Rubber Plantations

I am very excited. I have planned a Day Trip. A Grand Day Out some might call it, of meaningful and inspirational proportions. Other than Margueritte Duras, who I have already blogged about, the reason I originally wanted to come to Vietnam was because the film 'Indochine' made it look so gosh darn glamorous. I mean, really, what's more glamorous than Catherine Deneuve in this outfit:

Or this outfit:

Or this outfit where she looks pissed off, but in a controlled, I'm-a-French-colonial kind of way:

There's also the matter of Vincent Perez in a navy uniform, but that is not the point of today's adventure. The point of today's adventure is to pretend I am Catherine Deneuve in this outfit, where she is absolutely rocking the conical hat look and embracing Vietnamese culture and generally being in charge, a bit dirty but still looking like every rubber farmer's fantasy.

Cor blimey Catherine Deneuve circa 1990, you are a fitty. 

So, to prepare for this journey, I screen grabbed some maps on trusty Mini Pad and packed essentials like tea in a thermos, petrol in a bottle, water, the new-old iPhone with Google Maps and 3G abilities and sun cream. I was doing very well, speeding on Roger Red Bike to the shiny new highway that cuts through charming rice fields - yes I did get lost a little at this point, but nothing major - until just as I was speeding up to merge onto said shiny highway, a man at the side of the road waved a baton at me, spoke to me in Vietnamese a lot and then translated quite simply: "no moto". Oh. This somewhat scuppered my navigational plans, so I had to revert to the trusty method of repeating the name of the destination with a questioning inflection every time I felt slightly unsure about where I was going. 

This method never fails, and got me almost all the way back to where I had started from. I did get to see some water buffalo on the way, though:

Hey buddy, hey... isn't this a bit, y'know, urban up for you?

After three people told me the same directions, I trusted them enough to head towards Cat Lai, which I didn't realise was a ferry station, so this scenic route turned out to be way more exciting than the originally planned journey.  The ticket man confirmed that this was indeed the ferry to take to get to Long Thanh, my intended destination. It's funny, because at times like this you really notice the difference between life in Vietnam and life in the UK. In the UK when faced with a ferry to an unknown destination, the following anxious concerns would have crossed my mind:

- I don't know where I'm going - the ticket officer is going to think I'm stupid;

- what if I don't have enough money for this ferry?  Is there an ATM that won't charge me?

- I don't know where this ferry is going - what if I can't get back?

- I don't know the ferry timetable - what if I get stuck on the wrong side of the river overnight?

- what 'type' of people take the ferry?  Am I the right 'type' of person to take this ferry?

- I didn't anticipate taking the ferry when I left the house - do I have the right equipment for taking ferries?

- I haven't told my parents I'm taking the ferry...

Luckily, in Vietnam, none of these things cross your mind because we live a very 'what the hell' lifestyle and ferries cost 10p and there is the understanding that you are rarely the 'type' to do anything because, well, frankly, you're the only white person on the ferry, or moped, or sitting on the plastic stool, or bargaining a better tourist price, or asking for directions. So, no, you're not the right 'type', but at least you're a novelty. 

The ferry came with an amazingly Asian soundtrack blaring from on board speakers, and a baby to play with, so I felt quite happy going with the flow and humming along to the music whilst the baby tried to steal my watch. 

Back on the road, I followed along dutifully, passing some fairly standard Vietnamese side-of-the-road built upness, and after about twenty minutes saw my first sign of rubber:

This was a good sign. For a long time after that though, the rubber trees stopped and for a little while, my only chance of survival in an emergency would have been squash and turnips...

And then I passed what I can only guess was the Vietnamese State Space Station... or a nuclear reactor...:

Why else would you build a dome shaped building, other than to house alien life forms?

Eventually, though, I made it to the town of Long Thanh and followed QL51 a little way out of the centre to the first significant rubber plantation I saw. When I had asked Frenchie earlier if he thought I'd get in trouble if I rode down one of the dirt tracks and picnicked in the middle of the plantation, he reassured me with the following response: "it's not like it's gold."  How right he is, in so many ways. Rubber plantations, indeed, are not like gold. 

Halfway down the little track, I turned Snoop Dogg off because it wasn't really appropriate for the peaceful atmosphere of the plantation, which really was as beautiful as I had imagined it would be. Other than the sound of a man chopping wood, and the very occasional passing bike, there was only the noise of the leaves and the birds.  Have some calming and peaceful pictures:

Roger Red Bike has definitely proved his worth. 

Hey, you guys!  You made it too!

Return journey was significantly shorter than the outward one, since I knew where I was going this time...

