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[anirishview]

Chicken Phở

We spent two hours in Yangon. Did I get my first experience of the hot, humid Asian air in Yangon Airport? No. We sat in the plane – if you were going to Myanmar/Burma then you went on your way, however, if your last stop was Hanoi then you stayed on the plane. So we stayed. We were told not to leave our seats if we could avoid it. We waited while they refuelled. We sat while they sprayed disinfectant in the plane in accordance with Vietnamese regulations – all we were told was that if you would be bothered by this then you should cover your eyes, nose and mouth when passed by the cabin crew while they sprayed it at the height of the overhead bins. While we waited we filled out mandatory forms detailing if we had been to certain named countries or if we had experienced vomiting, diarrhoea, sore throat and other minor unpleasant ailments in the past 30 days. As well as our email, phone and address of where we would be staying for the duration of our trip in Vietnam.

When we landed in Hanoi we made our way out – slowly and impatiently. Our nerves were settling in and leaving an uncomfortableness in our stomachs, we needed this part of our journey to be over. We handed the “medical” forms in (they just stamped them and didn’t even read them) and headed over to the visa desk. We gave our visa approval letter over and waited to receive our visa. We opted for the visa on arrival simply because there isn’t a Vietnamese embassy in Ireland, the closest being in London so doing the application online is super quick and easy. It took less than an hour from what I remember of the blur that was our arrival. We collected our bags and shuffled our way out of the crowded arrival gate searching for our name on a piece of paper. Finally we saw it – our driver was waiting patiently in a mess of other drivers. The fantastic thing about our hostel was that they had a section on their website that allowed you to request an airport pickup. This saved an immense amount of hassle and stress for us – we knew that it was a fixed fee which we would pay to the hostel, we wouldn’t be brought an arsey way around Hanoi nor did we have to find a taxi driver and hope that our exhausted and nervous selves could explain where we needed to go, hoping he would know how to get to the hostel.

Our first time on the roads of Vietnam was, for me, terrifying and exhilarating. Cars and bikes were swarming from every direction and few were driving in a manner which seems safe or logical to us. Cars drove where they could fit – not in between the carefully painted lines on the motorway. In other words a three lane road had become a four or five lane road, not including the bikes which zipped in and out of traffic and sped about this way and that way. Once we got into Hanoi it was a new chaos in comparison to the motor way. We were at a stand still but again, if we could fit through a gap in the numerous vehicles then we went through it. To say we were delighted to reach the hostel doesn’t quite do it justice. The staff were incredibly lovely and welcoming. They put our minds at ease and were eager to offer help and advice. We got changed and showered and went out with directions and a map to find food. It was about 6pm and we were knackered and hungry. We got lost. Quite lost really. We doubled back on ourselves and never found one of the recommended restaurants (the hostel staff strongly advised that we stay away from street food initially) but we did find an ATM to get out some dong. Once we found a small restaurant/café/essentially indoor street food we ordered some pho (noodle soup). My SO got beef and I got chicken as I normally prefer chicken to beef for something like that. It was good but my nerves weren’t allowing me to fully enjoy it but it was so good to eat something that wasn’t airplane food! We paid and laughed at the fact that our dinner had cost us €4! We used our data (yes Irish data…I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re super stuck) because we were lost in Hanoi and desperately needed to find the solace of our hostel. I won’t lie, I clung to my SO so that neither of us would get lost in the madness of a Friday night in Hanoi.

Once back to the hostel, we quickly shed the city off and got ready for bed. That’s when I tasted my dinner for a second time. I vomited all night and most of the morning. The stomach cramps were horrible. Don’t get chicken pho from a restaurant or café. Just don’t do it. Around 11 or 12 the next day my SO found a “western” café and insisted we go just to get some food that I would be able to stomach. We downloaded a map of Hanoi and made our way out. Let me tell you, Joma’s bakery was an absolute godsend! I managed to keep down a fresh croissant and an iced tea – with a lot of bargaining with my stomach. We still felt horrible though. There was this constant feeling that we had fucked up majorly. It was hot, humid and verging on terrifying really. Hanoi is really, well and truly not like any other city we’ve been to, and as my first experience in Asia it looked hostile. No matter how much research you do nothing can truly prepare you for the chaos that is Hanoi. We were indescribably delighted when our soon to be colleagues arrived Saturday afternoon and were waiting to meet up with us. We crept out again and realised that there was a lot around us – familiar shop and restaurants which would become our saviour for the 6 days which we spent in Hanoi. We met the manager with whom we had our Skype interview and three other people outside Dominos and went to a secluded café for a few hours. The café is impossible to find unless you are given ridiculously specific directions or if someone brings you there. It is behind a silk shop, down a tiny alley, past what kind of looks like someone’s living room and then it just opens up into a 3 story building. I got the best mango smoothie that I have ever had, and may ever have in the future. While my SO got an iced egg coffee. You read that right – an egg coffee. I don’t know how to make one but it is pretty much just iced coffee with whipped egg whites mixed in, it is truly amazing and is something that my SO orders whenever we step foot in Hanoi. Meeting people who have been in Vietnam for quite a while, 2 for 3 months and 2 for almost a year, it put our minds at ease. It was great to meet the people with whom we would be living and working to convince us that Vietnam was not as scary as it might seem, we would be able to find our place within it and, hopefully, with our new colleagues and housemates.

