How I became an
English Teacher
in
Vietnam
Following my Short Story: A Hustler and a Hotpot in Ho Chi Minh City, I had experienced my first taste of the culture and way of life in a Vietnamese city.
[To sum up what happened:
On my first day in Vietnam I had been hustled for a rather expensive hotpot (and almost my watch). This was in exchange for a totally crazy, moped tour of the city, where my slick haired, outspoken, local “tour guide” was driving the wrong way down the road, running red lights and shouting to passersby: “Hap-pee Nuu Year!!” and “Hey so boo-tee-ful!!”
As much fun as it was at the time, afterwards I felt pretty stupid for not realising how much I’d paid for the hotpot. But C’est La Vie… I’m glad I had this unusual experience so I can share it with you now.]
The reason I was in Vietnam was because I was looking for an English Teacher job. This was due to hearing from a few different people how easy it was to get this type of work in Vietnam.
Apparently there was a high demand for teachers, and their ‘rules’ regarding qualifications etc. were often subject to negotiation rather than dead set. In other words, it was said there’s a: ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’, kinda thing happening there.
I also wanted to teach English as I was inspired by my Chilean friends in New Zealand who wanted to learn it, and so I spent some time teaching them (over a few beers):
Following on from NZ, I was inspired by an Englishman who I’d met in the Philippines. He expressed to me how great it was to teach in Vietnam having just ‘gone and done it’ himself, and the process, he said confidently, was pretty straightforward.
So I was feeling like life was showing me the way… and I listened and followed the signs to Vietnam…
…Fast forward to the morning of my second day in HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City) and I was sat at the breakfast table, on the top floor of the hostel where I was staying.
There was a steep, spiral staircase that started at Reception on ground level, and wound all the way up to the roof of the building. Up here was the kitchen/lounge area. A free breakfast was served here from 8am – 10am each morning.
On this particular day, I was joined by a man of similar age to me, sat on the opposite side of the table. We had already made introductions from the previous morning’s breakfast. I’d learned that he was originally from Zimbabwe and went by the name of Nathan.
Wearing casual shorts, shirt and flip flops, Nathan was well built with dark skin, had a round head with short cropped hair, and a kind face. That morning while consuming a very tasty, freshly made noodles with omelette breakfast:
I had confessed to him what had happened on my first day in Ho Chi Minh. He impressed me with his response to it, just calmly smiling saying “well, it was an experience”. It sounded to me like he’d been through some similarly intense times as well… and of course, travelers always experience these intense highs and lows.
Continuing talk with Nathan of what he was doing there, he said he was looking into courses for an English teacher qualification. But the courses he was researching were quite expensive, in person, and for about a month’s duration.
This wasn’t an option for me.
After travelling in the Philippines for a month prior to Vietnam, I’d spent a fair bit of money… Flying or ferrying between islands, going on boat trips over Christmas, swimming with whale sharks and partying with my friends, I was definitely running low on funds once again.
I was therefore very eager to find another, cheaper and faster way of gaining employment, to start earning some dosh.
I knew I would have to update my CV to begin with so I looked up my previous attempt at a CV that I’d saved in my emails and found… it needed a lot of work.
Not having a personal laptop at the time made me wonder what was the easiest way of sprucing up my CV; maybe there was a library or some place to borrow a computer… well, it turned out, I didn’t have to think about that for very long!
After Nathan had showed me a few things on his laptop I asked him if I could borrow it for a while to update my CV, and he said “yes of course”.
Brilliant!
This was a great opportunity to bang out the CV straight away without having to find or hire a computer (this would likely have been a mission in itself), while also being in a chilled location on the hostel roof top.
So for the next couple of hours I wracked my brains for how best to create my CV into more of a English Teacher orientated one. Previously I had formed my CV towards farm work or a customer service job, which were my most recent forms of application.
Once I felt happy with it, I handed the laptop back to Nathan, thanked him for letting me use it and I offered to take him for lunch, which he was happy to accept. He recommended this popular place for Bún chả.
(Bún chả is a Vietnamese dish typically made with grilled pork, rice noodles, dipping sauce and fresh herbs. Apparently this dish was created in Hanoi and remains very popular)
What I had to try and establish next was what criteria employers needed for them to take me on as a teacher.
I did some research and even though I’d heard many people say that they didn’t have a teaching qualification and still managed to get work, it did seem that I would need to be quite lucky for that to happen.
For the most part, the work people get is through companies and schools which ask the employee for some form of teaching qualification. (As it probably should be!)
Looking up the different online courses I saw that the fastest one for a proper teaching certificate would take 120 hours… So if I did 8 hours a day for 5 days a week – 40hours, it would take 4 weeks to complete…
This was not soon enough where my funds were concerned and so I continued to contemplate how I could get a job sooner. While I was consciously and subconsciously pondering an answer, I went about daily life as a backpacker in Ho Cho Minh.
Walking through the streets I would see things I’d never seen before. For example: there is a game in Vietnam called đá cầu, which is very popular. In fact, it’s their national sport.
The game is simply played with an object similar to a shuttlecock but with a more heavy, springy head to it, and the idea of the game is to keep it up in the air without using your hands.
I came across 3 men playing it in the park:
đá cầu (a cross between hacky sack and badminton)
At around about this time my flip flop string snapped and I was absolutely gutted. I loved those flip flops. We’d been through a hell of a lot together over the past couple of years. It was like I’d lost a part of my sole… ;P
So anyway, there I was flopping around this unfamiliar city with one barefoot and one flip flop. Safe to say, I was feeling pretty out of place.