Ratmicus Pink

So. Teaching in international schools is guilt inducingly awesome.  The TF mission to which I committed myself some three and a half years ago seems very distant, so distant in fact that a good friend observed that she 'didn't think I was into that disadvantage stuff anymore.'  First marriage, now teaching rich kids - looks like I'm losing sight of who I am. 

The guilt, however, quickly dissipates during Holy Week, also known as Trips Week, where, as teachers, we get to spend time in the great outdoors with, frankly, some pretty incredible young people. This year I have accompanied year 7 just four hours up the road to Madagui Resort, which is the most beautiful place on the edge of Cat Tien National Park. It's a little American-camp-in-'The-Parent-Trap', but this isn't stopping me from loving every single millisecond of it.  Let's avoid libel by only talking about my experience of it so far, with the understanding that there were, at all times, between 11 and 150 children present, all being generally awesome. 

First, we Did Rock Climbing, which was really, really hard. I stood, watching others, jumping from one foot to another in my excitement to also Do Rock Climbing as I have never Done It before, and this is the sort of Li Hi activity I've been craving for a while. When it was eventually my turn to Do Rock Climbing, I unwittingly chose the hard wall and it was really difficult and I only managed to get up about 1.5m before pretending that was okay, and that I wasn't embarrassed and allowing myself to be lowered down by my bee-liner like a sack of flour on a rope. When I found out that the other three walls were much easier, I Did Rock Climbing on one of them, and got all the way to the top, even though I slipped at one point, and scraped my arm. Ow. 

Now even though I felt a very proud sense of achievement, the awesomeness of the tiny children who scaled the wall like spiders far outshone my personal victory. Children are amazing. 

Then, I Did Lying By The Pool whilst children did awesome pool games, and then we Did Camping, which involved making sticky rice in bamboo tubes, and spring rolls and cooking marshmallows and bananas with chocolate in them over barbecues. During this time, I also Did Appeasing Local Police Officers by trying to get hold a copy of my passport, visa and entry stamp to prove I was in the country legally since my passport was currently in the hands of the nice HR lady who is currently trying desperately to get me exit and entry rights in time for Tet. 

Then we Did Freezing Our Arses Off in Tents overnight because it was way colder than anyone had anticipated. Waking up after very little sleep to this view, though, wasn't so bad:

The next day, I ate spaghetti bolognaise for breakfast because it was on offer, and why not?  I then Did Nature Scavenger Hunting with my team, Ratmicus Pink, and absolute credit goes to the travel company, Asia Motions, who truly understand the workings of KS3 minds: walking in the hot countryside for three hours = boring.  Finding beacons, cracking codes, taking silly photos, gathering natural souvenirs for points, animal prints, crocodile pits, competition, rock carvings and caves all in a race against other teams = the most awesome three hours ever. Our favourite bit was when the red ant carried the black ant away to eat him, and the ferns curled up when we touched them. That was hours of entertainment, and meant that we didn't actually get all eight stickers in our sticker pack, but the appreciation of nature's awesomeness was definitely worth it. 

We then Did White Water Rafting, which was fairly tame, but we all got wet, and the girls beat the boys. Hoorah!

The next day, the children Did Raft Building, and the adults Did Getting Sunburnt and Gossiping. All the rafts floated so well that I felt it my duty to plunge into the lake fully clothed and go and attack some, à la the Kraken from that famous poem. All withstood my deep sea attacks, though, and nobody was dragged to the murky depths. 

After Raft Building was Cocoa Plantation Visiting, c/o the nice people who make Marou chocolate. I threatened not to advertise them on my blog unless I got free chocolate, so they gave all the children and the teachers a bar each. Yum!  Back at the plantation, though, I learnt heaps and got overexcited and took photos. This is what cocoa pods look like:

And this is how papaya (yuck) grows:

And I discovered that jack fruits grow from green microphones:

And that Vietnamese farmers hate squirrels as much as my father does, but their traps are potentially more effective than his:

The final day involved Doing Zip Lining, Archery and Finnish Skittles (way cooler than British Skittles) and Watching Obstacle Courses and Handicraft.  By the end of the trip, I was so exhausted from doing all these cool things, that I had to call RoD and go to a newly discovered and beautiful cafe (c/o this bloggy blogger: thehungrysuitcase.com) for a bit of relaxed expat time:

Phew!  Every Li Hi adventure deserves to end in Oreo milkshakes, I feel.

Herding

Because sometimes, of course, fields get boring, and your herd are bitten by the travel bug, like we all are, so you take them on a small tour to the local apartment block...

Left: my apartment block; right: herd with moto-cowboy; foreground: un-phased resident, because this is completely normal, apparently. 