The rest of the week was ok, we spent most mornings in Joma’s and spent quite a lot of time escaping the heat, humidity and pollution during the middle of the day safe in our hostel. We would head out again in the evenings and found that Dominos was our safest option for food while we were adjusting. We knew before that we would need to avoid the women and men selling things, especially food, on the street and quickly learned how to easily move past them. We had been followed by one for a day we discovered and she caught us while we had to wait to cross a busy street. To hold us there she put her bamboo baskets across my shoulder and her hat on my head insisting that we take a photo so we caved and then before I could get it off of me she had given us warm and pre-cut pineapple and demanded payment. We didn’t have exact change so she kept saying “I give you change, I give you change”. If you take one thing away from this then let it be this – you will not get change and will have been paying too much in the first place, they will take off and disappear into a sea of Vietnamese hats and bamboo baskets. We paid 300,000 vnd for pineapple we didn’t eat - €12 for a small bag of pineapple. You have to be smart and fast with these people as they have been conning tourists for years and will always become smarter and faster. Mind your shoes when you walk – men sit and call after you in a panic, desperate to “help” as your shoe, be it a flip flop or leather dress shoe, is broken and he and only he can help you with his glue. They are very adept at getting your shoe off before you know what is happening and you will pay more than 300,000 vnd to get it back. They have friends around too in order to make sure that you can’t pull your shoe back and run. They almost got my SO but we were a few days in Hanoi and more savvy (well more than we were at first). Wanting to try Vietnamese food again, but more carefully, we found a restaurant called the Green Mango, which happened to also be a hotel. Well Oh.My.God. The food was amazing, they do effectively Vietnamese food and Western food and they were so friendly and for the first time since arriving in Vietnam we didn’t feel like we were being cheated out of something. For example we ordered a starter each and the waitress kindly told us that as the portion size was so large she would advise us sharing one – which we did and were glad that we did. Oh and the cocktails were to die for!

[anirishview]

The Year of the Rooster

My first Tết in Vung Tau, Vietnam:

 Some time in December I began to notice more red and yellow stars – flags everywhere. Yes they do normally have flags up but this was different, they were along each road and once January came along they cropped up at every house and apartment. Construction picked up. I mean it jumped from fixing up buildings and roads which seemed to have weeks of work remaining, to it all being finished in a matter of days. On my street alone two hotels were completed and opened. One, quite a large hotel, had the railing of the steps outside painted gold and for the grand opening a couple of days ago a festive dragon paraded outside with drums and dancing, surrounded by yellow and red flowers. The curbs around the town were suddenly painted white. Front beach suddenly had a giant rooster and hen mounted in the middle of the square. Red lanterns with gold trim were hung in shops, restaurants, food stalls, schools, language centres, homes and simply everywhere you looked. Yellow flowers, potted and cut, were being sold. Some flowers were in pots so large you could fit a small tree in them. By Friday 27th, everyone had at least two pots of these yellow flowers (which to be fair smell fantastic) to the left and right of their doors. Lets not of course forget the flags hanging from balconies, roofs and windows. Oh yes, and lanterns. Kind of spongey fake yellow flowers are also stuck on walls and windows.