I went in search of a new pair of flip flops, but while I was hobbling about, I began to feel too awkward and self conscious with my appearance and I soon gave up the search. I decided instead it was best that I retreat back to my hostel…
…Later that evening (wearing shoes) I was strolling through Bui Vien walking street with Nathan, and again I was blown away by the eclectic mix of sights and sounds that assaulted my senses:
Foreigners and Vietnamese locals sitting out together, enjoying food, drink and entertainment in the forms of karaoke, heavy uptempo music and a dancer
A Fire Eater breathing fire in the middle of the street
As you can see, it’s not your average night out in England!! Or, for that matter, any other place I’ve been to. And though I was really amazed by it all and felt it was a unique experience, I wasn’t (and likely won’t ever be) used to that intense city life.
Growing up in Wiltshire, England, there are farmed fields everywhere of either crops or cows and sheep, rolling hills and quaint little villages, and the pace of life is generally a lot slower and less stimulating. I would mostly choose this way of life if I was to live somewhere for an extended period of time.
Sometimes however, like when you’re travelling, the contrasting variety of experience is what you’re after. For me though, staying in a city I can get overwhelmed after a while and I need a breather, and it only took a few days staying in HCMC before I had that feeling.
As I woke up the next morning still contemplating how to get a teaching job, I came up with an idea of just leaving the city and Couchsurfing in a quieter place. I also thought that with the local Couchsurfers knowledge they would be able to guide me in the direction of a job.
I scanned the map of Vietnam for places to go and googled to see some people’s feedback on their recommended places. This brought my attention to Da Lat.
Da Lat I could see was higher up above sea level and had a cooler temperate climate (more like English weather) compared to HCMC which was hot and humid. It was also more in the countryside. It seemed a pretty sweet place to be, so I searched couches to ‘surf’ in Da Lat and spotted a guys profile with a lot of glowing references.
His name was Bao Nguyen and from his photos with him and his traveler guests, I could see he was a very friendly, positive person.
Checking the availability to stay with Bao, the earliest I could crash at his place was in 4 days time. After looking at different transport methods and how long they would take, I figured I could get the bus which was a 7-8hour trip.
Without further ado, I went for it and booked myself onto Bao’s couch for a week’s stay. I soon received a message back saying he’d accepted the request.
Hurray!!
Following this great news, I left my mixed 12 bed dorm room and climbed up the steep winding staircase to the top floor for that tasty breakfast of omelette and noodles.
I took a seat at the table by my new friend Nathan. Sat opposite was a girl who looked around my age (at the time I was 28) with dark brown curly hair, tied back in a bun and a cute face. She wore a black open neck top with an elegant thin silver necklace, pearl earrings and a colourful skirt. She too was about to tuck into some breakfast.
As I made conversation with Nathan about what things there were to do in HCMC, he recommended visiting the War Remnants Museum which wasn’t far from our hostel. Suddenly the girl next to me pipes up in a French accent:
“Ohh I am plan’ing on going zer after breakfast.”
She goes on to ask Nathan a bit about it and he shares his experience. Listening to him give some information about Vietnam’s history made me feel like it would definitely be worth a visit to gain a better understanding of the Vietnamese culture.
On top of that, I could potentially have some company and go with this French girl, so I asked her if she wanted to go together and she responded quite happily that she would.
SWEET!!
This was a really promising start to the day 😀
Feeling more confident about my prospects in Vietnam I went back down the staircase to my dorm where I picked up my backpack and went into the reception area to wait for the French girl, who’s name I’d found out was Marie.
She came down a few minutes later and we left the hostel walking out and along the Bui Vien walking street, following Google maps for the directions.
We were both happy to walk the 40-50minute journey to the museum instead of taking a bus or taxi so that we could just explore as we went, and in that time, while we manouevered our way through the hoards of mopeds, we chatted and got to know each other.
Marie had recently started solo travelling and had only just arrived in Vietnam a few days before me. In those extra few days she had taken a short trip over to Mui Ne, a place which she said was on the east coast a few hours bus ride from HCMC. She told me it was worth going. (Unfortunately I never got round to it)
Apparently there are epic sand dunes there… check them out: Mui Ne Sand Dunes
Meanwhile, a Vietnamese man comes right up to me pointing at my shoes and saying something like:
“Shoe!! Hey! I fix shoe! Hey! I fix for you!!
And with that he bent down and grabbed my shoe… Now, after what I’d just been through on my first day in HCMC meeting a slick Vietnamese conman, I was in no mood for any more hustling or hassling so I “shooed” him away… if you’ll pardon the pun.
Carrying on our journey past schools which had hundreds of students filing out the exit, most of them on mopeds riding over the pavements. Some had 2, 3 or even 4 adults and children to a single moped!
There were quite a few who weren’t bothering to wear helmets, and those who wore crocs or flip flops who somehow managed to keep hold of them while their feet were loosely dangling inches from the road. School bags or any other accessories were also strategically placed to keep balanced.
To them, it’s daily life, and I could see the effortless way in which they went about it. It was great to see that. I started to have some appreciation of what local life was like outside of the main tourist area where I was staying.
Still in awe of my surroundings, we came upon the entrance to The War Remnants Museum. I already knew some of the history behind the Vietnam War but here of course was so much in depth information, accounts, photos and videos that I found very impressive.
The building contains 3 floors with a timeline of events on floors 1 and 2 and the affects of Agent Orange on floor 3. Outside in the yard they have a number of different military equipment such as fighter jets and a helicopter.
