We received our passports back today with the new visa stamped inside. They cost us $10 U.S. plus the courier cost and our travel agent's fee came to $30 each, which is 30% cheaper than the closest price we were quoted elsewhere, and our visa has been extended three months instead of one! The agent said, "Lucky. It could have gone either way...sometimes I apply for three month extensions and they come back with only one month. They have stacks and stacks to stamp and date, and make lots of mistakes." We wish we could take advantage of the extra windfall of time. I worried that we'd get bored being so long in one place, but boredom never seems to close in on us here.
This morning we went with Vicki and her friend Jan to the Fairy Bay breakfast buffet. Jan is a seven foot guy from California who spent decades in Zimbabwe and whose father hobnobbed with Joshua Nkomo and other names that are easily dropped in conversation. We had a really long chat about how much Nha Trang has changed in the past twelve years, and what other spots along the coast, north and south, are equally beautiful and much less developed. Nha Trang is a victim of success. The Russians, who own 50% of the oil reserves in Vietnam and are building a nuclear plant nearby, get two week vacation visits without the need for visas, and are investing massively in beach front property. They build hotels, and have multiple flights daily into the local airport directly from Moscow, with at least 900 people coming and going each day.
It's all very new, the opening of Vietnam to foreign investment. It is a top retirement destination, but it might be a narrow window of time that we can enjoy Nha Trang as snowbirds. We're becoming curious about Cam Rang, south of us, and Qui Nhon, north of us.
We got a taste of what to look forward to yesterday. We went in a van, eleven of us, to Paradise Resort in Doc Let (pronounced "Yawk Let"), about fifty kilometres north of Nha Trang. For $35, Deb and I rode the van and spent the whole day on a gorgeous beach, with kayaks and snorkel masks, beach chairs and umbrellas, two rooms for changing and resting, and the most delicious lunch that you can imagine. We ate squash soup, salad with an amazing French mustard dressing, battered fresh fish fry, potatoes, tomatoes and fruit. Watermelon and bananas are in season, at every meal. To drink, there's free homemade vodka, as much as you can handle, in clear jugs on the table that you might think are vinegar or water, until you taste them. And there's beer on the honour system.
The owner is an 87 year old Jugoslavian named Chere who fought alongside Tito in the second world war. He's a tough old geezer who lifts everything in sight, does his own repairs, and loves his rotweilers and his guests. He is kindly but opinionated. His opinion is the only one that matters and he'll happily give it to you. Avoid disagreeing with him, and enjoy the warmth and twinkle in his eyes. His cooks and servers are deaf mutes, very sweet and attentive but uncommunicative. He has a Vietnamese wife probably 30 years his junior, and two children.
The beach is sheltered, with lovely clean hard-packed sand under incredibly clear salt water, with no drop off. It is shallow and evenly graduated for a long way out. Deb and I could stay with Chere in this piece of paradise for $60/day in our own beach front bungalow with three delicious meals per day included, a large bookcase full of books, and all the watersport activities. One could possibly go fishing with the local fishermen in the bay from time to time. It is warm and sunny in the mornings on this coast, but by afternoon a cooler breeze sweeps in off the ocean which creates relief from the heat, and you can nap in the shade with a cool breeze. It is idyllic.
All our other activities described in previous posts continue. Dan found a great location in Nha Trang for playing pool, in a little-used restaurant on the top floor of a nearby building, with a lovely balcony view. There's one table there with a real slate surface. There is no competition for the table, and there are no hostesses. If we bought beer, we could play for free, but instead we just pay $2 an hour for the table.
The beach is sheltered, with lovely clean hard-packed sand under incredibly clear salt water, with no drop off. It is shallow and evenly graduated for a long way out. Deb and I could stay with Chere in this piece of paradise for $60/day in our own beach front bungalow with three delicious meals per day included, a large bookcase full of books, and all the watersport activities. One could possibly go fishing with the local fishermen in the bay from time to time. It is warm and sunny in the mornings on this coast, but by afternoon a cooler breeze sweeps in off the ocean which creates relief from the heat, and you can nap in the shade with a cool breeze. It is idyllic.
