Category: Vietnam

Walking back through the alleyways to our apartment in the dusk, music tumbles out of a second floor apartment – rousing, unity type of music with choruses seeming to span time in their stereophonic tonal quality, together with an unexpected Scottish roaming in the gloaming feel. The love Ho showed his people lingers with me…

We often eat at a huge, noisy food hall off the campus along the main road in the evening.  There are 94 items on the menu, all in Vietnamese. We take our dictionaries and guide books in an effort to try and categorize the food pages and make some sense of it. The staff crowd…

From my window -bundles and bundles of electric wires drooping from balcony to balcony, almost roofing the alleyway. Teatowels, aspidistras, camellias, giant avocados and palms. Green, red and blue corrugated rooves. Seaside white and blue plastic mats. Shuttered windows. Agile elderly ladies cycling in conical bamboo hats. Delicate powder blue 1920's ironwork and bulging iron…

After two days my students cease to be a bewildering sea of Vietnamese faces and start to remind me of students from my teaching years twenty years ago; delightful, daft and daft-difficult. I am getting old. Children here seem keen on proverbs. At the end of the two and a half hour's session I lobbed…

Sunday outing – Hanoi Museum of fine arts. Guggenheim has donated a huge collection of 18th century engravings by Goya which depict the horrors and waste of war 'in the hope that the Vietnamese and the Americans may build a bridge of freedom and understanding after their suffering and loss.' I don't particularly like Goya…

Peter has bought an 8" long prawn from the market for tomorrow's lunch. He drops its temporary plastic bag home in the gutter as we get off the bus. He places it on the table in the restaurant. The westerners next to us look annoyed. Is it alive? I don't know now. The plastic bag…

We feel rather ashamed that we have got nowhere with the language -there are six tones i.e every syllable which can be pronounced in six different ways. e.g. the word 'ma' can mean phantom, but, mother, rice seedling, tomb or horse depending on the intonation. I have tried hard but can hardly detect the difference.…

Autumn is here. I have been assured that that is why I have a heavy cold. Indeed, I notice a drop in temperature -from intense, dense heat to that of a lovely English summer. For the first time we sleep with windows open and no air conditioning. The cockerel in the apartment opposite crows vigorously…

Perhaps this is a point to re-iterate the fact that we are piloting a 'mature' volunteers scheme here in Vietnam. I have to accept that this blog is completely inappropriate as a document to engage future volunteers but … more suitable culled material will appear on the my brother’s charity- http://www.glencoefoundation.org. This gives details of…

This weekend we are staying at the Golden Buffalo in my  brother’s hotel room in the heart of the old town whilst he is in Bangladesh for a week overseeing progress of cleft palate operations.  Peter has brought his travelling guitar to vietnam but has itchy fingers from not playing the piano for 3 weeks.…