Safe to say, Marie and I were sufficiently harrowed by the end of the exhibits, especially the photos of the many cases of deformed babies and children from the defoliant Agent Orange…
There were even some jars of preserved, deformed human fetuses!!
Horrific…
(Have a read of my Short Story: What I Noticed Travelling from Vietnam to Taiwan to appreciate what Vietnam has been through and the affect that still exists today.)
Marie and I had split up as we took our time looking through the museum, but rendezvous’d in the reception hall on the ground floor once we’d both finished.
We decided to go for some lunch next. I remembered about this app I’d downloaded called “Happy Cow”. This app shows vegetarian/vegan restaurants and cafés all around the world. Pretty handy if your diet is vege and you’re in Vietnam where most of the food is meat oriented.
(in fact there was one restaurant chain I found which served really tasty vegan food. This place was called: The Loving Hut. Check it out! They have restaurants all over the world.)
We found a place to eat nearby and we were shown to a table for two. Marie told me she was just going to the bathroom, so she walked off towards the toilets.
Meanwhile, I had just sat down at the table when a European guy with blonde hair walked down from the bar and looked to be on his way out of the restaurant. However, as he was passing by, he lingered for a second and looked back at me. He then approached me and asked if there was something that I needed help with…
I looked at the man and saw him to be early thirties, possibly German or Swedish, wearing a collared check shirt, shorts and small backpack. When he said this to me I didn’t understand who he was, because he sounded like he might be a waiter here but he certainly didn’t look like one.
“Oh hi,” I said, “no I think I’m alright thanks… do you work here?”
“Oh no I don’t work here but this is my friends place so I come here all the time.” he said in a tell tale German accent.
“… oh OK…” I said, still not quite sure what he wanted to help me with, “is there something you recommend?”
So he started telling me about his favourite meals on the menu.
After we had come to a conclusion for what meal I should get (the vege curry) he then asked what I was up to in Vietnam.
I told him I had only recently arrived and was looking for an English teaching job. This somehow led to Sven inviting me to the grand opening of his friend’s new restaurant that night…
…I’m not sure how it happened. There was no link there regarding someone to talk to about finding employment, it simply came to him to invite me. So we exchanged Whats App numbers, he sent me the name of his friend (Alex) and his address and then he left, just as Marie was coming back to the table.
“Strangest thing just happened…haha” I said, chuckling to myself.
“What ‘appened?” she asked.
So I told her about my meeting with Sven.
“This is cool” she said, which surprised me.
“Well if you want, you can come with me to check out this new restaurant later?” I asked.
“Yeah OK, could be nice” she said.
“Sweet!” I said happily.
This day seemed to be getting better and better and I felt like I was now on the up swing of the rollercoaster.
On our way back to the hostel, walking an alternative route this time, we came upon something rather unusual, that stood out impressively from the normal Vietnamese views of the city…
A bright, PINK, church…
no really, I’m not joking, check out the picture below:
I still have no idea why it’s pink but quite possibly it was done on a whim as a pretty stunt to attract tourists. Well it definitely worked. There were many tourists there all taking photos.
A bride in her wedding dress was having some professional pictures taken with the great, pink, church as her background.
Cool idea. And very unique.
Moving on, we passed by a woman cooking something on a small, camping style grill on the street. On closer inspection, she had a sign next to her that said “Viet nammese Pizza”.
I was intrigued by what this would be like, so I stayed to watch her work and checked out the menu:
She was using rice paper as the base instead of dough; an inventive idea to attract tourists. I mean, who doesn’t love pizza? I wasn’t hungry though, having just had lunch, so I hoped to try it another time.
Recognising my surroundings by this point, we headed straight for home. We decided to have a bit of a rest after our busy sightseeing day, so we went to our dormitories to chill and freshen up before dinner. We agreed to meet in the hostel reception at 6:30pm.
I was ready and raring to go at 6:30 on the dot, and Marie appeared shortly after. From the quiet, air conditioned hostel rooms, we walked out into the humidity and hubbub of the city streets, noticing the stark contrast between the two.
I followed the address I had on Google Maps, which was telling me the restaurant was only 10minutes walk away. We meandered through the throngs of tourists and locals filling the streets, and soon enough came upon our destination…
…However, the only place that we could see that matched the address we had, was a fairly small, shabby looking place, with glass windows across the front so we could clearly see what was inside… and it didn’t look promising.
There were a few tables with stools placed on the top as though it was closed, and a service counter on the left hand side. The room was dirty white in colour, in need of a lick of paint, with no decor, save for basic light fittings. Basically, a half finished restaurant.
It was also empty of people except for one person, and they were cleaning.
Marie and I look at each other questioningly, but I continue in through the front door, with Marie following just behind.
The person cleaning is a Vietnamese lady and she looks up at us, giving us a look like: What are you doing here?
I said the name Alex and she seemed to recognise the name because she started walking up the back stairs, as though wanting us to follow her.
We were led into a room that, thankfully, looked much more set up as a restaurant. There were nicely furnished wooden tables and chairs, wooden flooring, a few little decorations on the walls, and stood by the side of the room was a man engaged in his Macbook.
Alex turned around as we came in. He was of a height with me (6foot) had short blonde hair, big blue eyes, and a warm smile. He was dressed similarly to his friend Sven, sporting the check long sleeved shirt with black jeans.