Pho Sho Mo Fo

Pho is delicious. This might seem like a boring statement, but it is honestly so delicious and I have only discovered this since forcing myself to eat my way up and down Trãn Nāo, the street near where I live. I am so sad that for the first 15 months I have lived in this country I have wasted so much money on food when I could have been eating out every evening, consuming bowls of deliciousness, and watching the fascinating world go buy for just 72p a meal. 

This is pho tài from my absolute favourite pho restaurant and I love it. It is probably the best pho tài in the whole of Vietnam, but I would need to check out a few more pho places before I could verify this. 

In other news, I am stuck in Vietnam in a similar way that I was stuck in Darwin, except the people have been way nicer about my legal documentation here. Turns out that even though entry into the country on a new passport was seamless, thanks to the wonderful ladies in my HR department, exiting and coming back into the country say, to see your husband for the weekend in Singapore, is a no no with a single entry visa.  Fairly obvious when you think about it, but hey, who spends their time thinking when they could be, I don't know, eating pho tài?  Poor Frenchie thus has to do even more traveling to attend to my every need and whim.  Hopefully it'll all be fixed in time for me to enjoy my Tet holiday to some cutsie little destination with Buddhist temples otherwise I might have to get on my new little moped, Roger Red Bike, and drive to some strange, reachable destination in Vietnam for my cultural and Li Hi kicks!

Blank Beauty

Look how wonderful this is:

The immigration guys can stamp wherever they want!  In fact, I'm going to ask them to stamp right in the middle of the page, just for the sheer hell of it. 

What you don't see, though, is a Vietnamese visa.  Normally this would be because I have a residency permit, but nowadays my passport doesn't say the same name or number as my residency card, so I'm on a flight to Vietnam with just an exciting letter from my pals at the Vietnamese immigration office, asking the passport guys if I could kindly come back into their country. 

Isn't it fun, that in this day and age, you can get on a flight booked in one name with a passport that says another and enter a socialist republic without first having visited the embassy and waited around for six hours by just producing a shiny gold marriage certificate, being polite, and making a few phone calls?  Globalisation, hey?

Being a Feminist

Upon getting married this month, Frenchie and I were very fortunate to receive lots of cards, letters and drunken notes from family and friends wishing us all the best in our marriage for the years to come. One very special set of letters came from some ex students of mine, and one particularly apt message from a young man, clearly scarred by my teaching of feminist lit theory, read: 'what?  I thought you hated men?'  This, combined with a whole day of sitting still to have my hair and make up done, and then being physically given away by my father (a man) to Frenchie (another man), lead me to challenge my assumed 'raving feminist' status, and I sadly had to admit that I probably no longer promote my feminist rampage in neon lights, but rather wave a post-feminist bunting flag in Cath Kidston pattern that says, "It's my choice to stay in the kitchen!"  (Who wouldn't?  Cath does such pretty homeware stuff.)

This made me sad.  Where had the proud man hater of yesteryear disappeared to?  Who was this baby-obsessed maniac who had cuckolded my body?  What would GI Jane think?  Oh dear, oh dear.  It would seem that the only thing I still have in common with Simone de Beauvoir is that neither of us live in the same house as our significant others.  One has, indeed, become a woman, having been born an Afro-haired monkey thing of ambiguous gender. 

I mulled this over on yet another plane journey, my self-loathing growing, until - like a beam of light through stormy clouds - I heard a voice - a woman's voice - on a tannoy, like the voice of God or my subconscience, and it said:

"This is Mandy from the flight desk. We're currently cruising at an altitude of seven million feet over Limoges. The outside air temperature is currently -78 F and we've got some good south easterly winds making the journey easy for us at present."

Or something like that...

I was delighted!  A female pilot! A woman!  Surely something blog-worthy could come of this. 

So. Upon exiting the aircraft, I mustered up the courage to stop and talk to this pilotesse on my way out. I actually walked past her, embarrassed and eyes averted, up the gang plank and then told myself I was a coward and turned back. The conversation went thus:

Me: hello, I'm really sorry to ask, but I teach in a girl's school and we have a board where we post and talk about women in the work place and different careers that women can do. Like... inspiring role models.  That are women.  Um... We get a lot of creative, arty women, but not a lot of mathsy-sciencey type careers. Like pilots. Like you. Gosh. Would you mind if I took a photo with you for our board?

All a COMPLETE LIE but I couldn't think of any other way of saying, "IT IS AWESOME TO SEE A FEMALE PILOT!" so I went with it, and then... and then and then!  She invited me into the FLIGHT DESK, like the Star Ship Enterprise, and so I got a photo like this:

Doesn't she look smart and awesome?

Obviously, I felt bad that I lied, but I feel GOOD that I got to sit in a flight desk, and I feel EVEN BETTER to think that me and pilotesse Smith/Jones might help, somehow, to further the feminist movement of Women Doing Awesome Things somehow with this picture... Somehow...

So anywho, men are alright, but women are better. Hoorah for girls!

In other news, I drove all the way from Heathrow and back to Heathrow without dying, or killing anyone else, mostly because I sat on the inside lane on the M25 and drove at 55mph whilst making soothing noises to keep myself calm.  Driving a car on the motorway is definitely more stressful than driving a motorbike downtown in Saigon rush hour. 

Also, good friends are the best thing ever, so if you have a good friend living in, say, Vietnam, you should GO AND VISIT THEM and try to get married in the school holidays, and also have your babies during this time so that this good friend can attend, be a bridesmaid and squeeze fresh plump thighs and be a godmother. That is all. 

Homecoming

So.  Coming home for Christmas this year has been awfully exciting as, having found that the average Christmas has become a little mundane, Frenchie and I decided to spice things up a little by asking my sister to organise a Wedding of Epically Complicated Proportions to overshadow the birth of Jesus in our, and some 63 other people's minds. 

In the last three days,this has required following the Schedule of Colour Coded Uber Control, which has organised every 15 minutes of my life into manageable, bullet pointed chunks. 

'Get on the Plane', however, wasn't in the Schedule, which only started at 7am this morning when I touched down in Heathrow, but I was lucky enough to be babysat by eight other teachers, and as we all know, teachers like giving clear instructions like, 'Emma, pick up your passport', 'Emma, don't leave your passport there' and 'Emma, point to where your passport is right now.'  As well as this, they also got me in a taxi, to the airport, through check, security and duty free, to the bar, to the gate and on the plane. 

Whilst they were all busy herding me in the right direction with calm, outspread arms, I was busy having the following conversations:

Me: hello, Lovely Check-In Lady - I am getting married on Saturday in England. 

Lovely Check-In Lady: oh, congratulations. 

Me: I'm really keen not to be tired and jet lagged. I hear they have flat beds in business and first class. Any chance of an upgrade?

LCIL: I'm afraid not. 

Me: oh.  I really am getting married. I'm not making it up just for an upgrade. 

LCIL: congratulations. Try talking to the stewards when you get on the plane. 

Me: got it. What about the captain?

LCIL: the captain is married. 

Me: me too, but if there's an upgrade in it for me...

When I did finally talk to the stewards on the plane, I was delighted that they moved me to a row all on my own and promised champagne later. When they did bring me champagne, though, I had already realised that the plane was very empty and I could very easily have upgraded myself by just moving to an empty row, and that champagne was in fact available from their trolley for everyone. Hmph. He sure fooled me!

After a stopover at Doha, and the last two Godfathers (what a disappointment the third one is), the Schedule came into action and whilst wandering, slightly star-struck and overwhelmed through London to renew my passport, I noticed the following things that I probably took for granted when I was living in the UK:

- Paddington Bear is awesome. I've always known this, but it's worth reiterating. 

- the Heathrow Express is really very fast. What a delight!

- nobody in England likes to open their tills to give you change. 

- photo booths for passport photos make you look terrible and are very annoying. 

- people in the UK are unused to you starting a conversation, 'hello, how are you?  Gosh, that's a nice hat/scarf/pair of shoes', or 'morning!  This is lovely smelling coffee!  How are you?', but when you do start conversations like this, people are generally very nice to you and everyone's day is a little bit better. 

- 5 degrees is not as cold as I was worrying it would be, as long as the wind's not blowing. 

- M&S sandwiches are the BOMB. I love them. 

- travel is expensive. Gosh. 

- tannoy announcers have British accents!

Shockingly, I noticed this whilst everything was going according to the colour coded plan, which is spooky because things don't often go according to my plans. I don't want to jinx it, but the only loss so far has been a pair of wooden poles intended for signposts for wedding decorations which were clingfilm wrapped in Vietnam and made it all the way to Victoria before I noticed I had put them down somewhere and not picked them up again.  However, these were miraculously recovered by the lovely staff at the Victoria Pret-à-Manger, which, when combined with the friendliest service I've had in a long time from Kay at the passport office, got me feeling very Christmassy indeed. 

To keep up these festive spirits, and because I had four hours to kill before picking up my passport and  because London was looking particularly sunny and beautiful, I took myself on a little tour of my old haunts and visited some old friends:

Tea with Ole Liz at Buckers...

A tiptoe past my secret garden - a little spot I used to walk past and peak in at on my lunch break...

Some biscuits with St James at his palace...

A quick chat with my old boss at the Avenue (I used to stand there and take people's coats!)...

Then I got bored taking photos and met Laura for lunch instead and we ate sushi!  Because even when you're not in Asia, sushi is a GOOD idea.