All our other activities described in previous posts continue. Dan found a great location in Nha Trang for playing pool, in a little-used restaurant on the top floor of a nearby building, with a lovely balcony view. There's one table there with a real slate surface. There is no competition for the table, and there are no hostesses. If we bought beer, we could play for free, but instead we just pay $2 an hour for the table.
It's too bad that we're going home on March 18th. Vicki says that by March 20th or so, the wind swings around and our beach becomes a lee shore, with extremely flat, calm water and crystal clear visibility. Any garbage that has accumulated (not that there's much now) slowly sails back into the open ocean. Some of yesterday's Doc Let party went snorkeling today, but we decided two "sun days" back to back wasn't advisable. I protected my arms and legs while kayaking, but got a little burn on my face even under my hat, just from the bounce-back from the water surface. We'll take a day to go to Vinpearl now that we have our passports back and can get our over-60 discount; and sometime in the final week we'll watch for the wind and weather window to pick the best snorkeling day we can before we finally leave. If we come back next year, I'll be sure to pack my tennis racquet and sneakers, and personal snorkeling gear.
Y brought me rice crackers today made by her grandmother - the same enormous rice crackers you see carried by older Vietnamese vendor ladies on the beach. Some are made with chili and pepper. One normally spreads fish sauce and other things on them, but there are many varieties. We've had mango flavoured ones, and Y told us there is a coconut flavoured one in the package. They're a perfect beer snack, but I can't buy them directly from the vendor because they always demand a multiple of what their Vietnamese customers pay. I'm sure they'd sell a lot to westerners if they charged the same rate for everybody.
Interestingly, and while on the topic of pricing: on the way home from Mac's we stopped for the third time at our banana lady, the one who'd initially charged us 10K, then 15K the second time. Another lady sauntered over and tried to take charge of the negotiations this time. The vendor tried to put a bunch into a bag and hand them to me before she'd tell me her price. Then she tried to get us to pay 30K, then some ridiculous mumbled price for a slightly larger bunch that sounded like 50K. I told her this was ridiculous, that they were only 9 1/2 K per kilogram at the "Maximark" supermarket, where we'd bought our most recent bunch. They were laughing at us and screwing with us, playing games with the prices, so Deborah got mad and pulled me away, and swore we'd never return. They tried to call us back, but Deb wouldn't even turn around. Thus a Vietnamese market vendor who could have had repeat business at least twice a week for many weeks, and more business from the friends we would send to her, will no longer get our business, nor will we send any friends to buy from her. And thus doth many Vietnamese screw themselves with their basic Ferengi-ness.
March 1st. We ate at Harry's Canadian Bar and Grill last night...in solidarity. Harry has been evicted, given the boot after only one year on his three year contract. There's no recourse, in Vietnam. The contract isn't worth the paper it was printed on. He has thirty days to remove $6,000 worth of equipment, come up with a new location, and try to attract his customers to it. Some silly reasons were given, but the bottom line is that someone else offered the landlord higher rent, probably part of the same tsunami of Russian investment money that is buying up miles of shoreline here on the coast. The Vietnamese people don't have any idea what is going on, except the top leadership who are enjoying their cut of the action. There is Russian money, Chinese money, and Indian money. They're all jockeying for position, in a great land rush. Rents have tripled in a year. We're probably lucky we came this year; if we return next winter, like migratory birds, we'll likely be looking for a smaller, less developed bit of paradise a little further up the shore.
March 2nd. Things are changing for us in Nha Trang. Dan left today to return to the frigid wastes of Siberia - at least, that's how I imagine it. He says there will be snow until mid-April in Tyumen, and a month of mud after that. I've lost my pool partner. He hopes to see us here again next December, as does Vicki, who is on her way home with a one month stopover in the Philippines.