Having introduced ourselves, Alex welcomes us to his restaurant and treats us like we were already the best of chums. He even offers us a drink of his favourite rum: Flor de Caña, and he invites me to his German speciality meal: Spaetzle. Marie orders herself a Vietnamese dish, and the photos are below:
The spaetzle was… well, to put it nicely, filling.
You can see by the presentation that it wasn’t particularly mouth watering; some roughly chopped fried onions thrown atop a bizarre looking mixture of potatoey strands, stuck together with melted cheese. It tasted a bit like a dish I’d concocted once from leftovers…
I’m not sure if this was quite how the dish was meant to be. A German friend that I affectionately call ‘scheisskopf’, cooked Speatzle to share, at a hostel in New Zealand. I had remembered it as being very filling, but pretty tasty.
Nonetheless, this was still a really fun experience. I was sipping on the rum he left on the table (foolishly :P) enjoying the randomness of it all. I mean, I was having dinner at a new restaurant in Ho Chi Minh because a German fella had stopped to talk to me while I was about to order some food.
Also, Marie and I were the only people there, so we had this upstairs restaurant all to ourselves, sharing a candlelit dinner!
It felt really great to find myself in this much more comfortable position compared to my super intense first days in Vietnam. The main thing was I knew I was due to leave to Da Lat in a few days time so I could enjoy the rest of my stay in HCMC.
This meant I’d made friends with this sweet French girl, we’d done some touristy stuff together and then somehow we’d ended up spending an evening at this German guys restaurant, where he couldn’t have been more welcoming. So all these changes enabled me to feel a huge sense of relief and contentment.
The travelling life is such an up and down experience from one day to the next. The whole situation can just drastically change and so intense highs and lows are often the norm.
After the meal, Marie and I thanked Alex for his kind hospitality, wished him well with his restaurant and walked back out into the street.
Wondering along we caught sight of a beautifully lit rooftop bar nearby and we ventured up there to check it out. We stayed for a drink and enjoyed the atmosphere.
We were above the raucous and activity of the streets below and pretty red lanterns were strung up over our heads, against the dark, blackness of the night sky.
This day with Marie was getting to be ridiculously romantic…
Having shared a long day out site seeing, sharing new experiences, going for lunch, witnessing a pink church, having a candelit dinner for two, and now this!! Sharing a drink with this appealing ambience…
this would have been the perfect moment to get closer.
I was however, in a relationship already. I had told her of my girlfriend from Japan, and she respected this, so nothing further happened. (Sorry for the anti-climax 😛 )
We spent a little while at the rooftop bar then returned to the hostel.
That night, as I lay on my bed in the darkness of my shared dorm room, I was contemplating again what my options were for how to lock down a teaching job.
Suddenly, I was hit with a surge of inspiration!
“I’ll join the Facebook pages for travellers teaching English in Vietnam and post a status saying I’m looking for work… AND, I’ll make sure to sound like I’m an absolute catch!” I thought, feeling excited.
To make myself sound employable, I was sensitive to how I wrote my details, mainly, to side step the fact I didn’t have a teaching certificate and highlight what I did have.
What I did have was a University Degree and a passport which said England on it. I did also put that I had some teaching experience……… which I did!! Thank you very much…
I mean I taught kids how to play tennis for a year and taught my Chilean friends English over a few beers… safe to say I didn’t write that specifically in the Facebook post.
I shared the post and within literally seconds of posting I’d already had my first response!! After a couple of minutes many more flew in!!
Wow I was thrilled!!!!
Instantly very happy with my idea to post a status in those groups, I also thought:
“Why the hell hadn’t I done that to begin with?!”… But that’s always the way.
The mixture of responses I got were mainly from Vietnamese employers scouting for employees and sending me their job spec. One of them asked me if I had a teaching qualification and I said no I didn’t. She replied saying I would need one…
It also turned out that all the job spec’s sent through to me were all stating a teaching qualification as compulsory…
Damn!!
I’d definitely need to find a cheap teaching course online.
Waking up the next morning I was reading and responding to the comments and messages I’d received while I was asleep. The fact still remained; I needed a teaching certificate.
This brought me on to browsing the online courses. This time, I thought to look at a forum to see what people commented about the courses they’d taken.
And I struck gold!!!
I came across a course being sold through Groupon, a deals website, which showed a course on offer:
Online 120 Hours TESOL Course (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)
$499 – $18!!
I thought obviously there’s gotta be some drawback to this. Scrolling through all the hundreds of comments, the vast majority of people were actually saying it was legit and that they had received the certificate at the end of the course.
AND NOT ONLY THAT…
Some people had written they had completed the course in 8 or 10 hours!! Suddenly I realised that because it was a multiple choice course, you could go through as quickly as you wanted.
TA DAAAAAA!!!! This was my cheap, fast track ticket to a job!!!
I bought the course through Groupon, filled out a short registration process, then using my iPad, I eagerly started onto the first chapter of my “120 hour” International Open Academy course.
I decided that as I would be spending some time focusing on reading the text, some natural light and a comfortable place to sit was what was needed. So I left the lamplit darkness of the dorm room, climbed the staircase up onto the roof and embraced the morning sun.
Only a couple of other backpackers were there, one quietly eating, the other headphones in, typing away on their laptop.
I took a seat at a side table and zoned in on the course. Scanning the pages as fast as I could, I came to the multiple choice questions at the end of the chapter. 10 minutes or so later, after only resorting to the photos of the text a couple of times 😀 I’d completed the first module!!
It was therefore true, the comments I’d read on the forum. It was possible to smash through the course in no time at all.