 Anyway, the celebrations have so far been interesting. People return to their home towns for the celebrations. On the Saturday families are supposed to visit the husband’s family and the wife’s on Sunday. It seems that a lot of people from Saigon holiday in nearby beach towns as well. Over this Tết weekend my town is quieter in some places which would normally be buzzing with people, other areas packed, temples and beaches especially. On Friday my SO and I headed out to buy some yellow chrysanthemums and a Vietnamese flag. We managed to bring back a large flag and two pots of flowers on our motorbike which are all now proudly displayed at our house. We went out for dinner with our housemates and the usually calm Italian restaurant was packed so we had to wait for quite a while to get our food. Thankfully we weren’t in any hurry – one of our neighbours had been drunkenly singing into his karaoke machine with his speakers blaring and his unfortunately horrific voice carrying to every corner of our home and street for hours and hours on end. Once we got home it was thankfully relatively quiet and we were ready for bed.

 On Saturday morning my SO and I went out for breakfast having forgotten to go to the shop the day before and it was closed for Tết. Driving along the coast was the wrong plan – there are several temples along there and the road was lined with cars and motorbikes, some parked and others trying to manoeuvre themselves through much like us. We took a quick tour around to see what was open and drove home. Greeted by more karaoke. Now, 6 hours after I got back from breakfast, they are still going. Our nearby café is closed for the day so we have huddled into our room and have done very little for the day. The pubs where we can regularly find other westerners and waiters who speak English and/or understand our very poor and limited Vietnamese are also closed. We want to avoid the beaches which have been flooded by locals and tourists (as well as those from Saigon who trash the beaches every weekend when they come here, which is most weekends), but we have found out there is apparently a lovely beach that we haven’t been to yet so we set off to explore. We found a beach called “Strawberry Beach” (Bai Dau in Vietnamese) which really didn’t have anything to do with strawberries. It did however provide us with a stunning sun set and a gorgeous view of the rest of the coast. Afterwards the four of us (my SO, housemates and I) went for Indian food but upon hearing lots of music began getting worried that karaoke was starting nearby. It wasn’t, the music stopped and the drums and cymbals started. Teenage lads, in what I can only assume were traditional yellow costumes for Tết, were playing the instruments with large ornate dragon heads on the ground beside them. They were still playing and dancing with the dragon heads when we had paid and left to go home after we had fought our way through the crowd. I wonder what Sunday will bring?

 So why yellow and red?:

 Red is simple. Across Asia, red is known as a lucky colour, everyone wants to be lucky, right? If a colour is lucky, wear it, cover your home and town in it – that is what I have taken as the general consensus here. Red also symbolises joy. Yellow, however, is more complex. Here in Vietnam it has been known to symbolise wealth, prosperity, royalty, happiness and change. A huge part of Tết is hoping for wealth and happiness in the year to come, something which I think is quite universal – who doesn’t want their year to be full of happiness? Yellow, according to the Chinese, resembles the earth and is thought to be connected with something beautiful and prestigious. They also believe that it is the colour of neutrality and luck. I know that, yes that is the Chinese and I am in Vietnam, talking about a Vietnamese cultural tradition. We must remember that the two cultures run almost hand in hand, especially in the North. China controlled Vietnam for centuries, roughly 1000 years, leaving behind many of their traditions and beliefs. During my time here, I have asked Vietnamese people with whom I have worked about Vietnam before the many wars, before China. I have been met with blank faces and then followed with how Vietnam has been at war many times and their history is war…in other words I learned that they didn’t know. When they study history in school they learn about the many wars of Vietnam, of how Vietnam finally came out on top of their enemies. That’s why I think knowing the reason of yellow being important to the Chinese helps us to understand why it is important here in Vietnam.

 I won’t only say that it is purely down to their invader, it might be related to religion also. Many Vietnamese are Buddhist, believing that if they visit a temple on the first day of Tết that it will bring them good luck. Yellow is a significant colour in Buddhism, used in monks’ robes to symbolise their separation from materialistic society and their humility. My town is full of Buddhist temples and considering Vietnamese were Buddhist before the Chinese came into the equation isn’t it normal that they would hold onto it? This is nothing more than speculation of the connection between the two though.

 So this year is now the Year of the Rooster, I have seen so fecking many roosters everywhere! Yesterday probably marked the strangest thing I have seen involving a rooster in my entire life – as we drove our bike up the small street to our house a rooster was loose and a man squatting on the ground across from his house clicked his fingers two or three times and the rooster came and nuzzled up beside him! I have never seen anything close to that before, even in the countryside in Ireland!