My IELTS writing students came to the end of their 8 week session. I only taught them their last three lessons, and unless enough of them re-register, I won't be teaching them any longer. Which is okay with me; it has been my window into the IELTS program, and it ain't like I was doing it for the cash. The compensation is only about $10 an hour for actual teaching time, and nothing for the lesson prep, correcting and feedback time, which is always triple the amount of in-class time. Most foreign language teachers here, for that rate of pay, must simply think on their feet and do no lesson prep or follow-up work outside of class.
In some ways it feels like the end of summer vacation, with so many people heading for their homes in the north. Mac's class is still a delight, so we continue to teach there for free (very little prep involved), and get invited to play badminton, go to beach picnics, and go for coffee dates. And we still hang out with Renée and Shaina who will stay a week longer than we will, and with Esther and Lloyd when they're around. We went on the hash again today and I found myself running a great deal of the distance, which really surprised me. All this hoofing around town and a slight weight loss has made quite a difference to my fitness level. While hashing, I learned that the young Estonian hasher featured in the last photo album is famous for making pickles and even wholesaling them to local restaurants. Cucumbers are ubiquitous here, but cucumber pickles are rarely seen. I also learned that I'd heard his "hash name" incorrectly. I thought it was "Picklebit". It's not. It's "Pickle-dick".
March 4th. My hip is still recovering from the hash. Apparently breaking into a run didn't only surprise me, it surprised my hip as well. I took a pass on badminton with the kids this morning. However, my jaws still worked well at the Nhi Phi buffet breakfast.
Crazy Kim's...what to make of that place? Three classes per day, many without teachers, but using the space provided by Crazy Kim who owns a lot of very expensive real estate in the tourist quarter, including a spa, gym and dive training centre, and who never actually meets the teachers who volunteer there. She just chats with them over the phone and encourages them to take on the classes. There's a prefect assigned to each group.
In some ways it feels like the end of summer vacation, with so many people heading for their homes in the north. Mac's class is still a delight, so we continue to teach there for free (very little prep involved), and get invited to play badminton, go to beach picnics, and go for coffee dates. And we still hang out with Renée and Shaina who will stay a week longer than we will, and with Esther and Lloyd when they're around. We went on the hash again today and I found myself running a great deal of the distance, which really surprised me. All this hoofing around town and a slight weight loss has made quite a difference to my fitness level. While hashing, I learned that the young Estonian hasher featured in the last photo album is famous for making pickles and even wholesaling them to local restaurants. Cucumbers are ubiquitous here, but cucumber pickles are rarely seen. I also learned that I'd heard his "hash name" incorrectly. I thought it was "Picklebit". It's not. It's "Pickle-dick".
March 4th. My hip is still recovering from the hash. Apparently breaking into a run didn't only surprise me, it surprised my hip as well. I took a pass on badminton with the kids this morning. However, my jaws still worked well at the Nhi Phi buffet breakfast.
Crazy Kim's...what to make of that place? Three classes per day, many without teachers, but using the space provided by Crazy Kim who owns a lot of very expensive real estate in the tourist quarter, including a spa, gym and dive training centre, and who never actually meets the teachers who volunteer there. She just chats with them over the phone and encourages them to take on the classes. There's a prefect assigned to each group.