And so it was, after experiencing a few unsettling days in that alien city of Ho Chi Minh, living in a culture so drastically different from anything I’d ever experienced before, I’d managed to find a way in. I knew that once I had this teaching certificate under my belt, I’d have no trouble finding work.
Now all I had to do was choose where I wanted to live…
Giving myself a break after completing module 3, I noticed I had received a response to my post from a woman called Duyen (aka Sally, as was her English name).
She was promoting a vacancy at a company called Shelton. The position they had was in one of their teaching centres in Ha Long Bay.
I googled Ha Long Bay and… oh my God…
YES!
The images showed of these giant rocks emerging from the sea with colourful, wooden fishing boats, big beautiful beaches and stunning National Park views of dense trees and mountains.
Out of all the places I could find work in Vietnam, it looked like I couldn’t do much better than this!
As I said previously, I’m not much of a city person and will always choose the country or smaller town to live in if it’s for a longer period of time. I just prayed they would be OK with me not having a teaching certificate yet, as they didn’t mention that to begin with.
After I’d sent them confirmation that I was interested in the job offer, I sent pictures of my passport and degree and Sally thanked me for the documents. She then organised a Skype meeting with me and her boss, Micah, for the following day.
Now this was Exciting!!
My first Skype job interview! And it was for a job in which I had no experience, in a country in which I had no idea about!! Haha!!
I was totally out of my comfort zone… but this was why I was here.
So I had to find a reasonably quiet place with a decent Wifi connection. I settled for the lobby in my hostel because the receptionist told me the router was there. Headphones plugged into my iPad, I waited nervously for the call.
When Micah appeared on the screen and I heard his voice, I was surprised to hear a South African accent. He had closely cropped black hair with receding hair line and looked to be in his early forties.
We exchanged pleasantries and I explained my situation. Basically that I had been travelling for a few years doing a range of different jobs along the way and had just arrived into HCMC a few days previously and was ready to start work straight away.
He then asked if I had my teaching qualification…
I explained I was in the process of completing the TESOL course and would soon finish it… He said:
“Yeahhh that’s no problem, just as soon as you finish it you’ll need to get that certified.”
Phew! I was in!!
He seemed perfectly happy with me and quite eager for me to start as soon as possible. He said he would send the contract through.
I said I would have a read through it, then if it was all OK, I’d confirm my acceptance and book a flight up to Hanoi within the next few days.
SORTED!! Interview done and he’d offered me the job!! It was all falling into place.
I had a read through the hefty contract they sent, which took about an hour to figure things out. The jist of it was:
I’d be working for these guys for a set period of 9months. If I wanted to terminate the contract before then I would have to pay a fee of 2,500,000 Dong (£86) plus whatever they would be paying for me to be a licensed teacher to work in schools, i.e police check, health check etc. These costs combined with the leaving fee would total 5,000,000 Dong (£172).
This cost might not sound that much; to an English person working in England this could be a couple of days work, but in Vietnam standards, this was a substantial amount of money. (Money that I didn’t have…)
The rate of pay was said to be a minimum of 20USD per hour, with up to 32-40 hours a week. This pay was really high compared to the cost of living in Vietnam so I was sure I’d be able to save up a lot of money quite quickly.
If for some reason I wanted or needed to leave before the 9 months was up, I would hopefully have been able to save enough money to easily pay it off. (Little did I know what else I’d be paying out for shortly, and to begin with, how many lessons I’d have on my teaching schedule.)
All in all, this sounded very promising and I decided to go ahead and accept the job offer!! So I sent an email to Micah confirming my acceptance of the contract.
The next thing was, obviously, getting to Hanoi.
I searched for flights to Hanoi with Viet Jet airlines and booked a flight in 2 days time. I let Sally know when I was due to arrive and she quickly sorted me out a hotel and a ‘limousine’ which she said they would be paying for… a limousine :D, needless to say, I was baffled and excited.
There was just one other thing.
I felt sorry about it but I had to cancel my stay with Bao in Da Lat. I wrote to him explaining what had happened and that I wouldn’t be staying with him anymore, so he replied and withdrew the booking.
‘Ah well… these things happen’, I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I’ll be able to stay with him some other time’.
I had one last day in HCMC to enjoy before gathering up my belongings, leaving the hostel and flying to Hanoi. So I joined Nathan and Marie for breakfast and told them how I’d managed to bag myself a job!!
They were both very pleased for me and I felt again the relief of a plan coming together.
Marie also had news. She had decided to leave HCMC later that morning, to start a bus trip heading northwards, through the Vietnamese towns and countryside, to Hội An.
(I Googled Hội An to see what it was like and it looked really attractive.
It’s an ancient town located in central Vietnam on the coast and one of the few places in Vietnam to retain it’s old architecture.
A mix of SouthEast Asian influences, including a Japanese bridge over one of it’s sprawling canals, and Chinese-styled shophouses.
It’s also supposed to be very beautiful walking around at night decorated with many hand crafted lanterns.)
“Stay in touch then”, I said to her, “if you make it up to Ha Long Bay, send me a message.”
“Oui, oui, of course.” she said.
After breakfast, I gave Marie a big hug and thanked her for her company the past few days. Then it was back to work, to crack on with the TESOL course, which thankfully proved to be easy and straight forward.
For lunch I sought out a cheap but highly rated vege restaurant, again using Happy Cow, and discovered a different set up once I’d arrived at the entrance:
So simple. So cheap. Healthy food. You know it’s good for you if it’s naturally colourful 🙂 I really liked it.