 To finish, I must say that although I have had a very quiet and calm Tết, I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The excitement all around us in the build-up to today was actually a little contagious even though I did not know what to expect. It was one of the first times while I have been here that everyone has been genuinely excited and happy about a large celebration which wasn’t surrounded by propaganda and sometimes what can simply be described as lies. There is such a true belief among the people here that if they are kind to those around them on Tết and if they have flowers of red and yellow and red lanterns trimmed in gold that they will be lucky. There is one thing that I know for sure – if you don’t believe in luck and you don’t believe that the year ahead will be happy and joyful then you can be assured that it won’t be. I am so delighted to have been here to see it and to understand the importance of it all. 

[anirishview]

Tết, Saturday 28th of January 2017

For clarification, the next addition is a jump from September to January 28th 2017, which is not how things will usually go. Today Vietnam celebrates Tết, also called the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year. Tết is huge. It’s celebrated with friends and family and is far more important to them than our New Year ever is to us. I couldn’t live in Vietnam and start writing without giving it my full attention…

[anirishview]

13,000 Kilometres

 I graduated from my four year long law degree in September 2015 (in a university which had then been dubbed Monsters University). Before that I applied to a few solicitor firms – a lengthy, complicated, stressful and boring process. I thought that I for sure was going to be a solicitor; I’d start in a big firm and then move to a far away exotic place to do some good for the world. Easy, right? Well to start with, I should not have found the applications tedious and I should have put in more effort than I managed to muster. I didn’t understand until I didn’t get any interviews and heaved a sigh of relief that I was chasing something that I most definitely did not want. There was no disappointment, I discovered I was quite happy to have dodged that world. So, what now?

 My SO and I had long talked about life after university. Long story short, we wanted to travel. So that is exactly what we didn’t do. We started working – any jobs we could find really. We didn’t have to love them, they were money and they were all only temporary. There were so many of them. I started a contract which was supposed to only last a week. A month later I went straight from Temp Job 1 into a 2 month contract, and left there 4 months later. Trudging immediately into Temp Job 3 I knew something had to change, fast. Temp Job 3 and I separated over…differences…yeah we’ll say that. Some temporary and short lived freedom was followed by Temp Job 4, it lasted a few days scattered over 2 weeks, but it was all I needed. Then my tonsils had to go (exciting stuff really). Just FYI, one of these jobs was in a solicitor firm as a legal secretary, (the people who are not paid or respected enough to do everything that needs to be done to keep the firm’s head above water). I hated it, further assurance that moving away from that world was a fantastic decision.

 Why didn’t we travel? We would work and save and then move in together by November…ok January...March…July, that’s the latest…€1,500 for a tiny apartment near work, it’s nice but far too small for two people…€1,300 for one an hour away…but we want to escape the commute and petrol costs…€1,750 for an apartment near enough to work and it’s actually designed for two people but it’s more than my salary. This wouldn’t do. No more settling. That’s what I had been doing.

 Vietnam was on my horizon. This was September but Vietnam had been the light at the end of a dark and dreary tunnel since March…or April…well before the summer anyway (I think Irelands summer conveniently fell on a Saturday in 2016). Hanoi was the destination, teaching English was our goal. Roll on September 22nd. Planning happened slowly and yet also quickly. I started my TEFL course and finished it in Vietnam. We bought bags – ones that worked well as a suitcase but also for backpacking. Mine was far too small and didn’t fit enough – 60 litres for one year…don’t do it! – but I’m short, so any bigger would have been approaching larger than me and I wouldn’t be able to carry it, so I made it work.

 Leaving behind an angry mother and confused sisters, who insisted that I couldn’t teach English in Vietnam because I don’t speak Vietnamese, I started a long trip. My wonderful and very efficient SO had posted in Facebook groups looking for jobs. In Dublin airport at 11.30am on Thursday the 22nd of September 2016 we sat and spoke with our future manager over a very broken Skype connection. Successfully, somehow. We were lucky to have jobs before we even boarded the plane. We would meet her officially in Hanoi on Saturday with some of our soon to be colleagues. 22 hours, Dublin to Dubai, Dubai to Yangon and then on to Hanoi…

[anirishview]

Introduction

Before I start:

I am from rural Ireland.

I am not yet a writer, I am a law graduate and now an English teacher.

I was born in the 90s.

I am not in Ireland now, I am roughly 13,000 kilometres away.

As an Irish person I want to report on my experiences living there, living abroad and bringing topics forward which I believe are important to discuss.

For now I will be choosing to remain anonymous, that could change in the future though.

All of my stories are 100% true, but I will respect those mentioned by not using their real names.

I will be posting once a week to begin with, after that, we’ll see!