Anh categorically states, "No Vietnamese would do that for free". One former attendee says he had to pay something; another says she never did. Oddly, a couple of days ago I heard from a third person who knows her and says her start-up was funded by a grant from a Canadian foundation, for the purpose of teaching English to street children. I've been there twice: there are no "street children" present, just adult hotel workers and others hoping to improve their promotion prospects in tourism and other jobs. Is there a fee? Do their employers pay something? Does the grant funding continue each year? I suspect the latter, given how easy it is to trick foreign charities. One could even submit photos from a local orphanage - Renée and Shaina split their time between four of those. Crazy Kim can collect rent for her space from the foreign grant, pay nothing to any of her teachers and rely on tourist volunteers to meet with the students, whom she also never meets face to face. If my speculation is correct, she is one of probably a great many who have learned to game the charitable urges of the west. Her evening class has no teacher now that Robyn and Aaron have left to return to England. I intend to drop my Vietnamese class and I might use the time to drop in on the evening class to fill the void, and see if I can learn more about how she operates. Not that it will be up to me to do anything about it, but I'm curious. It might make for a good situation in a novel some day.
Motorbikes: I'm envious of all the Vietnamese - and that means virtually every single one of them - who scoot around town on two wheels. I keep wanting to rent one myself. They're cheap enough, but Deb won't go along with it. It's not that she doesn't trust my driving skill, although she's dubious that I can negotiate the chaotic traffic in the streets, especially at rush hour; and she will ride on the back of a scooter driven by a Vietnamese. Although the majority of foreign visitors seem to rent them, our guidebook says "Vietnam has recently banned all foreigners from renting motorbikes without a Vietnamese driver's license". Most foreigners have not been made aware of this, and the vendors sure aren't about to tell them. The police do not enforce the ban. Once never sees a cop enforcing any traffic rules, in spite of the obvious potential for profiting from on-the-spot fines. Even if they would, they can't speak English so they don't really want to get into trying to discuss traffic laws with a foreign motorcyclist.
I'm guessing that cops may be terrified of stopping the wrong person, perhaps a person of more status and power, or the child of a government official, and having their jobs put at risk for offending or annoying the wrong person. They don't stop speeders, or people who ride on the sidewalk. And of course, some riding on the sidewalk is inevitable because the sidewalks are not really for pedestrians, as they are in the west. Vietnamese people don't walk anywhere. Sidewalks are actually parking spaces for motorbikes, and often taxis, private cars, trucks and buses. This can be incredibly irritating for western pedestrians who constantly have to step nervously out into traffic in order to get around the parked vehicles. Even when you think you are safe walking on the sidewalk, you have to watch out for people leaving their parking spots and buzzing past you on their motorbikes. Mind you, the only time I was ever actually clipped, and from behind, was by a western jerk who would never have ridden on the sidewalk in his own country, but was merrily roaring up a narrow sidewalk to get around a corner without having to get out into traffic. I'm not nervous when I cross the street in front of Vietnamese bikers, who slow and smoothly part like the Red Sea to pass on either side of you. The western jerks, usually far less experienced, are aggressive, too fast, and unpredictable. They generally seem to think they've had a free pass without initiation to join the Hell's Angels by spending $5 a day on a motorbike rental.
Local insight from the expat community is unanimous: if you are involved in an accident, as a foreigner you will automatically be the one responsible for payment of damages, regardless of fault. Even your travel insurance might not cover you in an accident, especially since you are specifically banned from driving on just an International License or a valid license from your home country. This, fundamentally, is why we walk everywhere in town. We occasionally bum a ride from one of Mac's students if we're going out for coffee or badminton as a group, or we try to find a bus going in our direction. A German tourist explained that he got his Vietnamese license by producing his International license with a motorcycle qualification. He carries a blue card that shows the bike he bought is actually registered to someone else, a Vietnamese person, because foreigners can't own property. The Vietnamese person holds the insurance on the motorbike even though the foreigner has unofficially purchased it. It all sounds very dubious, and one still isn't covered if one causes personal injury or loss of income in an accident; nor is there any protection from being automatically considered "at fault" in any accident merely by virtue of being a richer foreign driver.