My last evening was spent with one of the workers from the hostel, his viet friend, Nathan and a French fellow. Unfortunately I can’t tell you their names, because even after they had just told me them, I still couldn’t understand them. They didn’t know English, so we didn’t speak so much, only got stuck into the meal in front of us.
The Vietnamese friend had cooked a fish dish and offered us some of it. He showed me how to make rice paper rolls from the fish stew. True to tradition, accompanied by the main dish was the sweet chilli sauce for dipping, and a whole bunch of fresh herbs.
The Vietnamese chaps were knocking back shot glasses filled with clear liquid, from a plastic bottle with no label on it. They offered for us travellers to take a shot with them, and so poured us all a drink.
Whenever they took a shot, they would shout together:
“Một, Hai, Ba, dzô!!”
I didn’t understand at the time, but later found out it meant:
“1, 2, 3, drink!!”
So they encouraged us to do the same and we knocked back the shot on dzô!!
I was pleasantly surprised. It had a nice warmth to it and it didn’t feel too strong either. The flavour I knew to be rice wine.
No sooner had I put the cup back down, had my new local friend gestured with the bottle to me, wanting to fill mine up again. I was happy to oblige him.
Many, many more shots of rice wine later, I thought I’d go for one last wonder through the streets of HCMC. I said “cảm ơn” to my Vietnamese buddies, which means “thank you” and started up the alley to the main street.
In the alley, I noticed some women who were sat on the ground playing cards for money, and I stopped to watch the game. I think I must have stood watching them for a good 5 minutes, trying to figure out how the game was played. After that time, I still had absolutely no idea how to play.
The pace of the game was so fast and with me being sufficiently lubricated on rice wine, I could have watched them for another hour and not understood. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.
The women didn’t bat an eyelid at my arrival, nor for the whole time I was idly stood observing them. One woman was profiting the most by far and was quickly collecting a stack of ruffled up bank notes, while another of the women became progressively more pissed off after consistently losing every round.
Soon after this I returned to the hostel and to bed.
The next morning over breakfast, the owner of the hostel was telling me not to leave. He said:
“It too cold in north!!” Hanoi too cold!! I live there 20year and I never go back. Stay in Saigon!! Weather so nice. People much nicer.
He wanted me to stay so badly, he even offered me a job working in the hostel!!
I liked the owner, even after he continued to try and put me off going saying how shit Hanoi was, haha!! And the hostel was alright but there was no way I was staying in the city any longer. Especially not when I had a one way ticket to a teaching opportunity.
So I thanked him for my stay there, packed up all my stuff from the dorm room and got a taxi to the airport.
Embarking from the plane several hours later, passing through security was a doddle compared to when I first touched down in Vietnam. This was because I was on an internal flight and the palaver of the whole visa process wasn’t necessary.
Once through into arrivals, I was looking at the names written on the cards people were holding out. There was supposed to be someone to meet me here holding out my name… but I couldn’t see them.
Half an hour or so later, I did miraculously meet the person who was meant to pick me up. He wasn’t at the arrivals but by the taxi rank outside. He helped me with my bags into the car and we set off in the direction of my hotel. As he didn’t speak English, there was no further conversation, except for the adverts on the radio.
He charged me more than the amount quoted by Sally, and I quoted the cheaper price to him; he insisted heavily by saying the price over again and I couldn’t be bothered to argue, so I just paid him the money.
I stepped out of the taxi and into the city of Hanoi for the first time. It was already dark, the time approaching 8pm, so I couldn’t see the buildings along the street very well. Lamp posts were sparsely planted and dimly lit.
I did, however, manage to find my hotel for the night. The taxi driver had dropped me a short walk from the entrance… so he did that right at least (the cheeky bugger).
The front of the hotel looked more like an underground carpark. The only difference was, a man stood behind a small reception desk in front of two lifts in the corner. Other than that, there was no name of the place anywhere I could see, but I knew from Google Maps that it must be here.
I gave my name to the Vietnamese receptionist for the car park.
He confirmed I had a booking by giving me a key to a room.
“Pass-por” he said, as he held out his hand.
So I rifled through my bag to dig out my passport, and gave it to him.
He didn’t give it back.
I thought he would just check the details but he put it down on his reception desk and looked as though he would keep it.
It took a second before I said:
“I need my passport.” and motioned for him to give it back.
Shaking his head he said something in Vietnamese, then: “Pass-por” a couple more times while he pointed to himself.
The thing was, I needed my passport for the next morning’s interview with Micah, so I was reluctant to let him have it.
It seemed like I wasn’t going to get around this guy though, so I just hoped it would still be there in the morning to pick up before I left.
“Pass-por, tomorrow” I said, unintentionally copying his way of talking.
“Yes, yes, pass-por to-mor-row” he said nodding vigorously.
That settled, I took the lift up to my room.
The room was decent: double bed, ensuite bathroom, unusual toilet roll…
I dropped off my bags and only spent a few moments here, wondering how the toilet roll was different (then realising there was no tube in the middle), before I went back out onto the streets of Hanoi in search of some grub.
I came upon this restaurant just down the road, and I smiled:
One Piece, as you can see from the link to Wikipedia (if you didn’t already know), is a hugely popular manga and anime from Japan: “It’s the best selling manga series in history and one of the highest grossing media franchises of all time.”
Evidently, Vietnam was one of the countries that loved the franchise. But even though One Piece has been so renowned world wide, I’d not actually heard of it until a few months prior, from my Japanese girlfriend at the time. So I took a photo of it and sent it to her.
