To Be or Not To Be

Today I can sleep in so of course I am wide awake at quarter to six. I force myself to sleep more and I’m at breakfast by eight. Hien says hello and asks how I am and before I even ask I can see she is upset, there are tears on her cheeks. She slept in and was an hour late to work. After realising that was all that was wrong I assured her that she was human and not a machine and that these things happen, she smiles briefly but is still upset. It’s some sort of personal shame here, poor sweet Hein, she takes such good care of me.

Of course tourism has boomed in Vietnam over the last 10 years and every second young person who is able to study is studying hospitality, Hein has eighteen months to graduate. Doyen from Alley Booz is studying accounting. Similar to Australia most students have to work to support their study but unlike the ones back home these kids are working ten hour days five to six days a week, then going to Uni after work and supposed to find time to study also.

To relieve my own guilt of how easy my life is, I usually tell people when it comes up that I have worked hard for twenty years to be here and they seem to have slightly more respect towards me but I have had a relatively normal, easy western working life with holidays, paid public holidays and fair pay. It would really only take one of us westerners around a year to save and have the ability to move over here, for most of these people moving to Australia is an impossible dream.

I found out that the girls with the baskets make between zero (sometimes going for two or three days without selling anything) and five dollars a day, so on average, two fifty a day. The constant rejection alone would crush me, it’s brutal to watch a westerner who has been asked to buy chewy that costs about ten cents too many times, lose it and tell them where to go, as I have been guilty of.

Anyhoo……………off to Anne’s Cappuccino café for coffee and more “zen/motorcycle maintenance”, I am halfway now and it’s really rocking my world/doing my head in - one of those books where you think the main character IS you. Back to study for tonight’s class and out to lunch before my trip to the orphanage with Thay this afternoon.

I’m heading for Lam café but bump into Tom and Glen and yet another loud mouth American. I try my best to ignore him but my head flips when I notice his T-shirt is from Bozeman, Montana – that’s where the characters are heading in my book – ZEN! Glen has been perusing the book and I announce, “you’re not going to believe this but the characters in my book are going to Bozeman, Montana” pointing at the Americans T-shirt. He breaks into that big loud American voice saying “oh no, this is in Indiana” lifting his book up. I say “no there on your T-shirt”, again he repeats himself “no this is Indiana” – he is not listening to me, too involved in his own egocentric world. Finally I say louder “NO, on your T-shirt” now he looks and pauses “oh this, my dad gave it to me, I’ve never really noticed it before” – and that’s why the world hates you! Way to spoil the perfect synergy.

I turn to Tom and Glen and we chat for a while about teaching. I asked their seasoned advice on what to do with the slow kid in my class, they say I will work it out but I really shouldn’t let the other kids suffer less of my attention for him. Sacrifice the one to save the many. Tom heads off to work. I order a beer and some food and Glen informs me he has a website for me full of work in Hanoi, I give him my email and he will send it to me later. He assures me it will rain today and when I ask how he knows he says “the flies”. I’m not entirely sure what he means, there are not many, just tiny little annoying ones that I noticed over the last few days but I haven’t seen any since the rain yesterday. I should have asked what he meant but the conversation has moved on, if it proves accurate I will ask him next time I see him. After eating and some more conversation I buy him a beer and leave to shower before my road trip with Thay.

Back at the hotel Thay takes me aside and sits me down. “Bad news” she says, a teacher friend of her fathers has died and she must attend the funeral today, Vietnamese tradition. She apologises repeatedly and I ask her to please stop saying sorry it is no problem for me, I can use the time to study. We rearrange the trip for Sunday which is better, I have the whole day off.

So back up to my room to study and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I wake at three to an enormous clap of thunder so I rush off to a café to see the storm but that was it, it does rain though – and rain, and rain. Uh oh, karma coming back to me, tonight it seems I will be riding to work in the rain.

I am a little more apprehensive than I have been before about tonight’s class, it’s intermediate which means older teens and they have not given me much material for the two hours so I probably should be on the net looking for time filling games, ah she’ll be right mate.

I bought another fifty cent poncho but luckily Mr Wah has a decent one for me and we head off into the not torrential but steady rain. It’s a beautiful way to go to work. The poncho along with Mr Wah’s riding skills sees me to school without a drop on my “nice” clothes. The traffic is slightly less than normal but everyone goes a bit slower and bunches up a bit more, at one point my elbows are touching wing mirrors at about 5kpm.

The boondocks where the school is doesn’t see many “whities” and they slink away when I ask for a “café sura da” sure my accent is not great but it’s not that bad either. Charged up on a coffee I find my classroom and it’s the class I observed last week with Lizzie teaching. Seven students about sixteen and a man in his thirties. The class goes swimmingly. I manage to explain that they can blame Shakespeare for the difficulties they have learning the language with the excessive amount of words that mean the same thing – the word “so” is simple and all we really need but because of his brilliance and people’s love of the “romance” of his language the students have to also learn the word “therefore” – same thing. Towards the end of class we choose a topic to discuss “for” and “against” and they chose the topic from the book that is a double negative so about 10 minutes into it I realise that everything is backwards and they are all frowning and lost – a rookie wouldn’t have fallen into that.

The bell rings and Mr Wah is taking me home before you know it. It is an even more stunning ride home, hardly any traffic and the sweet freshness of the rain, gone now, hangs in the air (except around the two open sewers that we pass each journey). A quick change and out for some dinner and a beer – I had no idea this would take so much energy, I’m spent.