March 6th. All the above notwithstanding, my friend Lloyd is hunting for his own motorbike. He and Esther are renting one from his landlord, which he claims is insured by the landlord. Certainly the other expats, in spite of what they say, do ride their bikes everywhere. I'd say they keep their fingers crossed that they won't be involved in an accident where anyone gets injured, but I learned earlier that to cross your fingers is a rude sign - and yet I've also learned more recently that maybe it isn't, but that there is a very similar sign that is that involves a slight separation of the crossed fingers, a trick I can't perform.
I've also learned that the story told by the American teacher in Da Lat at our Christmas Eve party may be grossly exaggerated - the one about preparing for an English pronunciation class for university professors that none of them were willing to attend. Yesterday in my reading group at Mac's I sat with a lady who had surprisingly good English, and she turned out to be a supervisor of students at Nha Trang University. She assured me that at both universities - and she'd gotten her degree at Da Lat - the English professors had to have Master's degrees, at a minimum, from an Australian university. It may have been professors in other departments who didn't show up for their first class; and they may have simply decided there was no particular reason why they had to attend because they didn't need to speak English and they had tenure so it wasn't like they could lose their jobs for refusing to play ball with the administration. This is all just speculation, of course, in an attempt to reconcile the two stories I've heard about Vietnamese university professors.
Today I'm helping a grade 11 student with an essay she's writing in English. She's preparing to go to the U.S. for grade 12 to be hosted by a family while she experiences a year of school there. I've encountered people who say they can't travel and can't get visas, and others - large numbers of them - who do study abroad and then come back. It appears that getting student visas to study abroad isn't very difficult, if you've got the money to travel. To emigrate searching for a job in a new country is a different story, and it would be hard to call yourself a refugee if you come from Vietnam, which is considered quite a stable country at the moment. I have another friend who aims to travel to foreign countries on Vietnamese ships, as a marine surveyor who is responsible for continuous assessment of the ship's condition. He hasn't said that he intends to jump ship in a foreign port, and I don't believe he wants to. However, the resistance to emigration doesn't appear to come from the Vietnamese gov't, but from the immigration departments of the western nations that some Vietnamese would like to travel to. They want to avoid asylum seekers and visitors overstaying their visas, becoming an economic and social problem in the new host country, and an influx of young people claiming refugee status for ideological and economic reasons rather than any genuine danger to themselves and their families.
Vietnam appears to be enjoying a major economic boom, with the help of investment money from Russia, China and India. The country is primed for growth demographically, unlike most western nations where the populations are aging, retiring, and increasingly in need of elder-care. The construction boom in Nha Trang alone is astonishing and constant - it will look quite different in only a few more years. Sadly, high rises are going up in streets just back of the waterfront, and they will blot out the sun on those streets, and in neighbouring hotels.
Motorbikes: I'm envious of all the Vietnamese - and that means virtually every single one of them - who scoot around town on two wheels. I keep wanting to rent one myself. They're cheap enough, but Deb won't go along with it. It's not that she doesn't trust my driving skill, although she's dubious that I can negotiate the chaotic traffic in the streets, especially at rush hour; and she will ride on the back of a scooter driven by a Vietnamese. Although the majority of foreign visitors seem to rent them, our guidebook says "Vietnam has recently banned all foreigners from renting motorbikes without a Vietnamese driver's license". Most foreigners have not been made aware of this, and the vendors sure aren't about to tell them. The police do not enforce the ban. Once never sees a cop enforcing any traffic rules, in spite of the obvious potential for profiting from on-the-spot fines. Even if they would, they can't speak English so they don't really want to get into trying to discuss traffic laws with a foreign motorcyclist.
I'm guessing that cops may be terrified of stopping the wrong person, perhaps a person of more status and power, or the child of a government official, and having their jobs put at risk for offending or annoying the wrong person. They don't stop speeders, or people who ride on the sidewalk. And of course, some riding on the sidewalk is inevitable because the sidewalks are not really for pedestrians, as they are in the west. Vietnamese people don't walk anywhere. Sidewalks are actually parking spaces for motorbikes, and often taxis, private cars, trucks and buses. This can be incredibly irritating for western pedestrians who constantly have to step nervously out into traffic in order to get around the parked vehicles. Even when you think you are safe walking on the sidewalk, you have to watch out for people leaving their parking spots and buzzing past you on their motorbikes. Mind you, the only time I was ever actually clipped, and from behind, was by a western jerk who would never have ridden on the sidewalk in his own country, but was merrily roaring up a narrow sidewalk to get around a corner without having to get out into traffic. I'm not nervous when I cross the street in front of Vietnamese bikers, who slow and smoothly part like the Red Sea to pass on either side of you. The western jerks, usually far less experienced, are aggressive, too fast, and unpredictable. They generally seem to think they've had a free pass without initiation to join the Hell's Angels by spending $5 a day on a motorbike rental.
Local insight from the expat community is unanimous: if you are involved in an accident, as a foreigner you will automatically be the one responsible for payment of damages, regardless of fault. Even your travel insurance might not cover you in an accident, especially since you are specifically banned from driving on just an International License or a valid license from your home country. This, fundamentally, is why we walk everywhere in town. We occasionally bum a ride from one of Mac's students if we're going out for coffee or badminton as a group, or we try to find a bus going in our direction. A German tourist explained that he got his Vietnamese license by producing his International license with a motorcycle qualification. He carries a blue card that shows the bike he bought is actually registered to someone else, a Vietnamese person, because foreigners can't own property. The Vietnamese person holds the insurance on the motorbike even though the foreigner has unofficially purchased it. It all sounds very dubious, and one still isn't covered if one causes personal injury or loss of income in an accident; nor is there any protection from being automatically considered "at fault" in any accident merely by virtue of being a richer foreign driver.
March 6th. All the above notwithstanding, my friend Lloyd is hunting for his own motorbike. He and Esther are renting one from his landlord, which he claims is insured by the landlord. Certainly the other expats, in spite of what they say, do ride their bikes everywhere. I'd say they keep their fingers crossed that they won't be involved in an accident where anyone gets injured, but I learned earlier that to cross your fingers is a rude sign - and yet I've also learned more recently that maybe it isn't, but that there is a very similar sign that is that involves a slight separation of the crossed fingers, a trick I can't perform.
I've also learned that the story told by the American teacher in Da Lat at our Christmas Eve party may be grossly exaggerated - the one about preparing for an English pronunciation class for university professors that none of them were willing to attend. Yesterday in my reading group at Mac's I sat with a lady who had surprisingly good English, and she turned out to be a supervisor of students at Nha Trang University. She assured me that at both universities - and she'd gotten her degree at Da Lat - the English professors had to have Master's degrees, at a minimum, from an Australian university. It may have been professors in other departments who didn't show up for their first class; and they may have simply decided there was no particular reason why they had to attend because they didn't need to speak English and they had tenure so it wasn't like they could lose their jobs for refusing to play ball with the administration. This is all just speculation, of course, in an attempt to reconcile the two stories I've heard about Vietnamese university professors.
Today I'm helping a grade 11 student with an essay she's writing in English. She's preparing to go to the U.S. for grade 12 to be hosted by a family while she experiences a year of school there. I've encountered people who say they can't travel and can't get visas, and others - large numbers of them - who do study abroad and then come back. It appears that getting student visas to study abroad isn't very difficult, if you've got the money to travel. To emigrate searching for a job in a new country is a different story, and it would be hard to call yourself a refugee if you come from Vietnam, which is considered quite a stable country at the moment. I have another friend who aims to travel to foreign countries on Vietnamese ships, as a marine surveyor who is responsible for continuous assessment of the ship's condition. He hasn't said that he intends to jump ship in a foreign port, and I don't believe he wants to. However, the resistance to emigration doesn't appear to come from the Vietnamese gov't, but from the immigration departments of the western nations that some Vietnamese would like to travel to. They want to avoid asylum seekers and visitors overstaying their visas, becoming an economic and social problem in the new host country, and an influx of young people claiming refugee status for ideological and economic reasons rather than any genuine danger to themselves and their families.
Vietnam appears to be enjoying a major economic boom, with the help of investment money from Russia, China and India. The country is primed for growth demographically, unlike most western nations where the populations are aging, retiring, and increasingly in need of elder-care. The construction boom in Nha Trang alone is astonishing and constant - it will look quite different in only a few more years. Sadly, high rises are going up in streets just back of the waterfront, and they will blot out the sun on those streets, and in neighbouring hotels.
Some tourists will begin looking for another "unspoiled" location, in particular perhaps the Australians and the European backpacker crowd. The Russian "packagers", as Dan calls them, will still come for their quick visa-free vacations on direct flights from Moscow and several other cities. The Vietnamese tourist industry in Nha Trang appears to be hitching its wagon to that particular star, which makes sense.
There are many who are shut out of profiting from the economic miracle, but others participate through tourism and other industries. The appetite to learn English is fueled by tourism, but also by students seeking higher education in foreign universities and intending to return to Vietnam afterward, and company executives wishing to trade overseas, sell their services overseas, or acquire new technologies. Those companies reward workers who work toward demonstrating proficiency in English.
March 7th. Last thoughts about corruption in Vietnam before moving on to a new topics: the guy Owee must be willfully blind about corruption if he's lived here for 12 years and hasn't seen any. Trinh didn't get to travel with Vicki to the Philippines for a month. Married to Ramon and living in Milan for the past two years, she was supposed to get a letter from local authorities proving no criminal background, which was part of her Italian citizenship process. She filled in lots of forms, waited patiently for appointments with people who stalled her, had to miss her flight and change it, and was finally made to understand that she would get her simple letter document, having paid all the official fees, for an additional million dong, $50. And it took ten extra days, even after that.
We were pleased that her sister Hieu was able to begin attending Mac's English conversation classes; and even more pleased that she got hired here at the Ha Tram hotel as a receptionist. Trinh is training here, since Trinh is at loose ends while waiting, and it was here in the hotel that Trinh worked when she met Ramon.
I met a young Vietnamese fellow who has been hitch-hiking through Vietnam, from Hanoi to here so far, Couchsurfing all the way. He will continue south and visit Cambodia, Thailand, and other Asian countries he can visit without a visa. I quizzed him about how it was that he could afford to travel when so many other young Vietnamese could not. His parents are not wealthy. His father is a retired guard and his mother owns a small store, but his sister works at one of the twenty banks in Vietnam. He graduated from university with a degree that should prepare him for a job in a bank, but he didn't try for the job. He worked as a tour guide (his English is excellent, with a clear mid-western accent), a receptionist at "the Skybar", and at a third job, and saved his money.
"Why didn't you go into banking?", I asked.
"In a word...corruption," he answered. "I didn't want my parents to have to pay."
"Pay? But you've already completed your education, right?"
"Right...but they would still have to buy me the job."
"That sounds crazy. How much would they have to pay?"
"About 300 to 400 million dong," he replied. "and that's just for a job at one of the smaller banks. I know that because my sister works at a bank, and they had to buy her job."
So, that's fifteen to twenty thousand dollars that his parents had to pay for his sister to get a job at a bank, and would have had to pay for him to follow in her footsteps - to the bigwigs at the bank. His father's total salary as a guard might only have been about $4,000/year.
Our young friend Y, who will interview shortly for a student visa to the U.S., hopes to take a teaching degree there and learn our classroom practices and methods. She says, "The teaching methods here are not good; teachers pay to get their jobs."