Unfortunately, One Piece was closed 🙁 so I went to eat some place else.
After a warming bowl of Phở, I returned to the hotel to organise myself for the day ahead of me. I planned how long it would take to arrive at the building in which I would be meeting Micah, arranged my smart(ish) clothes on the chair, took a much needed shower and got into bed.
It took a while to fall asleep. I was anticipating and going over in my head how the next day was going to pan out. As well as travel arrangements, I had to consider what kind of questions I needed to ask about the job, such as: how I could get my documents certified, and what type of accommodation I would be living in (and when I’d receive my first payment!).
(Thinking back on this now, there were A LOT of questions that I hadn’t thought about. Like, for example, the lessons themselves, what equipment would I need to teach the classes? what were the school or centre classes like? and how would I receive the support that I needed as a new teacher and a foreigner? I‘ll touch on this later…
… how these important questions didn’t occur to me, I really don’t know… well, hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it :P)
I woke the next morning with my alarm ringing in my ear. It took a second to remember where I was, and then it all came flooding back to me. Though I still felt pretty damn tired, I had to quickly shrug it off and put my game face on. All being well, this was the day that I would officially get myself a job, so I had to be fresh as a daisy.
I wore my long sleeve, collared shirt, which was an unusual colour, like that of avocado skin, but I loved it. Combined with this was my smart black jeans and my brown leather converses. This was as formal as I was going to get with my set of backpacker clothes.
I’d even bought some hair gel to slick my long hair down, so it wasn’t so wild style 😀
I left the room with all my gear, went down the lift to reception, gave the man my room key and thankfully, reclaimed my passport.
Sally had sent me directions for how to get to their office. It was a short, straightforward, 20minute walk, and I managed to navigate my way through the moped filled, horn blaring, city streets without too much trouble.
The only thing was, I was weighed down heavily by my baggage. I had my big backpack on my back, day pack on my front, laptop bag in one hand and guitar bag in the other.
On top of this, the atmosphere, even at half 8 in the morning, was fast becoming muggy and humid, so it didn’t take long before my shirt was suitably soaked in sweat and my anti-perspirant that I’d used, was beyond its limit.
25 minutes later, it seemed like I’d found the right building.
I’d spotted a giant “T2” written on the front of it and that was part of the address that I was given. I walked inside to find a dark, colourless entrance hall with only an office on the right, two Vietnamese people behind their desks in conversation, and a lift in the middle.
My destination I knew was floor 13A so I headed straight for the lift, tapped the 13A button and with a shudder and a rattle, I was on my way up.
Stepping out of the lift into a small lobby area, I couldn’t easily see where to go next. With low lighting due to no windows, the colour of both floor and walls was a dark greyish green. There was only stairs opposite, a corridor leading beyond the lobby by the stairs and 2 doors to my right.
Taking a closer look at each door, I thought “this can’t be right…”, because there wasn’t any writing or plaque on the door to say what offices were behind it.
I checked the details again but it didn’t say on the screenshot I’d taken whereabouts on the 13th floor I was supposed to go. I needed access to the internet to access my emails so I went back down the lift to the ground floor, hoping there was Wifi.
There was Wifi… but I couldn’t log into it, so I asked someone and they didn’t have a clue what I wanted.
So… I was a bit stuck. All I could do was go back up to floor 13A and try each blank door. Luckily, when the lift doors opened, Micah walked out of one of the doors and greeted me.
Micah was quite a big chap, around 6ft 3, with the solid build of a traditional South African who loves their meat and hosts an epic braii (South African Barbeque). He was wearing a white and green collared shirt with a Shelton Logo written on the breast.
“Giles!! Glad you were able to find your way.” he says, marching over and throwing out his hand for a vigorous hand shake.
“Hi, yes nice to meet you” I said, relieved to have found the right place.
“Come in, come in.” he said, waving for me to follow him.
Without further ado, he welcomes me through the door and into the offices beyond. He says for me to leave my bags behind the door and come through into his office, so I gratefully unbag myself and catch up with Micah who was already striding away.
I walk past several Shelton Vietnamese women employees who are all wearing the same green and white polo shirts, and also the same shade of vibrant red lipstick. (This seemed to be the fashion in Vietnam.)
They were sat behind desks full of files and paperwork, typing away on their computers. When they saw me they all smiled, waved and said hello. Then they continued to look at me and look at each other…
Initially, I thought they were attracted to me (which made me begin to blush) but then I thought it probably wasn’t so often for them to see a white guy with strawberry blonde hair walk through their office.
Meanwhile, Micah had entered a door at the back of the room and once I had come in, he introduced me to the 3 other people who were there: 2 women sitting at a computer and a man standing behind them.
The man was shorter than average height but I could see instantly he made up for it in energy. He was also not Vietnamese but looked likely to be Filipino, with coffee coloured skin, dark hair and rounded eyes.
“Helloooooo!!” he said with great flourish.
“Hi” I said, smiling back at them.
“This is our new teacher who’s going to be working over at the Ha Long Centre, his name’s Giles.” said Micah.
“Ohhh nice to meet you Mr Giles, I’m Mr Sinh.” he said rather camply.
“Nice to meet you Mr Sinh.”
“Hi Mr Giles, I’m Sally, the one you’ve been emailing with.” said the sweet young woman nearest me.
“Oh hi Sally, great to meet you.” I said.
“Right..” Micah said, as he picked up a folder from the desk, “So let’s just go back out to the café downstairs and we’ll go through some paperwork, OK.”
