blurring of boundaries, and how generally knackering life is when everything is new.
So, some things I noticed about today:
- The blurring of boundaries between work and life/ students and teachers, night and day. I had a phone call at about 8.30 asking if I could meet in 10 mins to discuss a lesson plan. Now strictly speaking I’m not working today, but I was up and ready so that was fine. It was also useful and this other tutor is very much more switched on and has definite ideas about what the lesson should include and how it should be structured. This is good, but I feel a bit of pressure to prepare a lot and as we are gearing towards an IELTS exam I know nothing about, this requires some Google time. Helpfully, I am also given a plan of work for the term, unhelpfully, it is all in Vietnamese. Thank goodness I brought my lap top with me.
- I was also asked to hand over my passport. I need to be registered with the police, that’s fine, and they did all this within about 3 hours, I also had to sign a scary looking contract. However, it now emerges after all the expense and angst of police certificates and health checks and trying to get a business visa, they have decided simply to issue a contract for me 2 months at a time, they can then keep me on a tourist visa as a volunteer, and renew it up to three times. If I then wish to continue working, I would need to leave the country and return (something the current South African volunteers are considering). Well you live and learn. I wish they’d told me that before – or maybe it is because there has been a change in visa regulations
- Today, my mission was to post some letters/postcards, and find a post office. When I asked my host said I could just drop them off in the admin department and they would be sent for me. Hooray. Alas, this was not possible, I tried to supply my post to a confused and alarmed looking officer. She went to get a translator, and it seems that my addresses look somehow implausible, so she wanted me to put my letters in another envelope, with the university address on them, and try again. The problem is those envelopes don’t seal, and I decided it was too problematic. Instead I tried to find the post office. Spectacular FAIL. I have not been able to get a map of Vung Tau, so rely on people’s directions. However, it is really hard to follow because all streets look chaotic to me, they all have cafe’s and motorbike service shops and miscellaneous other stuff, I can’t navigate. I got hopelessly lost, and had to cross 6 lanes of traffic on more than one occasion – mercifully the roads are relatively quiet, even so my strategy is to wait for some local either walking, or on a bike, and to tailgate them over. It is a strategy, and I’ve not yet been glared at for stalking! Eventually I spotted a western looking guy, and asked him for help. I think he was Russian, he had little English (which is fair enough, my Russian is non-existent). I gestured my letters and he drew me a map to the main post office. I found it, but was exhausted by the process. It was an incredibly grand building, I left my bike with a dozing security guard, and went up the imposing steps. Someone directed me to a counter, where a serious looking worker scrutinised and weighed my mail, added lots of official looking ink stamps and showed me a calculator with the amount on it (120,000 VD) which I handed over. She handed back my envelopes, which confused me, and a fellow customer pointed to some slots in wooden boxes which were for post. I must seem so stupid, but none of this is obvious until you know! Also, FYI, whilst I was mid transaction two people pushed between me and the counter to hand things to the cashier or ask questions. I guess this is the ‘no queuing’ thing in action. I took a couple of surreptitious photos, so probably I’m now been followed as a suspicious person. I hope so, it will help me find my way back to campus when lost!
- The Post Office was opposite the co-op supermarket, so I went to investigate, this involves leaving your bike in secure parking, and then when you enter the store you have to leave your bag in a locker. The store was full of confusing and expensive produce. I could do with proper food, but the fridge I have in my room stinks so badly, I’ve actually dragged it outside onto the fire escape hoping it might self-clean in the open air. It looks clean but is pungent. Anyway, this is a powerful disincentive to actually keeping food in my room. That, and the ants, which are numerous, oh, and the rats – did I mention there are an enormous number of rats, HUGE ones, active in the alley way, now I don’t think they come up to my floor, but I don’t want to do anything to encourage them. The supermarket is on three floors, even this is an ordeal, because if you buy anything at any level, you have to recheck it in to your bag in its locker, before you can enter a different level. It seems a lot of hassle. In the end I bought some insect spray (yes I feel a traitor, and I’m worried whatever I use will poison me as well as my insect room mates, but I have been bitten quite badly by I know not what, and need to redress the balance of power in the seige that is currently underway! I also bought some non-specific cleaner, to have another go at the fridge, it can’t stay outside indefinitely! On leaving the supermarket I got my bike, the guard solemnly checked my ticket and then permitted me to take my bike back – it was 1,000 VD to leave it, which I thought expensive, though in fact it is only 3p so reality check in order.
- Really, I’d had enough excitement for one day, but I felt I should go and do something a bit nicer, I found a new coffee bar and had a refreshing avocado drink again. I liked this cafe a lot, I was the only customer and the woman in attendance seemed pleased to have me and brought endless refills of green tea, two small glasses at first, and as I drained them, a further huge tall glass with lots of ice. I felt she was looking after me a bit, and that is nice to be honest, because I do feel vulnerable at times, not because of anyone being aggressive, but because of my own stupidity in navigating this new environment.
- So then, to the beach. Maybe a glimpse of the sea will restore me? I cycle a different way, down much quieter streets and see a different and more manageable side of Vung Tau. I notice Matilda’s – which I seem to recall was mentioned to me before but I can’t recall why or in what context – it isn’t in Lonely Planet so I head on to Lucy’s Sports Bar which is and has review as good sea views, non girly, good pub grub. En route a cyclo driver tries to engage me in conversation – do I know Manchester? Yesterday an elderly tooth-gapped motorcyclist asked where my husband was, and when I said I didnt have one, he told me he too was single. Well, there are clearly options! Lucy’s Sport’s bar does have good views, and obviously a very fine name – but again it is catering for ex-pat oil workers and is really quite ghastly, expensive, lots of fat white men some discussing business, others playing pool, and a couple mismatched with young very attractive Vietnamese women. There is western style food and an English menu, but it is catering for football/ sport watching drinking carnivores. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, only a factual one, the food looks good, but is almost all meat (steak and chips) lots of cold beers, I can see it would appeal to a certain demographic, just not me. It is late though and I’m exhausted, I’ve also misjudged it, because places seem to shut in the afternoon so if I want to eat, and I do, then here is about the only option. I order a Greek salad and vegetarian pizza – the only two vegetarian things on the menu. They are good, but stingy portion sizes, no complementary green tea and the waitress short changes me. I think it is an accident, and she corrects it when pointed out, but it doesn’t feel nice at all. There is a cynicism about the places that serve the expats, and who can blame them. They are safe and familiar in a working mens’ club sort of way, but it brings home the fact that when people talk about a great life for expats in VT, it is men they are talking about, doing rather stereotypical MCP things, drinking, picking up women half their age, eating steak and chips and watching sport on the telly, and getting away with inappropriate behavoiur at times because they are so comparatively wealthy. It’s like going back in time. I feel I’m being a bit unkind, but honestly, that is my impression. No one is unfriendly, but it is clearly not an environment aimed at the likes of me. It is a bubble not an integrated way of life.
- I consult my lonely planet. Near here down some back street is a much recommended World Wide Arms Museum – I take my bike and head down deserted back streets. I have to push it miles and miles up a dusty hill. I get amazing views, and see interesting back alleys, I pass household shrines, some are really elaborate, and I end up in dusty scrub/ woodland. I get some curious looks, but no hostility that I can detect. I am lost. I retrace my steps and attempt another route. I pass what I would willing swear was a tree laden with cucumber (nationwide April fool special on spaghetti trees somehow now seems all too plausible) I walk higher and higher in the heat, it seems like miles. I end up at the entrance to some sort of military centre, where I try and get directions from the uniformed guard at the gate. He gestures to carry on up the hill, but I think he is directing me to the lighthouse – somewhere I do want to visit, but that is far too far to walk (and the hill is too steep to cycle up) I press on for a bit til I see another coffee shop with an address which makes it clear I’ve gone too far. I retrace my steps, free wheel down the hill, and spot the very closed looking museum a good mile down – I’d gone right past it. It has an enormous padlock on the gate, but looks impressive, faded posters of saxon soldiers (if my history is correct) are decaying outside. Later I check their website – it should be open. I email as I think it could be worth a visit. It was good to explore ‘off piste’ very interesting but it is so very hot, and these hills are steep. I thought as a Sheffield lass I’d have coped better, but I think I can only do steep hills in the cold.
- I am now completely exhausted, hot and sweaty, so back to base to dump my stuff. I was going to work in my room, but had forgotten about the tannoy of the lecture coming through the walls. Instead I take my laptop and head to the coffee bar with the mango trees. It is pretty deserted, staff are around, but slumbering in various corners, having a little siesta. I manage to order and iced coffee by miming shivering and pointing at coffee. I had wanted it white, but that was too hard. Everything takes so much effort! The coffee bar does though have free WiFi (it is ubiquitous here) so I settle to catch up on my blog. I try to get onto the BBC website, and Facebook, but both seem to be blocked. It feels relaxed here, but it is misleading, there are barriers to connection and they are real.
- Oh, but I want to show you something ingenius. Many of the bikes here have a sort of built in bike lock, genius, you leave the key in when you are pedaling about, and when you want to lock it you simply push down a lever so a metal hoop completes a circle locking the wheel, when you want to unlock the bike, insert the key and it retracts, genius. Don’t know why we don’t have them as standard in the UK. Also, view of back yard of campus from my window. Transport systems summarised!
Quietly Terrified 