Lastly, before ending this diary entry and beginning the final one: I didn't bother volunteering at Crazy Kim's. "Crazy like a fox", she is. Before Hieu came to Mac's, she tried to go to Crazy Kim's, where as I've earlier described, they run three classes a day on the second floor of a local dive shop. Trinh used to go there a few years ago. They got Hieu to register and fill out forms, and then told her there were no spots available for her. "I don't know why they made me register if there were no spots," she said, plaintively. Ah, but to a retired school administrator the madness is quite clear. Her neatly printed registration will now be used as evidence of student attendance, to be stacked with all the others to justify continuation of the grant from the Canadian foundation that, we've been told, pays the rent for her space so that "street kids" can attend free conversation classes. Not that there are any qualified or paid instructors there - just occasional passionate volunteers. Canadian charities are such myopic soft touches. Myopic = "inability to see things that are far away".
March 7th. Last thoughts about corruption in Vietnam before moving on to a new topics: the guy Owee must be willfully blind about corruption if he's lived here for 12 years and hasn't seen any. Trinh didn't get to travel with Vicki to the Philippines for a month. Married to Ramon and living in Milan for the past two years, she was supposed to get a letter from local authorities proving no criminal background, which was part of her Italian citizenship process. She filled in lots of forms, waited patiently for appointments with people who stalled her, had to miss her flight and change it, and was finally made to understand that she would get her simple letter document, having paid all the official fees, for an additional million dong, $50. And it took ten extra days, even after that.
We were pleased that her sister Hieu was able to begin attending Mac's English conversation classes; and even more pleased that she got hired here at the Ha Tram hotel as a receptionist. Trinh is training here, since Trinh is at loose ends while waiting, and it was here in the hotel that Trinh worked when she met Ramon.
I met a young Vietnamese fellow who has been hitch-hiking through Vietnam, from Hanoi to here so far, Couchsurfing all the way. He will continue south and visit Cambodia, Thailand, and other Asian countries he can visit without a visa. I quizzed him about how it was that he could afford to travel when so many other young Vietnamese could not. His parents are not wealthy. His father is a retired guard and his mother owns a small store, but his sister works at one of the twenty banks in Vietnam. He graduated from university with a degree that should prepare him for a job in a bank, but he didn't try for the job. He worked as a tour guide (his English is excellent, with a clear mid-western accent), a receptionist at "the Skybar", and at a third job, and saved his money.
"Why didn't you go into banking?", I asked.
"In a word...corruption," he answered. "I didn't want my parents to have to pay."
"Pay? But you've already completed your education, right?"
"Right...but they would still have to buy me the job."
"That sounds crazy. How much would they have to pay?"
"About 300 to 400 million dong," he replied. "and that's just for a job at one of the smaller banks. I know that because my sister works at a bank, and they had to buy her job."
So, that's fifteen to twenty thousand dollars that his parents had to pay for his sister to get a job at a bank, and would have had to pay for him to follow in her footsteps - to the bigwigs at the bank. His father's total salary as a guard might only have been about $4,000/year.
Our young friend Y, who will interview shortly for a student visa to the U.S., hopes to take a teaching degree there and learn our classroom practices and methods. She says, "The teaching methods here are not good; teachers pay to get their jobs."
Lastly, before ending this diary entry and beginning the final one: I didn't bother volunteering at Crazy Kim's. "Crazy like a fox", she is. Before Hieu came to Mac's, she tried to go to Crazy Kim's, where as I've earlier described, they run three classes a day on the second floor of a local dive shop. Trinh used to go there a few years ago. They got Hieu to register and fill out forms, and then told her there were no spots available for her. "I don't know why they made me register if there were no spots," she said, plaintively. Ah, but to a retired school administrator the madness is quite clear. Her neatly printed registration will now be used as evidence of student attendance, to be stacked with all the others to justify continuation of the grant from the Canadian foundation that, we've been told, pays the rent for her space so that "street kids" can attend free conversation classes. Not that there are any qualified or paid instructors there - just occasional passionate volunteers. Canadian charities are such myopic soft touches. Myopic = "inability to see things that are far away".
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