So it was with the briefest of introductions possible that Micah and I then left the offices, to go literally next door and into a convenient little café with some wonderfully refreshing air con.
We stroll over to the counter and he offers to buy me a drink. I said I’d go for some tea while he went for a coffee. We took a seat at one of the tables and he began his spiel of how things went down in Shelton, the important bits of the contract, and what official documents he needed from me to validate me as a proper teacher.
He explained first of all that I would have to go on a visa run. If you’ve never heard of a visa run before, it basically mean this:
1: you leave the country for as short a time as you want (even if it’s just 10seconds, it doesn’t matter because you’re officially out of the country.)
2: you return to the country and start a new visa…
it’s as simple as that.
In my case though, I would have to show my confirmation of employment to immigration control at the airport. They would then hopefully stamp my passport and…
Tadaaa!! My tourist visa would be updated to a 3month work visa.
Micah said I probably wouldn’t have to do another visa run after 3 months because he could “sort something out for me”. He elucidated by saying:
“In Vietnam it’s possible to bend the rules a little, you know, so we can get things done for you quickly.”
Well… that was exactly what I wanted to hear! The faster I could start making some decent money the better!
Micah also had an idea for where and when to take my visa run (he’d obviously done this many times before with previous expat teachers). He recommended going to the closest and cheapest place; China.
China borders Vietnam in the north and with Hanoi also being in north Vietnam, I could get a bus to the border that took only about 5-6 hours, stay a night, then get the bus straight back.
Micah went on to say that there was a special holiday happening in Vietnam in just a few weeks time. This national holiday is called Tết.
[Tết is a very traditional and important time for the Vietnamese people because this is when they celebrate the lunar new year. It occurs around late January or early February, (the first day of the first month of the Vietnamese calendar).
Many customs are practiced during Tết, such as worshiping ancestors, giving lucky money to children and elderly people, and opening a shop.
Tết is also an occasion for pilgrims and family reunions. Many people who only worked in the city and had family outside of it would return to their family homes and spend the two week holiday together.]
This holiday meant Shelton was also closing for 2 weeks creating an opportune moment for me to go on a visa run.
The next thing Micah said caught my attention.
He warned me: “You may feel lonely at times as you start to find your feet but just contact me or Mr Duc, who will be the local contact for you in Ha Long, and we can support and advise you.”
He said this with an air of knowledge, either remembering his own experience or that of previous employees who he had managed. (It wouldn’t take long for me to know exactly what he meant…)
That brought us almost to the end of our meeting, with the only thing left to discuss: when and how I was to travel over to Ha Long.
“Sally has arranged transport for you to Ha Long for 11:15. The pick up point is just down the road from here, you should have that on your email.”
“Yes, I do, thank you” I said.
“Good good. So you’ll arrive at our Hotel, and Mr Jerry the Head Teacher will be meeting you there, alright?”
“OK sounds good!” I said enthusiastically.
And with that, we shook hands again, he welcomed me to the team and he left the café.
Meanwhile I had a bit of time before my pick up and I hadn’t had breakfast yet, so I stayed in the café and ordered a bánh mì. (Vietnamese sandwich/baguette)
Mulling things over and enjoying the tasty bánh, I reviewed my email from Sally for the hundredth time and was reminded that my transport from here would be: a limo.
I couldn’t quite get over that, and so I thought maybe they had a different definition of a limo in Vietnam. Well, I was eager to find out. So I “re-bagged” myself, and left the café in search of the pick up point.
A little way down the street and around the corner, it appeared that I had quickly reached my destination. However, as seemed to be the case so far for me in Vietnam, it wasn’t totally clear that I’d found the right place.
Double and triple checking the details they sent me, I was maybe 60% sure this was where I had to be. So I waited with great anticipation for this “limo”.
10 minutes past the time of my departure and a big black SUV pulls up next to me, the door swings open to reveal a car full of people. A local Vietnamese man steps out and starts vigorously talking in Vietnamese at me, whilst performing very expressive actions.
“Boo, king, Boo,king” he said over again, changing to English. He already started to handle my bags to put them in the car.
“Ha Long Bay?” I asked.
He stops what he’s doing.
“Ha Long?” No, no, no.. no ha long.
And with that he chucks my bags back on the pavement next to me, hops back in the car and takes off, veering straight into oncoming traffic.
“Well that was close”, I thought, “almost got swept away to a completely different place!”
Another 10 minutes later, I rang Sally to see what was happening with my ride. She explained that the driver was on his way to me and would be there in a few minutes. She also gave me the number plate of the vehicle.
No sooner had she told me the number plate, my eyes picked out the letters and digits on a car coming down the street which matched what she had just said. Similar to the big black SUV that had pulled up earlier, this vehicle was actually even bigger, more the size of a hummer!
As it pulled over next to me I could see that it wasn’t just a normal hummer type of car either, but an elongated version.
So this is what they meant by limo!
It wasn’t like some super, stretched, hummer style limo’s that students might rent out for prom nights. It was shorter than that, but pretty beefy nonetheless.
The driver jumped out of the vehicle, whipped around to my side and opened the passenger door for me. This guy wasn’t hanging about.
Without saying a word, he grabs my big backpack and guitarcase and swiftly puts them in the boot. I take my remaining day pack and laptop case and step up into the limo.
I settle down into one of two huge, comfy leather seats in the middle, with VIP printed on the headrests…
I really could not believe the difference in my life within just a few days.
I’d gone from jobless, broke backpacker, without a clue how to get into teaching English and without a teaching qualification, to suddenly: